Greek Folklore and Legends: The Greek Vampires
Harry's Note: I am pleased to announce collaboration with renowned scholar and author John L. Tomkinson.
Mr. Tomkinson is the author of many books about Greece (and other subjects) and he has agreed to provide for us, some of his insights, on this page, as well as others throughout my sites.
Please visit http://www.anagnosis.gr for more of his fascinating insights into Greek culture and history.
True lovers of Greece will be well rewarded by obtaining some of his very reasonably priced editions which are only available internationally, direct from the publisher.
His series Greece: Beyond the Guidebooks has been a source of inspiration to me personally. Major credit cards accepted.
The Greek Vampires
One of the most feared of the paranormal denizens of Greece
was the vrykolakas, or vampire. Charles Edwards had this to say about
the hardy Cretans he met during the 1880s: “A muscular Cretan, who
would not delay to tackle three or four Turks if it were required of him,
would be ready to die of dread of a vampire if he saw an inexplicable
shadow in the night, and would be for digging up this or that corpse in
the neighbouring churchyard, to see if the flush of blood in its normally
pale face indicated it as his unholy assailant in the quiet hours.”
Few cultures in the world have a tradition of belief in vampires as long-standing
and as widespread as Greece. But to understand the character of the Greek
vampire, we must divest ourselves of many of the now fashionable associations
of the term, derived from the romantic writers of the nineteenth century.
An informant in the USA explained the Greek concept of a vampire to investigator
Dorothy Lee thus: “In the homeland they say that a man is a vrykolakas
when, after three years, they dig up his corpse whole. When the body has
melted away, and only bones are left, the relatives go and take the bones,
they put them in a little box, they pour wine over them, the priest reads
over them, they put them in the coemeterion [house of sleep], they put
on the box the name of the dead, and the date. But some bodies do not
melt away, and of these they say, “He has become a vrykolakas.”
In those years we said that these had been cursed by their father, or
that the priest had excommunicated them because they had married a relative;
or if they had committed a crime, then they said that this man will come
out whole after he dies. Now I don’t believe these things, but then
I did.
And some people come out of the soil in three years, with flesh on, black and half-decayed. And I saw one, and how could I sleep after that? . . . they had him in the yard of the church, as an example to the people. And after three days his relatives took him, and they had to recite many prayers, and bury him, and again after three years to take him out. Of this they would say that it is a vrykolakas, and we would be afraid . . . Such a thing would give rise to gossip and speculation about the man’s life.”
Extract from "Haunted Greece: Nymphs, Vampires and other Exotika"
by John L. Tomkinson http://www.anagnosis.gr/Haunted_Greece.htm
Read more about Greek vampires. http://www.anagnosis.gr/Vampires.htm
Read more about other paranormal denizens of Greek folklore. http://www.anagnosis.gr/Exotika.htm
Illustration copyright Maria Ine.