Destroy

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### Bottling a Vampire

* Relevant Vampires:
* Favored By: Sabbatianoí, Sâbotnichav, Djadadjii
* Region: Bulgaria
* Main Article:

Seen most often in Bulgarian traditions as the most effective means of destroying a vampire. Armed with a religious icon and an empty bottle, the hunter will ambush the vampire and corner it. Leaving the vampire nowhere to go, the hunter will prick a finger and let a few drops of blood fall into the bottle. The vampire will jump into the bottle. The hunter seals it and then throws it into the fire to burn.

### Cutting the Chest

* Region: Slavic Areas
* Main Article: Corpse Mutilation

A second variant of this practice is piercing the chest with a needle or cutting the chest with a knife, so the soul could not follow the demons, nor could the dead transform into a vampire.

### Cutting the Hamstring

* Relevant Vampires: Plague Vampire
* Favored By:
* Region: Global
* Main Article: Corpse Mutilation

This involves cutting the ligaments at the elbows and knees. It's meant to trap a vampire in its grave. Sometimes used only for as long as it takes for a Stake-N-Bake, or sometimes the hunter will simply leave the vampire forever crippled and rebury it.

### Cremation

* Region: Global
* Main Article: Cremation

Perhaps the most successful and extreme way of destroying a vampire. The body is burnt to ash, the bone fragments ground to powder. Usually the ash is dumped into a river or well flowing body of water or cast to the four directions of wind. Sometimes the ashes are mixed with water or wine and drunk as a cure. (It should be noted that there *are* two or three tales where cremation was not effective and the vampire somehow returned.)

### Corpse Binding

* Relevant Vampires: pretty much all of them
* Favored By:
* Region: Global
* Main Article: Corpse Binding

Debatably the original and oldest way of stopping a vampire. Archaeological digs have been found where corpses were tied with all manor of ropes and vines, some with thorns. It's use is extremely debated in some of the oldest cases. It might be a natural part of the burial rites for the most ancient of burials. More modern folk tales, and by that I mean 5,000 years and newer, have attributed it to a form of lesser form of staking, forcing the vampire to be tied to its grave eternally.

### Decapitation

* Region: Europe, Russia, UK, USA, Central America
* Main Article: Corpse Mutilation

This comes from the belief and observation that neither the head or body can survive if the brain is detached from heart. Some tales found in Eastern Europe do note that the head must be properly further treated or it may reattach and the vampire can come back. Vampires in Asia and some parts of South America laugh at this though as they regularly go about without their bodies.

### Four Plants

* Region: Slavic Areas
* Main Article:

The plant favored changes from town to town but generally wolfsbane, mandrake holly, wild roses or certain types of flowers. You go out into the woods and find them growing naturally, then transplant them on top of the suspected vampires grave, one at the head, one at each arm and one at this feet. The roots will grow in and bind the vampire to its grave, preventing it from getting up.

### Keeping the corpse

* Region: Slavic Areas
* Main Article:

Old people in ancient times kept the body of the dead close and would not not to allow an animal to pass over the corpse, because it could take the spirit of the deceased, who after that would become a vampire.

### Living Fire

* Main Article: Need Fire

 An older version of the Need Fire. Living Fire is believed to be holy, having been started without human interference. It was particularly popular in the Classical world; Greece, Rome, Egypt and certain parts of the Middle East. It was made by using a natural heat source such as using highly polished copper or bronze mirrors - no striking allowed - on a particularly significant night such as a solstice or religious feast. Some accounts state that it could be allowed to go out and the ashes used to make Holy Water. Other temples required a year round crew of attendants to keep the fire going as it could only by ignited on that one day. A modern example of a Living Fire would be the Olympic Torch - lit by mirrors in Greece and not allowed to go out until the end of the games.

### Ludicium Aquae

* Relevant Vampires: Plague Vampire
* Favored By: Self Styled Hunters
* Region: Middle Ages, UK
* Main Article:

Borrowed from witchdunking, it worked pretty much exactly the same way. However, it was abandoned fairly quickly as it was just disgusting. You dig up a rotting corpse who was suspected of the being a vampire and chuck it in a pond or river. If it floats they were guilty.

