The churel, also spelled chudail or churail across North Indian, Pakistani and wider South Asian folklore, is specifically the ghost of a woman who died during pregnancy, childbirth, or within a fixed period after giving birth, particularly if she was mistreated, neglected, or died with grievances against her family unresolved. This origin story is unusually consistent across regional variants compared to the broader and vaguer bhoot category, and it marks the churel as a gendered figure of folk protest as much as a supernatural threat, since her anger is typically aimed specifically at the family, and especially the male relatives, considered responsible for the circumstances of her death.
Descriptions commonly give her feet turned backward, unusually long or dishevelled hair, and either a distorted, aged appearance or, in other tellings, a deceptively attractive one she uses to lure male relatives away, most often ones connected to the household that wronged her, before revealing her true form. Protective custom in regions where churel belief is strong has historically shaped actual funerary practice for women who die in these circumstances, including specific burial precautions meant to keep her from rising, which places the churel among the folklore figures with the most direct, observable effect on real mortuary behaviour.