Strigoi

The strigoi is one of the most feared figures in Romanian folklore, a revenant or dead person who returns from the grave, whose roots sink into pre-Christian beliefs about restless souls, later intertwined with Orthodox tradition and with Slavic and Balkan myths. The name derives from the Latin striga («witch»), through the Romanian strigă. The tradition distinguishes two great classes: the strigoi vii, living vampires, people endowed with occult powers (often born with a particularity, such as an amniotic membrane over the head) whose spirit leaves the body at night; and the strigoi morți, reanimated corpses that come out of their graves. It was believed that certain circumstances (suicide, violent death, lack of baptism or unexpiated sins) predisposed one to become a strigoi.

The strigoi morți are described as notably well-preserved corpses, with a reddish face and with nails and hair that seem to have continued growing after death, features that ethnography has related to the natural processes of decomposition misinterpreted by the villagers. They are attributed superhuman strength, the ability to transform into animals (wolf, dog, cat, insect) and that of exhausting the living. Their typical action consists of revisiting their relatives and their old home to consume the vitality of the sleepers, causing illness, exhaustion and death, as well as misfortunes on livestock and crops. The strigoi vii, for their part, act through the nocturnal journey of their spirit, causing nightmares and ills without apparently abandoning their bed.

Romanian folklore developed a whole repertoire of measures against the strigoi. As prevention, the suspect was buried face down, garlic was placed in the mouth or thorns around, and the graves of those who had died in disturbing circumstances were watched. To confirm the suspicion the body was exhumed: if it appeared incorrupt, rosy and with fresh blood, it was considered a strigoi. The ritual destruction involved driving a stake (of ash, oak or hawthorn) into the heart, beheading the corpse and placing the head at the feet, extracting and burning the heart, or incinerating the entire body and scattering the ashes. These practices, documented by folklorists such as Agnes Murgoci, reflect a worldview in which ritual purity protects the community, and contributed to forming the image of the vampire that Bram Stoker popularized.