SHROUD EATERS AND SEDUCTION

Have you heard of the bell-ringing fiends of Germany? How about the Romanian witches who cast out their souls at night to drink the blood of their victims?

Both Romania and Germany have a long history of vampires, but while they have a torridly intertwined relationship through history, their vampire traditions differ dramatically. The creature takes many nefarious forms in both countries, yet the most infamous is Bram Stoker's Dracula. who many believe is inspired by Vlad the Impaler.

But this tale is only the culmination of a bounty of folk tales surrounding the dreaded beast, handed from generation to generation; a body of legends that has been irreparably changed by German film and fiction. The origins of the Dracula style vampire, and its claim to a long history in Romania, are hazy - the nosferatu are thought to be just one of the popular types, and it is in fact said by many that the strigoi are the most famous, with the moroi secondary to these.

There are a number of types of vampire in Romania, and all types would meet at night with witches and wizards to plan the mischief and havoc they would wreak on mankind that evening. Almost anyone could become one through no fault of their own - particularly women. In fact, it was so commonplace that a saying developed in the region that vampires were once almost as numerous as 'blades of grass'.

Ir seems from Romanian folklore that strigoi and moroi could mean both living and dead vampires, yet this varies from one tale to the next. For many, strigoi means only a reanimated corpse, like the Greek vrykolaka. Others say it can be used to mean a witch or wizard who sends out their soul at night to do harm. Some say moroi are always living vampires, and are either the offspring of a nosferat vampire - or indeed of two stngoi - bom with a wild mop of hair that they keep for their entire lives, or inversely completely bald males.

The moroaica are their more common female counterparts, who strangely possess two hearts, wild ted hair, pale blue eyes and dry patches of red skin on their faces. This type of vampire doesn't always drink blood, but does dram the life-force from anyone unlucky enough to be irs victim, and is skilled in magic and the black arts. After death, they too become strigoi. destined to rise each night from the grave for eternity. The strigoi arc thought to be the most common vampire - the reanimated corpses of the dead who roam the land every night except Saturdays, when they rest in their graves.

Vampires are most likely to appear around Saint Andrew's Eve and Christmastide in Romania, with Easter and Pentecost following close behind In Romanian burial tradition, every grave was opened years after death - seven years for the elderly, five for youths and three for children - to see if the corpse had indeed transformed into the undead, before being ceremonially washed in both water and wine. They would be reburied if only bones remained, as this meant that the soul had gone on to everlasting life in Heaven. There is a belief that the soul does not leave the body until 40 days after death, or even later than this; and until it leaves, the body will be preserved and not decay.

Like other Slavic vampires, the undead in Romania can appear red and swollen after feeding with talon-like fingernails, often sitting up in their misery with force. One foot will sometimes be awkwardly jammed up in the corner of the grave, as a sign of their foul nature. In thes region, too, horeses will not pass over the burial place of these revenant fiends, and ganders behave similarly.

Strangely, the creatures should be staked through the bellybutton as well as the heart - or the heart itself can be removed and either burnt or boiled. While the standard methods of vampire dispatch apply, here they can also have forks inserted through their eyes, heart and chest, and be reburied facing into the earth - a sure-fire way to end their devilish wanderings.

Here, it was believed that anyone predestined to become a revenant had special powers while still alive because of ir. Foremost was the ability to cast their spirit from their body at night and go off to cavort with witches and the undead, often at crossroads, places where neither dogs bark nor cuckoos sing, in churchyards, derelict houses, or in the midst of the darkest forests. The strigoi could also be a witch who could cast her soul out to drink the blood of humans or animals, which they would bite just above the heart or. strangely, right between the eyes. Able to take on rhe power of animals, they would leave their houses through the chimney, returning ragged and dirty the following morning. The soul would often take the form of a fly, or shape-shift into different animal form at will. They ^ also had the power to call up the  rain, as well as dry a mother of her milk, or even drain a neighbour's cow by enchanting their heifer to release the milk of their neighbour's herd when milked.

Living strigoi would, of course, remain revenant strigoi after their death, continuing to gain sustenance from the blood of the living - including their own relatives. Once they had fed on their kin. they would next kill local residents and their animals. Only then would rhe creature be able to move to another country, regaining their humanity to marry and sire progeny, who would too become vampires after their death. In some areas it was believed that after death, vampire spirits would be incarnated as death's-head hawkmoths, made infamous from their connection with the haunting film Silence of the Lambs (1991). Traditionally, people followed the custom of impaling these poor creatures on a pinhead and fixing them to a wall to contain them.

Unlike in other countries, where being born with a caul is lucky, being born with a piece of membrane covering or attached to the head in Romania is a sure sign of being a vampire that will lead to transforming witliin six weeks of death, as is having an extra appendage like a tail or wayward nipple, being a particularly hairy baby, or being born prematurely or outside of marriage. If an individual knew that they fell into one of these categories, they would usually leave instructions that their body should be treated with suspicion after death and the appropriate measures taken. Suicides should be immediately exhumed after burial and the necessary rituals undertaken.