### Need Fire

* Region: Celtic parts of Europe and the UK, Some parts of India
* Main Article: Need Fire

Like the fire-churning still customary in India for kindling the sacrificial fire, the need- or wild-fire is made by the friction of one piece of wood on another, or of a rope upon a stake. Need-fire is a practice of shepherd peoples to ward off disease and the undead from their herds and flocks. It is kindled on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of an illness or certain wild animal attack, and the cattle are driven between two bonfires.

### Piercing a Corpse

* Region: Global
* Main Article: Corpse Mutilation

Only slightly different from staking. Piercing a corpse does not go all the way through the body and does not necessarily target the heart. (Although, most Hollywood vampire stakings do count -- no pun intended -- as piercing.) Piercing is often combined with several other methods suck as staking, binding decapitation and so on, depending on the town's lore. Generally, to pierce a corpse you need either nails or thorns, though sometime sewing needles will work. Normal targets for piercing are the hands, feet, and (facial) cheeks.

### Poo on a Grave

* Region: Bulgarians, Middle East, Western Asia
* Main Article:

Sometimes it's just as simple as taking a shit on someone's grave. Sometimes you mix in a bit of poison. There are a handful of tales that state some varieties of vampire are only too happy to eat excrement when they can't find blood or life energy.

### Pouring water around the tomb

* Region: Slavic Areas
* Main Article:

This custom came up frequently in sever Slavic tales of the Undead. People believed that if they poured water on the grave of the deceased every day for forty days -- no, you can't miss a day -- the grave would be blocked and the deceased could not leave the place because vampires can’t cross the water.

### Pressing the coffin with stones

* Region: Slavic Areas
* Main Article:

People in Slavic areas would often cover the coffins with heavy stones, or pile them up on top of the grass so that the undead couldn’t come out and roam.

### Second/Supplemental Burial

* Relevant Vampires:
* Favored By: Global
In several parts of the world it is customary to exhume the grave and clean the bones, say a few prayers. This allows the living to reconnect with their lost loved ones and to check to see how the corpse is getting on. Some areas will intentionally mummify or smoke the corpse and exhume them every few years. Other areas check for decomposition and those that are not acting like a normal corpse are further examined. Some towns have cultures that state that the soul cannot rest until they have had a second burial.

### Sing-Sing

* Region: USA
* Main Article:

Controversially applied to vampires in recent years. A Sing-Sing is a general name for a widely variant series of cleansing and purification rituals by a Tribe's Shaman or Medicine Man/Woman.

### Stake the Ground

* Region: Eastern Europe
* Main Article:

What came first, the tale of a teenager who pins their skirt or pants to a gave and dies of fright or the idea that you can stake the ground to kill a vampire? Anyway... In some areas of Eastern Europe you take three wooden stakes or very long iron nails and drive them into the ground above a grave. The placement varies from town to town. The idea is that this will impale the vampire and/or kill it if it tries to leave.

### Staking

* Region: Global
* Main Article: Staking

This was not originally intended to kill a vampire, only a way to pin them down to allow you to do other things, such as decapitate the corpse, pierce, bind, and so on. The first stories of fatal stakings were done with long iron swords; this was intended to permanently pin the vampire to its grave and force it to starve. The expense of leaving an iron sword behind gradually forced it into becoming any number of very long wooden stakes and led to the use of thin yet long nails. For staking to be effective, it must go all the way though a body and into the coffin/ground under it.

### Threshold

* Region: Abrahamic
* Main Article:

In some Abrahamic (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) folk-traditions, the devil and all things evil cannot go where they are barred or not welcome. While widely popular in fiction, there *is* some actual basis for the idea in folk tales, though not a verbal invitation. Usually a number of plants are dried and hung, things like horseshoes or a talisman by the door. Sometimes small charms or spell bottles are buried by a step. In yet other areas all it takes is to draw a small symbol between coats of paint. Generally, it's a way to protect yourself, but there are an odd couple of tales where it's suggested that you can bombard a vampire's resting place with threshold charms to forbid them from leaving the spot.