Greece is a magical country where myths are closely intertwined with reality, and where it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between truth and fiction
Contemporary folklore is no exception. Urban legends, or, to put it simply, horror stories, are usually not included in tourist brochures and guidebooks, guides do not talk about them either, so as not to scare overly impressionable tourists.
And only locals in a frank conversation over a cup of coffee can tell you extraordinary stories that have been passed from mouth to mouth for several decades.
The Legend of the Poor Lumberjack
This story happened not so long ago, thirty years ago. In a small village at the very foot of Olympus, there lived a young guy who often went to the forest to get firewood. Once, as usual, early in the morning, he harnessed a horse, got into the cart and drove into the forest, but by evening the guy never returned home. All night long, his family did not sleep a wink in anxious anticipation. And at dawn there was a knock at the door. On the threshold stood the missing guy, but already without a horse and without a cart. What happened to him in the forest still remains a mystery, since the poor man has not said a word since then. From the horror he experienced, he was forever speechless.
Olympus is one of the most popular topics in contemporary folklore. You will hear all kinds of stories from the inhabitants of the nearby villages. This is not surprising, Olympus is a really mysterious place, it is not for nothing that the ancient Greeks believed that it was there that the abode of the gods was located.
According to legends, some of the rocks of Olympus are hollow inside and are the entrance to the underground city where the gods once lived. Local old-timers say that not far from the summit of Olympus, Stephanie, a stone door is hidden, which closes the entrance to the "golden" cave.
It is said that one day, a shepherd from a nearby village accidentally came across a small hole in the rock. The shepherd decided to look inside and to his surprise saw a golden light, seemingly breaking through from the ground. Curiosity overcame fear, and he decided to find out what kind of secret the unusual cave hides. There were twelve statues inside, from which a golden light emanated.
Nobody knows how long the shepherd spent in the magic cave, but after returning to his native village, he did not leave the house for a long time and led a secluded life. Just before his death, the old man told his children about what happened to him many years ago.
The Legend of the Tobacco Lover
It's better not to read the story to especially impressionable people. The Greeks usually tell this legend deeply after midnight, when there is silence outside and the full moon is shining.
Several years ago, a woman lived near Athens who was a heavy smoker. Every day at the same time she went out onto a country road to get on the bus and get to her place of work.
But one day a terrible thing happened, the bus driver accidentally hit a woman, and she died. Since then, at night, a ghost appears on the country road, who asks everyone for a cigarette, and if the cigarette is not given, the ghost takes the soul. Locals say that the ghost is afraid of fire, therefore, when walking or driving past a "bad" place, you must always light a match or a lighter.
Haunted house of Athens
Haunted houses have long been a favorite theme in many ghost stories. The earliest report of such a house dates back to the 1st century. BC. The story below has come down to us from Ancient Greece.
At that time, a ghost was rumored to have settled in one of the Athenian villas. Every night a sad spirit roamed the entire villa, clanging with heavy prison shackles and iron chains on his arms and legs, making an eerie noise. The people who rented this villa fled from there in terror, and one of them even died of fear.
The owner of the villa, in desperation, was ready to rent it to anyone for a paltry price. This attracted the attention of a philosopher named Athenodorus. He looked around the villa and happily agreed to rent it for such a ridiculous price. Moreover, the stories of ghosts intrigued Athenodorus, and he decided to find out what was behind this whole mysterious story.
On the very first evening after the move, when Athenodorus was peacefully working in his office, an ominous rattle of rusty chains was heard in the darkness outside the door. However, he pretended that nothing special was happening, and calmly continued his studies. The sounds were getting louder. Then the door swung open and the ghost of a gray-haired old man entered the room; he gestured desperately, demanding that Athenodorus stand up and follow him. The philosopher still did not pay the slightest attention to the ghost.
The ghost drew nearer and nearer, until finally it hovered directly over Athenodorus. He didn't even blink an eye. In the end, the discouraged spirit turned and departed in the same way that it had entered, dissolving in the middle of the courtyard. Athenodorus followed him and exactly saw the place where he disappeared.
The next day the philosopher returned to this very place, accompanied by a magistrate and several workers, who dug up the courtyard and found a skeleton in the ground, chained in rusty chains. After the remains were reburied in the cemetery, peace and quiet reigned in the villa. Neither the ghost himself nor his shackles bothered anyone else.
Greece and vampires
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Greece is one of the oldest sources of the modern vampire legend.
