This page was originally the creation of two insane masterminds, Jenna Kimberlin and Rogue. There weren't any pages like this available so they thought they'd create one - which we proudly continue to display and host. The text below is taken from the book "THE VAMPIRE" by Ornella Volta. It's a fabulous account of various vampire folklore and tales from all around the globe. I've left the text in it's original format so as to preserve the author's style. It's an oooold book, but all you need to do is leg it down to your local library or used book shop to get a copy. It's good readin'!
NOTE: by vampire is meant any dead person who attacks or torments the living by night, either by his own means or with the help of a demon. In this table - in which the importance of geographical location with regard to the aspect and behaviour of va mpires is shown - I have deliberately left out either demons like ghouls or lamiae whose nightly activities are the same as the vampire's or the dead who have been specially revived by the living for such specific activities as agricultural work as in the case of the zombies.
 Species: Upierczi How It Becomes a Vampire: Suicide, violent death or practice of witchcraft during lifetime. Special Activities: causes drought, even drying the dew on plants. Cure: Drowning in a lake or river (salt water does not seem to be indicated). If transfixed with a nail, must not be hit more than once otherwise it will revive.
Species: Mjertovjec Characteristics: Has a purple face. It is active from midnight until the cock crows thrice in the morning. How it Became a Vampire: Natural causes: if it is the son of a werewolf or a witch; or else if in its lifetime it has behaved as a werewolf, a sorcerer, an apostate, or if it has cursed its own father or the church. Cure: Preventive Cure: sprinkle poppy seeds along the road leading from the tomb to the house of the deceased. When the evil becomes apparent: transfix the mjertovjec through the chest, nail it to the coffin or else burn it.
Species: Upier (male), Upiercsa (female), Wieszczy Characteristics: Has a harelip and the tip of the tongue pointed like an insect's sting. How It Becomes a Vampire: Natural causes: when born with teeth. Special Activities: tolls bells at night and cries out the names of some inhabitants who die almost at once. Cure: preventive Cure: bury it face downwards well covered by the earth; preventive cures: (for Wieszczy): bury it with a cross made of willow tree under the armpits, the chin and the chest; put a little earth taken from the threshold of its home on the coffin.
Species: Ogoljen Cure: preventive cures: put a little earth from the tomb in its navel; bury it at a cross-roads.
Species: Farkaskoldus Characteristics: when dying it takes on the aspect of a werewolf.
Species: Krvopijac Characteristics: has only one nostril, to identify it while it is in its tomb, send a black foal into the graveyard ridden by a naked adolescent of proved virginity: where the foal refuses to ride, there the Krvopijac is buried. How It Becomes a Vampire: By drinking wine and smoking during Lent. Cure: Preventive cures: chain it to the coffin with a garland of wild roses; when the evil becomes apparent: a wizard, holding a small saint's image up in the air calls forth the soul of the demon inhabiting the corpse and forces it to go in a bott le of blood that he will then immediately throw into a fire.
Species: Varcolaco - Murohy - Strigoi Characteristics: Can take on the aspect of a dog, a cat, a frog, a toad, a louse, a flea, a spider, and is particularly active on St. George's and St. Andrew's days. How It Becomes a Vampire: Generally by heredity, but also by dying un-baptized or by suicide. Special Activities. bites without leaving any signs of wounds. Cure: preventive Cure: tying a thorny bush to the shroud. Suicides, particularly, should be put in running water as soon as they are dead. When the evil becomes apparent: take out its heart and cut it in two; plant a nail in its forehead; put a spoonful of quick-lime or a head of garlic in its mouth; smear it with fat of a pig killed on St. Ignatius's day; sprinkle the shroud with holy water , take the corpse far away into the mountains and leave it there. If the vampire is female, plant some iron forks in its heart and eyes and bury it in a very deep grave, face downwards.
Species: Norferat How It Becomes a Vampire: natural causes: by being the illegitimate son of two illegitimate parents, or by being the seventh son of a seventh son. Special Activities: Makes husbands impotent.
Locality: PRUSSIA Cure: Preventive Cure: put poppy seeds in the grave to send it to sleep or else give it a stocking to unravel at the rate of one stitch a year, or else a fishing net to disentangle.
Species: Nachzehrer Characteristics: When in the tomb holds the thumb of one hand with the other and always has its left eye open. Has the habit of gnawing the shroud and when it has completely swallowed it even gnaws parts of its own body, making a sort of grunting noise which can be heard at a distance. How it becomes a Vampire: by being born with a second skin or dying from drowning. Special Activities: the fact of gnawing its shroud helps to propagate cattle pest and sometimes even real plague in the immediate vicinity of the graveyard. When it leaves the tomb it sometimes amuses itself by tying cattle together in pairs by th eir tails. Cure: preventive Cure: put a stone or a coin in its mouth to prevent it from chewing. For the same reason, one can also put a lump of earth under its chin or bind its jaws together with linen. When the evil becomes apparent: cut off the head of the nachzehrer with the axe used in ordinary executions.