Again, in the UK being a seventh child is a good omen, but in Romania means you could be a vampire - if. of course, your siblings were all boys or all girls. The most random way of becoming a vampire in this region surely has to be if a black cat jumps in front of a pregnant woman refuses to eat salt, or if she catches sight of another vampire during her term - then the baby will also be a vampire.

The pricolici are shape-shifting vampires that often have a wolf-like form in their natural state, and are sometimes born with rails the source of their power. Also called tricolici or triccolitch, they are similar to the Slavic vukudlak and can appear as a dog or pig. They are said to be unbaptised children a common belief - yet also created at the death of anyone who burns a porridge spoon on purpose, or sweeps dust from the door into the setting sun. You have been warned. This type can be easily linked to the German werewolf, the prikolitsch.

Vampire-like creatures in Germany are particularly malevolent. While alps are incubi that drink human blood during sleep, nachzehrer are more sinister by far. Being undead, they are more like traditional vampires they drain the living to survive, yet are said by some to never leave their graves holding their thumb, with one eye open, obviously a favourite pastime for an idle, interred nachzehrer just looking to pass the time. Indeed,they sit in their burial place, gnawing at their burial shrouds technically called manducatiori and even devouring their own bodies. A horrific guzzling sound can be heard by anyone unwittingly passing by their grave as they chew.

Rather than murderous rampages and a thirst for blood, this critter was famous for spreading disease and killing their family members, sometimes draining their energy through black magic - the relative's energy would deplete with each bite of its own body the nachzehrer took. Some say that orice it had eaten itself, the creature would move on to killing its kin. Strangely. Hie cure for this creature was to disinter the body and then fill its mouth with a coin, a stone, or even soil - so that it would be unable to chew, and slowly starve to death. Their heads can also be chopped off.

While this may sound stranger Ilian fiction, some convincing theories abound to explain how this legend emerged, including blaming scavengers for devouring the corpse, and that cloth can become worn when the corpse leaks purge fluid, biamed on the revenant gnawing at its shroud. These too were able to shape-shift, this time transforming into a bat or pig. which enabled them to roam around undetected, and even fly up to the church bell tower. Tine fiend would ring the sacred bell and anyone within hearing distance would mysteriously succumb to death.

Another type of German vampire, the upicr amuses itself with a similar bell-ringing activity, but in this case it will shout out the names of unwitting community members, all of whom will of course, promptly die. If you are lucky enough to escape this deadly name-calling, watch out between midday and midnight as the ghoul roams the roads, looking for victims to impale on its barbed tongue, in ordeiro drain them of their blood, only to regurgitate this into their coffin later to take a sanguinary blood bath. To destroy this fiend, simply burn its body to ash. Bui be warned: it will explode into thousands of maggots, each of which must be recovered and squished, or else the dreaded upier will rise once more to life.

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THE VAMPIRIC GRANDMOTHER OF AMARAST 

Releasing a mother's spirit from her fate as a vampire who murdered her own kin.

One of the most striking vampire tales comes from the southern village of Amara$ti in around 1890. The elderly mother of Dinu Gheorghita and his brother died. Soon after, the children of the elder brother began to die and after this, the children of the younger too went to their graves.

In despair, the brothers' thoughts went immediately to their dead mother. Could she have turned into a dreaded vampire?

To make sure that the old woman was not indeed the walking dead, returning to the families' homes to kill those she left behind, the brothers dug up her body and cut her clean in two But the deaths continued. The brothers dug up her body once more, only to find the corpse without a wound and entirely in one piece. Then they did what any good sons might when faced with such a misfortune: they took their mother's body into the forest and built a fire under the greatest tree they could find - of course - disembowelling her corpse, before plucking out her bleeding heart, quartering it. and flinging it into the flames.

Mixing the ashes with water, they bade their children to drink as a talisman against harm. They burnt the body entirely and buried the ashes. No more of their children died and it seems their mother's spirit walked no longer.

NOSFERATU: FACT OR FICTION?

The nosferatu is one of the most famous vampires, but is this reputation justified?

One of the most infamous vampires today, the nosferatu did indeed exist in Romanian folklore as a type of incubus and a blood-sucking vampire. While many people find it strange that it receives no mention in early Romanian folklore accounts, others have suggested it was a figure well-known by locals.

It shot to fame with the 1922 German film Nosferotu by FW Murnau. set in the Carpathians. The folkloric nosferat or nosferatu is an alluring revenant of either sex. The transformation into one of these creatures is strongly linked to being illegitimate. Choosing at least one lover whom it often makes infertile, it rises from its burial place each night to return and drink their blood again and again, until the victim succumbs to death or sexual exhaustion from the orgastic energy of the vampire beau. It will often prey specifically on newlyweds, and anyone unfortunate enough to be killed by the ghoul is cursed to become a bloodsucking revenant themselves.

Written by Dee Dee Chainey in "All About History - History of Vampires", editor Sarah Bankes, UK, 2018, excerpts pp. 40-43. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.