Ancient Greek records indicate the existence of three vampire-like creatures - lamia, empusai, and mormolikai. Also, in Greece, the strig is known - the vampire witch. The Strig comes from the Latin strix. which originally referred to a screaming owl, and later to a night flying demon who attacked and killed children by sucking their blood. Lamia was named after Lamia, the queen of Libya.
She was the daughter of Belus and Livia and, as the story goes, she was loved by Zeus, king of the Greek gods. Hera, the wife of Zeus, became jealous and kidnapped all the children of Lamia, whose father was Zeus. Lamia retired to the cave and took revenge, kidnapping mortal children and sucking their blood, being unable to strike back at Hera. She turned into a terrible creature. (The story of the Mormolikai is very similar - they are named after the Mormo woman who ate her own children.)
Later, the lamia began to be identified with a class of creatures created after her model. They were disgusting women with deformed snake-like lower bodies. One leg was copper and the other was like an animal, mostly like a donkey, goat or bull. The Lamsh were known as demonic creatures that suck blood from young children. However, they had the ability to transform into beautiful young girls in order to attack and seduce young men. Philostratus paid much attention to the deeds of the lamia in the 25th chapter of the fourth book "The Life of Apollo".
One of Apollo's disciples named Menippus was fascinated by a young rich girl, whom he first met as a vision. In this vision, he was told where (the area around Corinth) and when he would find her. The young man fell in love and was preparing for the wedding. When he told this story to Apollo, he told his young student that a snake was hunting him. Having met the woman, he said to Menippus: “You can realize the truth of what I said: this beautiful bride is one of the vampires (emusia), one of those creatures whom we call lamias and brownies (mormolikai). These creatures fall in love, they are subject to the raptures of Aphrodite - but they especially seek human flesh and lure with such delight those whom they then intend to try at their holiday."
Despite the objections of Menippus, Apollo opposed the lamia. One by one, her spell disappeared. Finally, she acknowledged her plans and talked about her habit of feeding on young and beautiful bodies, because "their blood is pure and strong." Philostratus called this entry "the most famous story of Apollo." Apuleius in the very first part of The Golden Donkey retells the story of a meeting with a lamia, who caught up with her fleeing lover and killed him, piercing his neck with a sword, took all the blood and then cut off his head.
But people soon lost their fear of lamia. Already in ancient times, she simply served as a means of intimidating parents of naughty children. However, the echoes of these beliefs are alive, and now, if a child suddenly dies, it is said that the child was strangled by a lamia.
In the 15th century, lamias were rediscovered, now in literature, when Angelo Poliziano of Florence published the poem Lamia (1492). In 1819, the British poet John Keith wrote a poem of the same title. Since Keats, lamias have appeared in numerous poems, painting, sculpture and music. For example, August Enna wrote an opera called Lamia, which was first performed in Antwerp, Belgium in 1899. Poems on the same subject were written by Edward McDowell (1888), Arthur Simons (1920), Frederick Zeck (1926), Robert Graves (1964), and Peter Davidson (1977).
Later novels depicting lamias included four books by D. N. Williamson: Death Crew (1981), Death School (1981), Death Angel (1982), and Death Doctor (1982) - all they are about the same character - the lamia Zacharias. Tim Power's recent novel, Her Focus (1989), described events in the early 19th century and England. In this novel, Keats, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Mary Godwin, and Percy Shelley interacted with the lamia.
Vricolakos
The Lamias, Empusai, and Mormolikai, while famous for drinking blood, were not vampires in the sense that they are in Eastern Europe. They were more ghostly creatures than living corpses. The ancient Greeks, however, had a whole class of newcomers - the vrikolakos - which later evolved into true vampires.
The term comes from the Old Slavic compound word "wolfodlaka", which meant "wearing a wolf's skin." This term arose among the southern Slavs, from whom it may have passed to the Greeks. The most accurate description of the newly returned (creatures that return from the grave) in ancient Greek literature is given in the story told by the phlegon - a slave who was freed during the time of the Roman emperor Guardian.
Filinnon, daughter of Demostratus and Harito, was seen entering the room of Machates, a young man who remained in her parents' guest room six months after her death. The servant told the parents that he had seen their daughter, but peeping through the crack of the guest room, they could not establish who Machates was spending time with. The next morning, Harito told Machates about her daughter's death. He said that the girl who visited him yesterday was called Filinnon. Then he presented the ring that she gave him and the chest strap that she had forgotten. The parents recognized both items - they belonged to their daughter. When the girl returned again, the parents entered the room and saw their daughter. She began to reproach them for interrupting her meeting with Machates and said that she was given only three nights that she could spend with him. However, due to their interference,she will die again. And Filinnon became a dead body again.