Species: Characteristics: a butterfly called Alp sometimes comes out of its mouth. Special Activities: The Alp settles on the chest of sleepers suffocating them and sucking up all their breath. Cure: Put a lemon in the vampire's mouth.
Locality: POMERANIA How It Becomes a Vampire: natural causes: by being born with teeth or a silver spoon in its mouth and dying as a child. Special Activities: spreads plague. Cure: preventive Cure: burning the "silver spoon" and making it eat the ashes (while alive of course). When the child dies, cut off its head between eleven in the evening and midnight.
Species: Sriz Characteristics: has the habit of going up the highest church steeple in its village, where it pronounces the names of some of the inhabitants. Special Activities: Makes those people die whose names it pronounces.
Locality: WALLACHIA Characteristics: Lives at night in abandoned or ruined houses. How It Became a Vampire: Natural causes: having red hair. Cure: preventive Cure: nail it to the coffin or else cover the tomb with tow and then put a certain quantity of explosive in it and blow it up.
Species: Drakul Characteristics: Moves with the help of a demon. Shows itself with its coffin on its head.
Characteristics: Goes around naked, leaving its shroud on the tomb. Cure: Take its shroud away.
Species: Vrukolak - Vukodlak Characteristics: It is contagious; it prefers to devote itself to relatives and friends; itshrieks when it is transfixed. How It Becomes a Vampire: by predestination or contagion, but also when a dog or cat jump on its bed where it died, or when it is murdered without anyone seeing the assassin. Special Activities: Profaning tombs when alive and sucking blood when dead. Cure: preventive Cure: nailing it to the coffin by planting a nail through its heart, or else, as soon as it is dead, cutting its tendons and piercing it all over its body.
Species: Vlkodlak Characteristics: has the congested face of an impenitent drunkard and blood-coloured skin; always aged more than twenty and can remain active for a maximum of seven years, then becomes a man again and repeats the process in another part of the coun try. How It Becomes a Vampire: By committing one of the following misdeeds in its life: murder, perjury, incest with its mother; or else following one of these two mishaps: being killed by a werewolf or else eating lamb killed by a werewolf. Special Activities: Causing eclipses. Cure: preventive Cure: Cutting off its toes and thumbs. Putting a nail in its neck. When the evil becomes apparent: piercing its navel with a branch of hawthorn and covering all its hair parts with tow, then setting fire to it with candl es used for the death vigil. Species: Mulo Characteristics: It is generally a dead gypsy (but even a stallion or a lamb); it can grow after death (when it is a still-born baby) up to the age of eight; it wears very white brand new clothes, and willingly drinks even wine. Sometimes it has t he aspect of a vegetable. It lives and is active at the stroke of noon as wen as at night. How It Becomes a Vampire: natural causes: by being still-born or else by being murdered. Special Activities. it boils the women it likes the most in a great cauldron in order to de-bone them more easily and make them similar to itself. Cure: To call a dhampir (degenerate son of a vampire) who will eliminate it after a hand-to-hand struggle, sustained by magic practices.
Species: Pijawika Cure: Cutting its head off and putting it between the legs or under one arm.
Species: Kuzlak How It Becomes a Vampire: By being taken away before its time from the mother's breast. Special Activities: amuses itself by throwing dishes and saucepans in the kitchen and by moving about carts in the courtyard. Cure: To call a Franciscan monk who will transfix it with a hawthorn bough plucked high in the mountains.
Species: Blautsauger Characteristics: Has no skeleton and is very hairy, has very large eyes and is able to turn itself into a rat, but usually takes on the shape of a wolf. Special Activities: always holds a bit of earth from its tomb behind its back and tries to make sleeping peasants eat it in order to turn them into vampires. Cure: Scatter hawthorn flowers along the road leading from its former home to the cemetery. The blautsauger will. not fail to pick them up thus losing precious time.
Species: Vryolakas Characteristics: Is active from ten in the evening until the first cockrow in the morning. How It Becomes a Vampire: natural causes: by having a desire for wine over its face. Cure: By pouring boiling oil over it or else sticking a long nail in its navel. It is also worth while scattering bird seed over its tomb for it will lose time counting the seeds.
Species: Vukodlak Characteristics: easily turns itself into a wolf; only goes out when there is a full moon; crows never go near its tomb.
