If one or two persons die in a house in one year, the family often
leave it and make another house. On quitting the old house they knock
a hole in the back wall to go out, so as to avoid going out by the
front door. This is usually done when the deaths have been due to an
epidemic, and it is presumably supposed that the dead men's spirits
will haunt the house and cause others to die, from spite at their
own untimely end. If an epidemic visits a village, the Gonds will
also frequently abandon it, and make a new village on another site.