Garudapurana 2.23

Garuḍa Purāṇa, Chapter 23
Garuḍa said:
What do ghosts do when fixed in the state of piśācas?
Do they ever speak? Tell me that, O Lord of gods.

The Holy Lord said:
I shall describe their nature, their signs, and dreams as they truly are:
Afflicted by hunger and thirst, they indeed enter their own homes.

Settled in bodies of wind, they show signs to the sleeping members / of their own lineage and appear before them, O Lord of Birds.

One approaches there one's own sons, wife, and kinsmen; / a horse, elephant, bull, or man is seen with a deformed face.

When an awake person sees himself or another sleeping / in an unnatural or inverted position, he should know that to be caused by a preta.

If in a dream a man is bound tightly with chains in many ways, / or a deceased ancestor appears ill-clad in a dream begging for food,

or if in a dream one snatches food from someone eating and flees, / or someone—whether oneself or another—tormented by thirst, drinks water,

or rides a bull in a dream, walks alongside bulls, / flies up into the sky, or goes afflicted by hunger to a sacred ford,

or hears a voice speaking from among cows, bulls, brahmins, horses, / an emblem, an elephant, a deity, a spirit, a preta, or a night-roamer,

in a dream, O King of Birds, these are pretas' manifold signs. / If one sees a wife, kinsman, son, or husband who is alive as dead, / it is certainly due to an affliction from a preta.

If someone begs another in a dream, overwhelmed by hunger and thirst, / one must go to a sacred ford and offer rice balls; there is no doubt it stems from pretas' afflictions.

If in a dream a son, cattle, father, brother, or wife / walks out of the house, one sees this on account of pretas' afflictions.

These are the signs, O King of Birds; let one perform an expiation: / bathing at home or at a sacred ford, one should make water offerings at a bilva tree.

The wise person should give black grains and gifts of worship to one who has mastered the Vedas, / perform an oblation to the fire according to his ability, and have [the scripture] read completely.

Whoever recites or even listens with faith to this / exposition of pretas' signs—for him the ill omens of pretas are destroyed.

Thus ends the twenty-third chapter, entitled 'Determination of the actions of pretas, their speech, their signs, and the means of liberation from them,' in the Pretakalpa of the Dharmakāṇḍa, in the second part of the Uttarakhaṇḍa of the glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa, in the dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Garuḍa.