Species: Llugat - Sampiro Characteristics: goes around at night, wrapped up in its shroud and wears shoes with very high heels; its tomb is indicated by a will o' the wisp. How It Becomes a Vampire: natural causes: being an Albanian of Turkish blood. Special Activities: spreads death and destruction.
Species: Bruculaco Characteristics: has swollen, tense and hard skin as though it had been tanned. When hit it sounds like a drum, for which reason the bruculaco is nick-named timpanita. The bruculaco has a very sonorous voice but can also emit one scream a night. How It Becomes a Vampire: by being excommunicated. Special Activities: causes the death of any who answer its nightly call; spreads the plague. Cure: preventive cure: not to excommunicate it when alive. Minor method of defence: when hearing its call at night, not to answer until repeated a second time. When the evil becomes apparent: cut its head off and bum it. At Milo, it is advised to cut the head into pieces and boil it in wine.
Species: Bruculaco How It Becomes a Vampire: by falling into catalepsis: the soul thus being momentarily separated from the body goes into that of a wolf, making it thirsty for fresh blood.
Species: Catacano Characteristics: mouth always grinning, showing very white teeth. Special Activities. spits blood on its victims' skin, producing horrible burns. Cure: Burning its nails in flames, boiling its head in vinegar or isolating it behind a barrier of water, salted if possible.
Species: Dearg-dul Cure: preventive cure: to pile large quantities of stones on its presumed tomb.
Species: Moribondo Special Activities: particularly assaulting cattle. Cure: making one's herd pass through a circle of fire, at the cost of burning a few head of cattle.
Species: Vampiro Characteristics: fall prey to monstrous spirits, it has the habit of animating the first corpse it finds, giving it all kinds of shapes.
Species: Bruxsa Characteristics: has the form of a woman during thd day, and becomes a bird at night. How It Becomes a Vampire: through witchcraft. Special Activities: sucks the blood of children.
Species: Talamaur Special Activities: sucks the life out of the dying, and sometimes devours the hearts of healthy men when they are asleep.
Locality: ASSYRIA How It Becomes a Vampire: from not having had a proper burial.
Species: Vetala - Punyaiama (pure race) - Veda Characteristics: looks like an old woman. Special Activities. cannibalism; sucks the blood of sleeping, drunken or mad women. Sucks the blood of sleeping persons, passing a magic thread down the chimney.
Species: Ch'ing Shih Characteristics: has red staring eyes, pointed nails curved like claws, long hair, a greenish-white in colour, and flies very fast, being given strength by the moon light. When burnt, emits a piercing shriek. Cure: make a circle of rice grains around it; thread seven pieces of Jujube on its back-bone.
Characteristics. has red antennae coming out of its nose with which it sucks. Sometimes only consists of a head.
Species: Buo How It Becomes a Vampire: by being a warrior slain in battle.
Characteristics: lies with its eyes open in the coffin; it becomes ten times as strong w ith the moon; can turn itself into a bat and if burnt, emits a long moaning. How It Becomes a Vampire: by being an ex-sorcerer. Cure: Burn it by night when there is no moon, or else nail it to the ground with a nail. Carefully burn every little fragment, for even the smallest will be enough for the whole monster to be reborn again.
Species: Owenga
Locality: ASHANTILAND Characteristics: there are three varieties: men, women, and children, all in h4man form except for a pair of books in the place of their feet.. How It Becomes a Vampire: by sucking blood from the thumbs of a sleeping person.
Species: Otgiruru Characteristics: looks like a dog. Special Activities: makes anyone who answers its call die.
Species: Wume How It Becomes a Vampire: by being a criminal in life or else being the victim of a curse. Cure: Bury it in a secret place.
Characteristics. has a proboscis. Special Activities: sucks the brain of the sleeper by putting its proboscis into the victim's ear.
Species: Ciuateteo ("Right honourable mother") How It Becomes a Vampire: by being still-born. Special Activities: produces infantile paralysis. Cure: by offering it bread and meteorites. Characteristics: face, arms and hands painted with whitest of chalk; knows how to fly.
Species: Lord of the Mictlampa (male vampire) husband of the Mictecaciuatl Lady of the Place of Death (female vampire) Characteristics: a very black body and a skull in the place of a head.
Species: Lobishomen Characteristics: small stature, stumpy and hunch-backed, resembling a monkey, but with a yellow face, bloodless lips, black teeth, bushy beard and plush-covered feet. Special Activities: makes its victims (all women) into nymphomaniacs. Cure: let it get drunk on blood in order to catch it more easily, then crucify it on a tree while stabbing it.
|