Vampire species

When I was a boy, I collected stamps. After initially just collecting any kind of stamps, I got interested in a specific group of Danish stamps and the numerous misprinting errors of those stamps. These errors could be both systematic, because of variations in the gravure, or it could be more incidental like when the watermarks in the paper had accidentally got inverted. Looking for these variations in the printing and paper made it possible to identify when an individual stamp had been printed and which place it had had in the original sheet of stamps.

Similarly one can ‘collect’ instances of vampire beliefs – or ‘vampire species’, if you will - but in my opinion this kind of collecting first becomes really interesting when you try to eliminate the purely accidental and try to recognize the patterns in these beliefs. Unfortunately, while compiling it may become difficult to see the wood for the trees, and the pattern gets lost.

Several ‘vampire encyclopedias’ have resulted from this kind of compiling. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are not too reliable, and their selection of material all too frequently reflects what can be found in various modern books on the subject. One recent example attempts to collects various ‘species’ of vampires, and I can not help being baffled by e.g. the great number of variations of the word ‘vampire’ that are presented as distinct and distinguishable terms. I am here considering Theresa Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, a rather expensive volume published a couple of years ago. Expensive, because although in hardcover it has a recommended retail price of £70.50, but only contains 199 pages.

The first variant of ‘vampire’ listed under V by Bane is:

‘Vampiir (Vam-PEER)
In northern Europe, in the Republic of Estonia, the concept of a blood-drinking vampire was imported from the neighboring countries of Latvia, Finland, Russia, Sweden, and Ukraine. Calling this vampire a vampiir, it entered silently into a person’s home, lay on top of someone, and smothered him to death while he slept. It had the ability to shape-shift into a bat and a wolf; however, a vampiir was only active a few hours each night and was susceptible to sunlight. Like many of the vampires that lived in neighbouring countries, the vampiir was killed either by burning it to ash, decapitation, or by hanging.
Source: Bunson, Vampire Encyclopedia, 87; Dundes, Vampire Casebook, 54’

The first reference is Matthew Bunson’s entry on Estonia:

‘Estonia A region situated along the Baltic Sea to the north of Latvia, historically part of Livonia. The Estonians had several species of vampires, largely the result of external influences, especially Russian. The rarest of the undead in Estonia was the vere-imeja (bloodsucker). The Estonian species, the veripard (blood beard), was essentially a manifestation of a nightmare, tormenting people during the night and pressing down upon them. Another type of Estonian undead, the vampiir, was probably another foreign tradition that found only limited acceptance in the region.’

And the second reference is in fact to a paper by Felix Oinas on East European Vampires originally published in 1982. Oinas is concerned with the roots and development of vampire beliefs in East Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, and for that reason he also considers Estonia and Latvia, noting that ‘In Estonia, beliefs in vampires are rather undeveloped. The term for vampire in Estonia is vampiir (vampire), vere-imeja (blood-sucker), or veripard (blood-beard). There are numerous stories about revenants who visit people in the night and press down upon them. However, the vampire as a bloodsucking and killing revenant is little known by the people, and the idea may have been taken from their neighbors.’

Oinas here refers to Grundzüge des Estnischen Volksglaubens by the Estonian folklorist Oskar Loorits published in Lund in Sweden in 1949. Loorits, at the time a refugee from Estonia who had found a haven during WWII in Sweden, deals extensively with e.g. revenant beliefs and burial customs in Estonia, so Oinas in fact only refers to a couple of passages of the book, while in fact several parts have some bearing on Estonian revenant beliefs.

Oskar Loorits. Source: Wikimedia

On page 100, Loorits mentions the quite rare ‘Blutbart’ (veri-pard), that probably derives from Finnish, and notes that a belief in vampires has remained undeveloped (‘die ganze Vampir-Vorstellung im estnischen Totengluaben unentwickelt geblieben und hat nur selten als fremdes und junges Gut gelegentlich Anklang gefunden’). Later, on page 563, he makes some comments on the use of terms in recent decades, but nowhere does he use the spelling ‘vampiir’ or claim that vampires in the sense of bloodsucking dead was a well-known belief in Estonia. In fact, ‘vampiir’ is simply the way of spelling the word ‘vampire’ in Estonian, cf. the entry on vampires in the Estonian Wikipedia.