At this moment, the flegoi, the witness, enters the scene. As an official, he was called upon to maintain order, as word of Philinnon's return spread throughout the city that evening. He examined her burial site and found there gifts that she took after her first visit to Machates, but the body itself was not there. The townspeople turned to a local sage, who advised to burn the body and observe the correct rituals of purification, and rituals appeasing the deities.
This unique story of the return of the dead contains some aspects of the later Greek account of Vricolakos. An essential point is that the body of the restless person was usually burned, they did not chop off his head and pierce his heart with a stake. However, the Greek returnee was not yet a vampire or even an object of fear.
He often returned to complete unfinished business with his spouse, family members, or someone else close to him in life. In later centuries, there will be stories of longer visits and of the Vricolakos resuming his family life. Sometimes it was reported that the newly returned went to places where they did not know him, and again had a family and children.
One of the earliest reports of vricolakos comes from the French botanist Pitton de Thournfort. While on the island of Mykonos in 1700, he heard the story of a recently deceased man who walked around the city and annoyed the inhabitants with his appearances. After attempts to calm him down in ways that did not require exhumation failed, on the ninth day after the funeral, the body was dug out of the grave, the heart was removed from it and burned. But the problems have not disappeared. Once a visitor from Albania suggested that the solution to the problem was to stick "Christian" swords into the grave, since it was believed that a sharp object stuck into the grave would prevent the vampire from rising. The Albanian argued that if the sword is in the shape of a cross, it will not let the devil go out of the body (many believed that the body was animated by the devil or an evil spirit). He suggested using Turkish swords. It did not help. And in the end, on January 1, 1701, the body was set on fire.
Greece gave the world the first modern vampire writer Leon Allassi (known as Leo Allatius). In 1645 he wrote De Graecorum hodie quorundani, a book on the beliefs of the Greek people, in which vrikolakos is described in great detail. In the early 20th century, Sutbert Lawson spent a lot of time studying vrikolakos in Greek folklore. In the development of this image, he distinguished three stages, starting with the one that arose in pre-Christian times and is represented in the records of Phlegon.
In this version, the return took place by divine desire for a specific purpose. Also in ancient Greek texts, Lawson found another explanation: return is a punishment for human sins. In Euripides and Aeschylus, Lawson noted examples where people were subjected to a curse that condemned them to an incorruptible body, meaning that in death this individual would not find a place for himself among those who stand on the other side of the grave. Thus, the ancient Greek writers fueled the concept of the "restless".
Lawson noted three circumstances that predispose an individual to become a vricolakos. First, it could be the curse of a parent or someone to whom this person was guilty, for example, such as was imposed by Oedipus on his irreverent son. Oedipus called on Tartarus (the kingdom of the dead) to refuse to accept his son and expel him from the place of eternal rest. Second, someone can become restless as a result of an evil or dishonest act, especially against their family, such as killing a relative or adultery with a daughter-in-law or son-in-law. Third, the deceased can become restless if he died a violent death or if he was not buried.
The popular belief in Vrikolakos was introduced into the doctrine of the Greek Orthodox Church when it became the dominant force in Greek religious life in the first millennium AD. The church has developed a doctrine about the dead, whose bodies remain undecomposed, and about those who have returned, who have been resurrected and returned to life. Regarding the former, the church taught that a curse can prevent the natural decay of the body, which, in turn, becomes a barrier to the development of the soul.
However, curses uttered by parents or someone else become secondary in comparison with the curse uttered by the church in the act of excommunication (especially when the church denies the sacrifice to the victim). The stories of the damned dead, whose bodies did not disintegrate, gradually became the basis of the belief that excommunication has physical results. Reports of changes in the bodies of the excommunicated, from whom this excommunication was later removed, added picturesqueness to the church writings.
When it came to vrikolakos, the church seemed just bewildered. But in the end, she had to deal with what, even in ancient times, was believed to be an illusion. Initially, the church explained this by the interference of the devil in the imagination of people, which made them believe in the return of the dead. However, in the face of pro | Following messages, the church developed this time the theory that the devil possessed the body of the dead and made it move. But most often such cases were associated with the activities of mediums, in the same way as it was in the biblical story of a woman from Endor (I Samuel 28).
