Vampir

In Illyria/Dalmatia (the Bosnian–Serbo–Croatian region) **vampirs** were undead beings that often visit loved ones and cause mischief or deaths in the villages they inhabited when they were alive. They wear shrouds and are often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from the pale British vampire (which dates from the early 19th century). Variants throughout the Balkans are known as *strigoi* in Romania, *shtriga* in Albania, *vrykolakas* in Greece.

Vampirs are usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics are often attributed to the recent drinking of blood. Blood was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin and its left eye was often open. It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature. They ate any kind of flesh, especially craved human flesh, but if they bite a person and they died with body mostly intact (i.e. not eat or torn to pieces), that person would revive as a vampire themselves. Vampirs are also closely associated with demons, dark spirits, and the use of magic.

Corpses thought to be vampirs were generally described as having a healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs of decomposition. In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its face. Evidence that a vampir was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours. Vampirs could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-like activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects, and pressing on people in their sleep.

Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles, near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method resembles the Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld. It has been argued that instead, the coin was intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced by knowledge of vampires in other regions. This tradition persists in Greek dealing with the *vrykolakas*. Other methods commonly practiced in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampir; this was intended to keep the vampir occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania.

Many rituals were used to identify a vampir. One method of finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse will balk at the grave in question. A black horse was required.

The causes of vampiric generation can be many and varied. In Slavic areas, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead. A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was also at risk.

## Weakness

Methods of destroying suspected vampirs varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in southern Slavic cultures. Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic or hawthorn in Serbia, with a record of oak in Silesia. Aspen was also used for stakes, as it was believed that Christ's cross was made from aspen (aspen branches on the graves of purported vampirs were also believed to prevent their risings at night). Potential vampirs were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany and the stomach in northeastern Serbia. Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated vampire. This is similar to the practice of burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant. In one example of the latter, the corpses of five people in a graveyard near the Polish village of Drawsko, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, were buried with sickles placed around their necks or across their abdomens. Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In the Balkans, a vampire could also be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by sprinkling holy water on the body, or by exorcism. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 19th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure.

To summarize:

* They are nocturnal.
* They can be killed by decapitation or fire.
* An ash, oak, or hawthorn stake will also kill them.
* Drowning them will stop them until they are removed from the water.
* Garlic, holy symbols, and running water deter them.
* Counting things, esp. small things, will occupy them.
* Some can be harmed by silver (much like spirits being harmed by cold iron).
* Any part of the aspen, oak, ash, maple, dogrose, wild rose, holly, juniper, millet, linden, mayflower, roses, lemon, rowan, or wolfsbane will be deterrent or harmful to them.

## Etymology

The Serbian form *vampir* has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian вампир (*vampir*), Bosnian: *vampir*, Croatian *vampir*, Czech and Slovak *upír*, Polish*wąpierz*, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) *upiór*, Ukrainian упир (*upyr*), Russian упырь (*upyr'*), Belarusian упыр (*upyr*), from Old East Slavic упирь (*upir'*) (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). The exact etymology is unclear. Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are \*ǫpyrь and \*ǫpirь.

Some form of vampiric entities have been reported in most cultures; the term *vampire*, was popularized in western Europe in the early 19th century, after an influx of vampire superstition from areas where vampir legends were frequent. The *Oxford English Dictionary* dates the first appearance of the English word *vampire* (as *vampyre*) in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled *Travels of Three English Gentlemen* published in *The Harleian Miscellany* in 1745. Vampires had already been discussed in French and German literature. After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity. The English term was derived (possibly via French *vampyre*) from the German *Vampir*, in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian *vampir* (Cyrillic: вампир).

Another less widespread theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar *ubyr*). Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb "vrepiť sa" (stick to, thrust into), or its hypothetical anagram "vperiť sa" (in Czech, the archaic verb "vpeřit" means "to thrust violently") as an etymological background, and thus translates "upír" as "someone who thrusts, bites". An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian *Слово святого Григория*), dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of *upyri* is reported.