Curiously, Theresa Bane does not include an entry on the ‘veri-pard’ or the ‘vere-imeja’, but lists Vampiir as a phenomenon by itself, ‘imported from neighbouring countries,’ whereas it is quite evident that Loorits says that a vampire belief per se remains undeveloped in Estonia! Still, considering the vampire to be one of several related kinds of revenants, there is no doubt that Loorits deals with living corpses that haunt the living. To gain more information on those, one would have to consult the work by Loorits (and possibly more recent colleagues in Estonia), but Bane rarely goes to the source.

Instead, she sometimes relies on the most curious books, like Nigel Suckling’s Vampires for this strange, but highly entertaining entry:

‘Vanpir (Van-PEER)
The word vanpir (“werewolf”) was said to have been created by an unnamed German officer. In 1726 there were thousands of reports filed that the plague that was running unchecked in the southeast Slavic regions was started by REVENANTs. In life these revenants had been werewolves, but after they died, they had come back as what the locals called VRYKOLAKA. The German officer changed the word vrykolaka for one he allegedly made up – vanpir. No reason has ever been given for his decision to have done this. German newspapers began to pick up on the story and it spread. Eventually it came to France where the odd and obviously foreign word was changed once again, this time to a more familiar and as terror-inspiring word – VAMPYRE. Again the story began to spread and managed to make its way over the channel into England. This time the word’s spelling was changed to suit its British audience and became vampire.
Source: Singh, The Sun, 276; Suckling, Vampires, 54; White, Notes and Queries, vol. 41, 522’

The copy of Frombald’s report that is in the archives in Vienna uses the form ‘vanpiri’, and perhaps – perhaps! – this is the factual basis of these strange speculations. But overall, this entry sounds more like the plot of a novel than a piece of vampire history.

In a number of other instances, Bane seems to confuse various ways of writing a term. She includes entries on ’Flygia’ and ‘Fyglia’, but I think both refer to the concept of a fylgja, and it also seems hard to make out the distinctions between the Chinese ‘Kuei’, ‘K’uei’, ‘K’uei, Revenant’ and ‘K’uei, Spirit’. Similarly when it comes to the entries on the Romanian ‘Priccolitsch’, ‘Pricolic, Undead’, ‘Pricolic, Wolf’, ‘Priculics’ and ‘Procolici’.

It is not that I take some particular pleasure in criticizing such things, and I am afraid there are numerous more examples. Rather it grieves me to see all sorts of books on ‘vampires’ taken verbatim in collecting ‘vampire species’. The notion of an encyclopedia of this kind is certainly not bad, but it requires a sound methodology in approaching sources and deciding on entries. Collecting stories and ‘species’ without a keen and eye on the underlying patterns, discarding of the accidental and unreliable, is like collecting stamps with little or no interest in e.g. history and printing techniques.

From Oskar Loorits: Grundzüge des Estnischen Volksglaubens (1949), p. 91

Loorits on the other hand systematically describes Estonian folk beliefs in Grundzüge. Beginning with the concept of life force (Lebenskraft) and how it is related to different parts of e.g. the body, including blood, he explores the notions concerning the difference between a live and a dead body, burial customs, the nourishment that the dead may require, the ‘afterlife’ of corpses, revenants etc. Revenant beliefs consequently are not considered as anomalies, but are simply yet another part of a world view or system of belief.

Detached from a system of belief or even detached from any kind of etymology, ‘vampire species’ become more or less accidental fragments risking to blur rather reveal than the underlying patterns.

A diagram from Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture by Charles Stewart (1991) of the places where Greek exotiká may typically be encountered. Vrykolakes are, as one would expect, found in graveyards.

A Study in Survivals and Greek folklore a century ago

'Mr. Lawson informs us that in Thessaly he was actually told of a family in the neighbourhood of Domoko, who reckoned a vrykolakas among their ancestors of some two or three generations ago, and by virtue of such lineage they inherited a certain skill which enables them to deal most efficaciously with the vrykolakas who at intervals haunt the country-side, indeed so widely was their power esteemed that they had been on occasion summoned as specialists for consultation when quite remote districts were troubled in this manner.'

Yet two more recent reprints from Cambridge University Press are of some interest in connection with the subject of this blog, in both cases with Greek folklore and anthropology. These two books from the early twentieth century are among the works studied and referred to by Montague Summers (cf. the above passage from The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, p. 230), so they will no doubt be familiar to many people.