Thus, when the church came to dominate Greek religious life, it introduced the dogma that the dead could become vrikolakos if they died in excommunication, if they were buried without proper funeral rites, or if they died a violent death. In addition, two more conditions appeared: it could be either a stillborn child, or one who was born on one of the great church holidays.
Thus, the early Greek view of Vricolakos as one who died under the curse of the family or in great sin expanded. The Christianization of the Slavic and Balkan peoples began actively at the end of the first Christian millennium and achieved impressive results in the 1st-12th centuries. When the Eastern Orthodox Church began to dominate in Russia, Romania, Hungary and among the southern Slavs, the beliefs of these peoples passed to Greece and even more clearly changed the concept of the newly returned, transforming him into a true vampire.
The idea of a werewolf also took hold. The word "vrikolakos" itself has Slavic roots; it comes from the Old Slavonic name referring to wolf's skin. In Greece, it meant the resurrected body. Some Slavic peoples believed that a werewolf becomes a vampire after death. Lawson argued that this Slavic term originally referred to a werewolf, but gradually began to be used to refer to a newly returned, or vampire.
In addition to the definition, the Greeks also adopted the Slavic point of view about the high evil nature of the vampire. The ancient Greek newly returned was inherently not dangerous - he returned in order to complete unfinished family affairs. He sometimes performed an act of revenge, but usually a goth, which was considered quite logical. He was not prone to indiscriminate violence.
Thus, the Greeks, for the first time from the Slavs, adopted the idea that some of the returnees were particularly ruthless. Gradually, the malevolent nature of the vampire began to dominate the Greek perception of vrikolakos. She was focused on his lust for blood and manifested in a violent disposition. The Slavic vampire also usually returned to bring violence to those closest to him. A popular form of cursing the enemy was the phrase: "So that the earth does not accept you" or "So that the earth rejects you." As a result, the cursed face was expected to return in the form of a vampire and bring devastation to his loved ones.
Calicantazaros. This is a different type of vampire that existed in Greece, Calicantazaros was a special vampire. It was described in detail by Leo Allatius in his 1645 treatise De Graecorum hodie quoriindam. Calicanthazaros was related to the extreme holiness attributed to Christian holy days at Christmas time. Children born during the week between Christmas' and the New Year (or the Epiphany of the Twelfth Night - in the evening, when the Three Wise Men arrived and Bethlehem to present gifts to the Christ Child) are considered unlucky. They were described as destroyers of festivities and believed that after death they would become vampires.
Calicanthazaros was notable among vampires in that its activities were limited to the day of Christmas and the week or 12 days after it. For the remainder of the year, he traveled in some kind of humane underworld. He could be distinguished by some manic behavior or long claws. He grabbed the people with his claws and tore them to pieces. Reports of Calicanthazaros in terms of his appearance varied widely.
Calicantazaros influenced daily life. Like every person born during the forbidden period, they looked at him with a grain of hostility. Parents feared that such children would develop vampiric fantasies as they grew up and would harm their siblings.
Modern literary vampire. Thus, the Greek concept of the vampire was developed, which was still alive at the time when British, French and German writers began to master the topic of the vampire in poetry, stories and stage productions. As vampiric literature began to develop, early writers established a connection between Greece and the vampire. Goethe, for example, made Greece the setting for his poem, The Corinthian Bride. Then John Keats turned to ancient Greek sources, working on the poem Lamia (The Witch, 1819). And John Polidori transferred much of what is happening in "Vampire" (1819) to Greece.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, many observers confirmed that the belief in Vrikolakos is still alive in rural Greece. In 1835, William Martin Leek, in his book Travels in Northern Greece, transmitted several records of the handling of bodies believed to be Vricolakos. Even in the 1960s, H. F. Abbott, Richard Bloom, Eva Bloom, and others had no problem collecting testimonies from Greeks who had encounters with Vricolakos.
Lawson mentioned, and Abbott and the Bloom couple confirmed, that there are many stories among the Greeks in which animals, such as cats, who jumped over the body between death and burial, were called the cause of the vrikolakos. Abbott told the story of the body of the suspect Vrikolakos, which was scalded with boiling water rather than burned.
Greece is one of the oldest centers of vampire knowledge. The concept of a vampire, having gone through a complex process of development, is still of great importance today, continuing to be a source of understanding of the popularity of the vampire myth. In addition, Greece has made significant contributions to the evolving image of the modern vampire in fiction.