Moroi

The moroi is a figure from Romanian folklore, closely related to the strigoi and often described as a «living vampire». The compilations of Emily Gerard (Transylvanian Superstitions, 1885) and of Agnes Murgoci (The Vampire in Roumania, 1926) present it as a being born in circumstances considered anomalous or ill-fated: children conceived or born on certain holidays, seventh children, illegitimate children or children who died without being baptized. According to the belief, such people could carry within them a vampiric nature, so that their spirit left the body during sleep to harm the living. Baptism and Orthodox rites were considered essential to prevent this fate, and an unappeased moroi could become after death a strigoi, revenant fully formed.

Unlike the strigoi mort, corpse that comes out of the grave, the moroi often acts while alive or as a spirit. By day it can pass as an ordinary person, although folklore sometimes attributes revealing traits to it, such as a certain paleness or a peculiar constitution. At night, its spirit manifests as an invisible or dark presence that enters houses to oppress the sleepers, sitting on their chest to absorb their breath or vital energy, in an image related to that of the nightmare (the «mara» of European folklore). It is also attributed the ability to transform into small animals to sneak into homes. Its presence was revealed by the restlessness of the livestock, the lack of sleep and the inexplicable exhaustion of its victims.

The defenses against the moroi coincide to a large extent with those employed against the strigoi: garlic, certain protective herbs, holy water, crosses and orthodox prayers hung or placed on doors and windows. To prevent a suspicious deceased from rising, they resorted to burying him face down, driving a stake into him or filling his mouth with garlic or seeds, with the idea of keeping him occupied or tied to the grave. Community surveillance and the exhumation of suspicious graves formed part of these practices. The moroi, together with the strigoi, constitutes one of the folkloric antecedents of the modern literary vampire, and its name endures today in popular culture, reused by contemporary vampire fiction.