Vampire Books Online / The Vampire Myth by The Salt Lake herald

Ghostly legends in Southeast Europe concerning a nocturnal visitor.

The exhibition in this city of Sir Edward Burne-Jones’ masterpiece of painting, “The Vampire,” has had the effect of awakening interest both in the picture and in the subject of vampirism as it exists in the Orient. In fact, prior to the appearance of a recent article in the Post, a great many people had never heard of the vampire superstition, but had all along supposed that the artist had evolved both subject and picture from the wild chaos of a morbid and melancholy imagination.

The following extracts from Miss Lucy Garnett’s “The Women of Turkey and Their Folklore” throw additional light on the vampire myth.

Miss Garnett spent some twenty years among the peasantry and common folk of Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Hungary, and was the first person to describe and study the curious vampire superstition of those countries. The title of this book, which strange to say is very little known in America, is really misleading, for contrary to what it suggests, the book deals not only with the women of Turkey, but with the entire people of all Southeast Europe. One chapter of this book is devoted to the vampire superstition, which she describes thus:

Perhaps the most ghastly of Greek and Turkish superstitions is that of the vampire, generally known in the Balkan peninsula by the Slavonic name of Vrykolakas. It is customary among the Greeks and other peoples of the peninsula to exhume the body of a deceased relative at the end of three years in order to ascertain if it is properly decomposed. Should this not be the case, the Vrykolakos, the restless one, is supposed to be possessed of the power of rising from the grave and roaming abroad, reveling in the blood of his or her victims.

According to those who believe in this superstition, the causes of vampirism are various, and among them are the following: the fact either of having perpetrated or of having been the victim of a crime; having wronged some person who has died resenting the wrong; or of a curse pronounced either in excommunicatory form by the priest or by a person to whom an injury has been done. “May the earth not eat you” is a common expression in the mouth of an angry Greek, for a vampire is not, as some authorities have contended, a disembodied soul, but an undissolved body.

Such is the best definition of the vampire superstition extant, Miss Garnett having been the first to recognize the fact that, contrary to the opinions of English and French students of folklore, the peasants of the Balkan states do not look upon the vampire as a spirit or disembodied soul, but as a being still in the flesh.

This phase of the belief Burne-Jones has appreciated to the full in his celebrated painting, in which he depicts the vampire not as a thin and airy spirit, but as a livid corpse, the peculiar purplish tint of dead flesh being strikingly plain and realistic around the eyes of the woman in his picture.

Continuing, Miss Garnett says: Vampirism is believed to be hereditary in certain families, the members of which are regarded with aversion by their neighbors and shunned as much as possible. Their services are, however, called into requisition when there is a vampire to be laid, as they have the reputation of possessing special powers in that direction. It is generally believed that the vampire retires to its grave before cockcrow, but some maintain that it visits it only once a week, on Saturday.

Miss Garnett thus describes the peculiar custom of laying a vampire:

When it is discovered that a Restless One is about, the people go on a Saturday and open a tomb, where they always find the body just as it was buried and entirely undecomposed. The priest who accompanies them reads certain parts of the ritual supposed to be of peculiar efficacy for putting a stop to the restless wanderings of vampires, and sometimes this course suffices to restore the neighborhood to peace and quiet. But cases happen in which the priest is not a sufficiently powerful exorcist, and when all his endeavors have proved ineffectual, the people of the neighborhood go to the tomb on a Saturday and either drive a stake through the heart of the undissolving corpse or take out the body and consume it with fire. Nothing short of extreme necessity would, however, make orthodox Greeks consent to perform such an act, as they have a religious terror of consuming with fire a body on which the holy chrism has been poured by the priest when performing the last rites of his religion.

There is a touching story of a dead man who, though the earth was eating him, was called from his grave by the passionate entreaties of his mother, reminding him of his promise to bring back to her his sister who had been married to a bridegroom from east Turkey. The Greek poet Valaorites also describes in a splendidly realistic poem the rousing from their graves of the tyrant Ali Pasha of Jannina and his Greek lieutenant Thanase Vaghia by the vampires of the massacred inhabitants of Gardiki.

