Ghost of a flea

I watched a documentary on tornadoes that mentioned that one of the plains tribes had an oral tradition of referring to one particular type of tornado as a "dead man walking." They had footage of a May 27, 1997 tornado that went through the small Central Texas town of Jerrell, that was described by storm-chasers as beginning with a medium dual-rope tornado or multi-vortex pencil tornado. (as it went through town it became lethal) For the first and only time in my life, I saw the dead-man-walking. It looked like the hips, legs, and feet of a huge giant. The two tornadoes were connected at the top, which looked like hips/lower torso. The clouds obscured the imagined upper body, the bend in the "rope" made knees, and the point of contact with the ground made a dusty swelling that could be thought of as feet. As each of the twin tornadoes rotated around each other they created a haunting optical illusion of legs walking. It was a real heart-stopper. Edit: Still image found here.

After seeing that footage, I have no problem understanding how an oral tradition of an angry spirit scuffing his way across the landscape could occur.