Macedonian Folklore by George Frederick Abbott, was originally published in 1903. Abbott, born 1874, 'spent two years at the turn of the twentieth century studying the cultural beliefs and folklore of Greek-speaking Macedonia. His results are formulated in this 1903 book and include accounts of such varying topics as the folk-calendar, funeral rites and bird legends among many other observations. Filled with anecdotes of his adventure and reports from local inhabitants, this work is a highly engaging travelogue with many ethnographic insights. Those interested in the development of anthropology will find Abbott's study a telling example of Victorian methods while the general reader will find his prose style warm and enjoyable.'

Abbott died in 1947, cf. Wikipedia.

Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Folklore by John Cuthbert Lawson was published in 1910, and 'analyses the customs and superstitions of modern Greece as a means of gaining a greater understanding of ancient Greek belief structures. Analogies and coincidences between ancient and modern Greece had been pointed out prior to the publication of this edition, but no large attempt had been made to trace the continuity of the life and thought of the Greek people, and to exhibit modern Greek folklore as an essential factor in the interpretation of ancient Greek religion. The text is highly accessible, and all quotations from ancient and modern Greek are translated into English. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in anthropology and the classical world.'

A recent assessment of Lawson's work - which is still frequently referred to in various books - can be found in 'On the Beliefs of the Greeks' by Karen Hartnup:

'His Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion is immensely learned, and his treatment of beliefs and practices in this work is often sensitive and perceptive, but the title of his work indicates his underlying concern. He argued that although Christianity altered the ethical standards and imposed a religiously sanctioned morality on ancient Greece, practically all ancient religious customs continued up to his own day. Christianity was merely grafted on to paganism and the conciliatory practices of the early church meant that the Christinaity of the masses became polytheistic. Lawson concluded that the inhabitants of modern Greece "with all this external Christianity ... are as pagan and as polytheistic in their hearts as were ever their ancestors." In fact, for him modern Greek Christianity was just a thin cover for the continuing system of paganism.

Although Lawson's work follows the prevailing methodology of his time, it typifies the archaeological and romantic folkloric approach to Greek popular religion, which until recently held sway in Greek studies. In such studies the aim was to strip away the modern 'accretions' in order to extract information on the classical period and to reveal a 'pristine Hellenic past'. No attempt was made to trace the practices through the intervening periods and the impact of such momentous events as the conversion to Christianity, the conquest of Constantinople, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire was ignored.' (p. 7-8)

Isle of the Dead

Boris Karloff Blogathon: Like Fuseli’s Nightmare has become an iconic image, so the famous Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead) painting by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) has inspired music, literature and popular culture, most notably in the symphonic work by Rachmaninov. Itself inspired by the images of Hades from classical mythology, it clearly lends itself perfectly to imagery of an otherworld of the dead.

American film producer Val Lewton minutely recreated Böcklin’s island in his 1945 movie Isle of the Dead. Set in Greece in 1912 during the First Balkan War, the Greeks have just conquered the Ottomans in a battle, but also have to work hard to avoid suffering plague and typhus. Boston journalist Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) follows the Greek general Pherides (Boris Karloff) on a visit to a cemetery on an island just off the coast. The general, a tough and rational patriot with the nickname The Watchdog, wishes to visit the grave of his wife, but finds that her grave as well as all other graves are empty. Although guarded by a statue of Cerberus, the island is apparently not a peaceful resting place for the dead.

Pherides and Davis are greeted by a Swiss archaeologist who has settled on the island at the house of a Greek lady, Madame Kyra. The archaeologist tells them that his archaeological excavations on the island had inspired locals to rob the graves, and that is why the graves are now empty. Kyra on the other hand informs the general that one of the corpses was an ‘evil one’, a vorvolaka, and she suggests that evil is still going on. At the house a handful of foreigners have sought refuge from the war, and one of them, Mrs. St. Aubyn, is ill and grows paler and weaker, while the young Thea is ‘rosy and red and full of blood’. The general tells her that it is nonsense, but when one of the people in the company dies from septicemic plague and they have to quarantine the island, fear and superstition begins nagging even the general Pherides.

Isle of the Dead then pits science and medicine against religion and superstition. As the plague takes it toll on doctor Drossor and even on the general himself, they accept that there may be higher powers at large, and the old Watchdog finds himself begins to believe that Thea is indeed a vorvolaka. He almost succeeds in convincing Thea herself that she may be the cause of the plague and illness.


