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When Baasan recalled the dates and circumstances of the deaths of her great-grandmother, Otgon, and grandfather, Amar, she became convinced that the two skulls her brother Bat saw before he died represented these two ancestors. Otgon and Amar had died at a time of repression and could not receive proper burials, mourning, and rituals of sending their souls to the next destination. "There was hardly anyone courageous enough to seek a lama to recite sutras. Whispering a mantra was the best most people could do at the time, said Baasan. Without the proper rituals of mourning and grieving, souls do not leave the living in peace, but come back to torment them. 
Otgon and Amar were ordinary people. They were not shamans or lamas, so after death their souls were not destined to become origin spirits. But even the souls of ordinary people need proper burials and rituals. With appropriate burials and mourning rituals, they would be able to find their next reincarnations and leave their living descendants in peace. But because they had been improperly buried and inadequately mourned, their souls were trapped on earth with the living, becoming uheer - malignant, tormented spirits - and settling on Baasan's hearth to trouble her and others.