The masterpiece of Miss Garnett’s chapter on vampirism is, however, the following hair-raising story, of which she herself says: “One of the most thrilling modern vampire stories I have met with is the following, which was related to me by a Cretan peasant who had been an eyewitness of the occurrence.”

Once on a time the village of Kalikrati was haunted by a vampire called Katakhanas by the Cretans, which destroyed both children and many full-grown men and desolated both that village and many others. They had buried him in the Church of St. George at Kalikrati, and in those times he was a man of note and they had built an arch over his grave.

Now a certain shepherd, his mutual syntekno, was tending his sheep and goats near the church, and on being caught in a shower he went to the sepulcher for shelter. Afterward he determined to pass the night there, and after taking off his weapons he placed them crosswise by the stone which served him for a pillow, and because of the sacred symbol they formed the vampire was unable to leave his tomb.

During the night, as he wished to go out again that he might destroy men, the vampire said to the shepherd, “Gossip, get up hence, for I have some business to attend to.” The shepherd answered him not either the first, the second, or the third time, for he concluded that the man had become a vampire and that it was he who had done all these evil deeds. But when he spoke for a fourth time, the shepherd replied, “I shall not get up hence, gossip, for I fear that you are no better than you should be and may do me a mischief; but swear to me by your winding-sheet that you will not hurt me, and then I will get up.”

He did not, however, pronounce that oath, but said other things; but finally, when the shepherd did not suffer him to get up, the vampire swore to him as he wished. On this he rose, and on his taking up his arms the vampire came forth, and after greeting the shepherd said to him, “Gossip, you must not go away, but sit down here, for I have some business which I must go after; but I shall return within the hour, for I have something to say to you.” So the shepherd waited for him.

And the vampire went a distance of about ten miles, where there was a couple recently married, and he destroyed them. On his return the shepherd saw that he was carrying some liver, his hands being wet with blood, and as he carried it he blew into it just as the butcher does to increase the size of the liver. And he showed his gossip that it was cooked as if it had been done on the fire. “Let us sit down, gossip, and eat,” said he. And the shepherd pretended to eat it, but only swallowed dry bread and kept dropping the liver into his bosom.

Therefore, when the hour of their separation arrived, the vampire said to the shepherd, “Gossip, this which you have seen you must not mention, for if you do, my twenty nails will be fixed in your children and yourself.” Yet the shepherd lost no time but gave information to the priests and others, who went to the tomb and found the vampire just as he had been buried, and all were satisfied that it was he who had done all the evil deeds. So they collected a great deal of wood and cast him on it and burnt him. When the body was half consumed, the shepherd too came forward in order that he might enjoy the ceremony. And the vampire spat, as it were, a single drop of blood which fell on his foot, and it wasted away as if it had been burnt with fire. On this account they sifted even the ashes and found the little finger-nail of the vampire and burnt that too.

This and many other vampire stories are related in Miss Garnett’s book. She states that one of the means employed by the Bulgarian peasants for detecting a vampire, which they call an Obour, is by noticing whether or not the suspected person has a sharp pointed tooth, the possession of which is to them a sure indication that the party under suspicion is an Obour.

The tale of a young man who fell in love with a beautiful female vampire is also current throughout the Balkan peninsula.

In concluding her chapter on the vampire superstition, Miss Garnett says:

“Many vampire panics are no doubt attributable to rumors set on foot by persons who profit by such superstitions. In 1872 the whole population of Adrianople was thrown into a state of commotion by the reported nightly appearance of a specter in an elevated part of the town known as Kyik, inhabited by Greeks and Turks. The specter was represented as a Vrykolakas by persons who affirmed they had seen it lurking in the shadows of the houses, a long, lank female with a cadaverous face and clad in a winding-sheet. The Christian priests and Moslem hadjis, who were equally appealed to in this emergency, strove in vain during a fortnight to exorcise the wanderer by their prayers and incantations. Finally a rumor began to circulate that the only person possessing the power of freeing the town from this haunting specter was a Turkish djinji, or magician, famous for his power over evil spirits, who lived in another town and who would consequently require a large fee for his services. Seven purses were, however, soon raised by the panic-stricken townsfolk, the djinji came, and the Vrykolakas was put to flight.”