When Mrs. St. Aubyn suffers a cataleptic trance, everybody assumes that she is dead, and she is placed in one of the burial rooms of the cemetery. She, however, awakens and finds herself prematurely buried, screams and scratches at the coffin, and eventually succeeds in getting out and avenging herself - almost like a vorvolaka. Kyra and the general both are certain that she has indeed become a vorvolaka: 'Who dies by a Vorvolaka, becomes a Vorvolaka.'

Ancient mythological images of Hades, Charon and Cerberus mix with the Greek folk belief in the vorvolaka and plague, catalepsy, premature burial as well as what some term ‘psychic vampirism’. All of that told within just 71 minutes: They certainly knew that ‘less is more’ back then. The acting, not least by Karloff himself, is impeccable and as always in Lewton’s movies, the horrors are done rather by suggestion than by effect, and they work very well.


‘Vorvolaka’ is one of the variants of what is usually called ‘vrykolakas’. Karen Hartnup in On the Beliefs of the Greeks: Leo Allatios and Popular Orthodoxy (Brill, 2004), mentions it in the form ‘vourvourlakas’:

‘It may be misleading to use the term vampire in the context of the Greek revenant. The vampire with which we in the West are most familiar is the Dracula of Bram Stoker and ‘B’ movie fame, with his long flowing cape, fangs, and thirst for blood. Although both the Greek vampire and its so-called Transylvanian cousin are revenants, that is, resurrected dead bodies, they differ greatly in style and in their relationships with members of society. It is not helpful to call this creature a vampire as the word carries with it connotations alien to the phenomenon. What should be used in its stead? A plethora of terms for the revenant existed, with each area having its own variation of the species. It was called among other things, vrykolakas, vourvoulakas and katachtonios. Vrykolakas, however, is the most common Greek word for the creature and so seems to most suitable.

Although the vrykolakas exhibited non of the traditional behaviour of the ‘Transylvanian’ vampire, nonetheless it had the ability to cause great terror within a community. The creature was so frightening that could drive whole villages to decamp. Tournefort described the reaction of a village in Mykonos which discovered a vrykolakas in its midst:

Whole families quitted their Hourses, and brought their Tent-Beds from the farthest parts of the Town into the publick Place, there to spend the night. They were every instant complaining of some new Insult; nothing was to be heard but Sighs and Groans at the approach of Night: the better Sort of People retired into the Country.’ (p. 173-4)

Some of the most famous sources on the vrykolakas are the De quorundam Graecorum Opinationibus by Allatios (1645), Relation de l’isle de Santerini (1657) by father Francois Richard and the Relation d'une voyage du Levant by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1717), all of them well-known in the literature on vampires. A careful analysis of Allatios with the evidence on vrykolakas found in Greek texts of ecclesiastical law, nomokanones, in comparison to popular beliefs, is found in Hartnup’s book, which is highly recommended.

This blog post is part of the so-called Boris Karloff Blogathon, commemorating Karloff's 122nd birthday on November 23 2009!

The Wurdalak

Now that I have mentioned the Italian director Mario Bava (1914-1980) in a recent post, I might add a few words about his film adaptation of Aleksey Tolstoy's (Алексей Константинович Толстой, a cousin of Leo Tolstoy, 1817-1875) story La famille du Vourdalak (Family of the Vourdalak). Bava's adaptation is the middle story in an anthology film of three stories (or three faces of fear, as the title goes): I tre volti delta paura (1963). Like in Tolstoy's story, a nobleman called d'Urfé (in Tolstoy's story he is a marquis, in the film a count called Vladimir d'Urfé) who in 1759 ends up in a Serbian village at a time when Gorcha, the father of a family, has been away to fight a Turkish criminal, Alibek. Gorcha (played by Boris Karloff) has warned his family that if he does not return within five days (in Tolstoy's story: ten days), he will have become a wurdalak (or vourdalak), i.e. a vampire.

Tolstoy draws heavily on his knowledge of the vampire cases of the 18th century in his story, and Bava adds extra touches from later authors. As film critic Tim Lucas points out in his commentary on a recent DVD release, the adaptation actually incorporates elements from a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Consequently, although this film is often regarded as one of the films closest to the actual vampire cases, it is in fact inspired more by literary conventions and inventions than by historical fact. Furthermore, Bava himself adds his own sense of colour, style and athmosphere to create a unique vampire film.


