Moroi
Romanian vampire, living or unbaptised
Curated byBestiarypediaCreated onUpdated on
Europe
Wallachia(Romania)Transylvania(Romania)
Origins of the moroi
In Romanian folklore, moroi (also muroi, with the feminine moroaică) does not name a creature distinct from the strigoi, but the same being called by another name. Tudor Pamfile, in Mitologie românească (1916), places the use of the term chiefly in Ardeal (Transylvania), in western Muntenia and in Oltenia, while Bucovina preferred vidmă; and he warns that attempts to separate the two names are local, unstable distinctions, unable to break the unity of the belief. Two roads lead to that condition. The first is the marked birth: the illegitimate child of illegitimate parents described by Emily Gerard in Transylvanian Superstitions (1885), the seventh son among seven brothers, the child born with a caul of membrane over its head. The second, repeated far more often in the villages, is death without baptism: the child buried without the sacrament becomes a moroi and returns to the house where it was born.
Manifestation
The moroi acts above all while its body sleeps. By day it passes for an ordinary neighbour, though belief credits it with pallor, heavy sleep and a weariness that has no explanation. When night falls, the soul leaves the body and enters the houses: it settles on the sleeper's chest and takes away the breath, an image akin to that of the nightmare which the rest of Europe called mara. Pamfile also records a division of shapes that the villagers took for granted: the strigoi turns into a greyhound or a wolf, and the moroi into a fly, which is how it slips through the crack. The collections do not confine it to the breath. The Bucovina testimonies Pamfile reproduces tell that the souls of children dead without baptism walk the villages by night and suck the blood of children and young girls, who sicken and die. Restless cattle, sleeplessness and exhaustion without cause betrayed its passing.
Protection and legacy
Against the moroi the village used the same things it used against any strigoi (garlic, holy water, the cross and the Orthodox prayer at doors and windows), but for the child dead without baptism there was a remedy of its own: to water its grave with holy water for seven years running, according to the testimony Pamfile takes from the journal Ion Creangă; the one that went unwatered came back to its mother's house. If suspicion fell on an adult dead, he was buried face down, a stake was driven into him or his mouth was filled with garlic and seeds, to keep him busy counting them or bound to the pit. The name outlived the belief: Agnes Murgoci carried it into English ethnography in The Vampire in Roumania (1926), and twentieth-century vampire fiction borrowed it, so that today moroi denotes in popular culture something rather different from what the peasants of Oltenia were burying.
Also known as
Relics
Symbology
Element
Shadow
Number
1
Color
White
Animals
Cat, Dog
Sigils:
Traits
Powers
Weaknesses
Behavioral
Resistances
In the Atlas
Travel the beings’ world of origin and the cosmos of their dimensions.
Mythologies
Romanian folklore features creatures like Zmei dragons, Strigoi vampires, Moroi spirits, Iele evil fairies, forest guardians, rooted in pre-Christian Carpathian and Transylvanian traditions, with tales of bloodsuckers, shape-shifters and nocturnal hauntings.
Sources
Transylvanian Superstitions
Emily Gerard · 1885
An article by Emily Gerard published in The Nineteenth Century (London, 1885) on the beliefs of rural Transylvania. It describes the Romanian vampire, which it calls nosferatu, and distinguishes the living from the dead: the living one is commonly the illegitimate child of illegitimate parents, and whoever dies at the hands of one becomes a vampire in turn. Bram Stoker read it before writing Dracula.
The Vampire in Roumania
Agnes Murgoci · 1926
A study by Agnes Murgoci published in Folklore, vol. 37, no. 4 (1926), pp. 320-349. It gathers the author's fieldwork in Romania and sets out for the first time in English the distinction between strigoi vii and strigoi morți, the signs looked for at exhumation and the repertory of rites of destruction: the stake, the beheading, the burnt heart and the ashes given to the sick to drink.
Romanian Mythology I: Enemies and Friends of Man
Tudor Pamfile · 1916
A repertory of Romanian folklore gathered by Tudor Pamfile (Bucharest, 1916). Its first part is devoted to the strigoi and records that moroi is the name of the same figure in Transylvania, western Muntenia and Oltenia, with hundreds of village testimonies on birth with a caul, exhumation and the rites of containment.
Frequently asked questions
Is the moroi a creature distinct from the strigoi?
No: in the sources they are one and the same. Tudor Pamfile says so plainly in 1916: moroi is what the strigoi is called in Transylvania, in western Muntenia and in Oltenia, and the differences some villagers drew (that one gives the evil eye and the other does not, that one turns into a wolf and the other into a fly) are local, inconstant marks that never managed to separate the two names. The clean-cut distinction between a living moroi and a dead strigoi is a later ordering, convenient for handbooks, which Romanian belief does not support.
How does the moroi manifest itself at night?
As a pressing presence rather than a figure one sees. The soul leaves the sleeping body, comes in through any crack and settles on the sleeper's chest to take away the breath, which is the very image of the nightmare called mara in the rest of Europe. Pamfile records that the moroi turns into a fly (and the strigoi into a greyhound or a wolf) to slip into the house. In the Bucovina testimonies the child dead without baptism goes further and sucks the blood of other children and of young girls. What the village observed was the effect: restless cattle, sleeplessness and an exhaustion that no day's work could justify.
Can a moroi become a strigoi when it dies?
That is the usual formulation, and it is worth understanding properly. What the collections say is that whoever held the gift in life and dies without the due rites rises after burial; but this is not one creature turning into another, it is the same being passing from its living form, the strigoi viu, to its dead form, the strigoi mort. The border is the funeral: the Orthodox rites, the garlic in the mouth, the face-down burial or the stake barred the passage, and their absence opened it. That is why villagers watched the graves of suspects during the weeks after burial, which was when the return was expected.
What signs identify the moroi in Romanian folklore?
The first is seen at birth: the caul of membrane over the newborn's head, which the mother kept because it was believed to carry the mark. Then come the bodily ones, which are negative and therefore unreliable: pallor, sleep too deep, weariness without cause. And last those in someone else's house, which were what really moved the village: cattle that will not settle, the child growing thin, the girl who wakes exhausted. An insistent fly in a sick person's room was read as the shape in which the moroi came in. None of these signs identifies anyone on its own, and that very ambiguity was what allowed an inconvenient neighbour to be pointed at.
🔖Cite this entry▾
If you cite this article in an academic, journalistic or editorial publication, use any of these formats:
Bestiarypedia. (2026, August 22). Moroi. Bestiarypedia. https://bestiarypedia.com/en/beings/moroi
Free citation with attribution and canonical link for editorial, academic or journalistic use. Full commercial reuse or creation of derivative products requires prior agreement.