As for the ending, Bava opted for d'Urfé joining his beloved Sdenka, even though she had become a wurdalak, and consequently becoming a member of the family of the wurdalak. In the American version called Black Sabbath, a different ending was decided on, that was more in the vein of Tolstoy's, where d'Urfé survives to tell the story in Vienna in 1815.

Boris Karloff also starred in another film that will be of interest to anyone interested in the Magia Posthuma, Isle of the Dead produced by Val Lewton in 1945. The theme of this film is pretty unusual, as it is inspired by the Greek belief in vrykolakas. I may return to it in a future post.

This blog is definitely not about vampire cinema, but I find it relevant to deal with those instances where fictional vampires - from literature or cinema - have a particular relevance for the study or understanding of the subject of Magia Posthuma. That is why I will at times write about films like Leptirića or I tre volti della paura.

Keyworth and the Uniqueness of the Vampire

Now I have obtained and read a paper by G. David Keyworth, who was mentioned in one of my recent posts. It seems that Keyworth wrote a thesis on 'the socio-religious beliefs and nature of the contemporary vampire subculture' before completing a PhD thesis on 'the unnatural history of troublesome corpses and vampires in Europefrom the medieval period to the twentieth century'. The paper I refer to, Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead-corpse? published in Folklore 117 (December 2006), p. 241-260, is obviously based on his work for the latter thesis.

Augustin Calmet in his Dissertation on revenants and vampires claimed that “in no history do we read anything similar, so common, or so decided, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary, and Moravia.” ("Mais en nulle Histoire on ne lit rien d'aussi commun ni aussi marqué que ce qu'on nous raconte des Vampires de Pologne, de Hongrie & de Moravie." II, vii). In his paper Keyworth aims to “test the validity of Calmet’s notion that eighteenth-century vampires were a unique type of revenant.” Consequently, Keyworth compares and contrasts the vampires of the 18th century with tales and cases of revenants and other 'troublesome corpses' from the 12th century and onwards.

Some of his examples will be well known, e.g. those from William of Newburgh and Henry More, whereas others are more obscure. The older sources are mainly from England, Iceland and parts of northern Europe, and Keyworth seems to be fascinated by the old Norse draugrs. He refers to various writings on the Greek vrykolakas (e.g. Allatius and Tournefourt) before coming to the oupire and vampire of the 18th century, which are described via quotes from Harleian Miscellany, Mercure Argent, the Lettres Juives, and the reports from Kisiljevo and Medvedja.

Further on he refers to writers on theosophy and spiritualism, who had notions of 'astral' and 'posthumous' vampirism. He also mentions von Görres' mystical views in Die Christliche Mystik (1836-42), and finally compares the New England 19th century 'vampires cases' with those of the 18th century.

All in all this makes for an interesting peek into the historical development of notions about revenants.

As for Keyworth's question: 'Were the Vampires of the Eighteenth Century Unique?', he concludes that:

“The Slavic vampire of the eighteenth century remains a unique type of revenant, given its supposed thirst for human blood.” (p. 256)

I feel that the paper is much too biased towards England and northern Europe, whereas in my opinion it is particularly interesting to know if the same trend can be found if you incorporate material from various continental European countries. Quite a few books have been written about the revenants and apparitions of the medieval period, so material should be readily available.

Furthermore, I am a bit wary of the use of e.g. the Harleian Miscellany as evidence, because this text is mainly based on other sources. In general I prefer to try to go to the most original sources, in particular those written by people who were present when examining cases of purported vampirism. Keyworth mentions two examples (and his source is obviously Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death), but there are others. In particular the military physician Georg Tallar's examination of 'vampire victims' is important.

These sources are also important when considering the 'blood sucking' of 18th century vampires. Were they really supposed to suck blood and how? In many cases the victims complained of other symptoms than losing blood, e.g. suffocation.

Keyworth does however note that the notion of blood sucking could be inferred from the post mortem effects on the human body:

“Slavic culture, however, as we have seen emphasised the apparent accumulation of blood within the organs and bodily cavities of such corpses, this being taken as supposed evidence that the deceased had been sucking the blood of the living.” (p. 257)

But is this enough evidence to claim the uniqueness of the 18th century vampires?

In my opinion there are still unanswered questions. Keyworth touches upon important aspects of the history of vampires and revenants, but I do not feel convinced by his conclusion, or perhaps I just view things from a different perspective? However, now I have even more reason to look forward to reading Keyworth's book!