In popular beliefs, ghouls are considered demonic creatures, evil and harmful spirits who, like vampires, suck blood from people and animals. They were identified with the dead, coming out of the graves at night, watching over and killing people and livestock. The word "ghoul" itself has a common root with concepts such as "shove", "pressure", as well as "feather" and "soar", which meant within the meaning of "rise", "walk", "fly", etc. In other words, a ghoul - "rising up", that is, rising from the grave. The word is also closely related to the name of the bat - bat.
However, there are other theories. In particular, the famous Russian linguist and mythologist Elena Levkievskaya writes: “Some believe that the word“ghoul”means“bloated”(from the blood of victims), others believe that the ancient form of this word means“unburnt”,“not devoted to the fire”- from the common Indo-European tradition of cremating the deceased. " There are comparisons of a ghoul with a soaring spirit, as a state of mind after the death of the body. Hence the belief that it is by the wind that one can send diseases, pestilence, crop failures, droughts from the grave with the help of the dead or the earth from the grave and thereby harm people. The well-known Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko, in his ethnographic article "The Burning of Ghouls in Naguevichi", describes how in the 1830s, living people were dragged through the fire in his homeland, suspecting that they were ghouls.
It was believed that people who died unnaturally became ghouls - drunken drunks, suicides, rapists, victims of curses, as well as sorcerers. The earth does not accept such dead people, and therefore they are forced to wander around the world, causing harm to the living. A ghoul can be called an evil and hostile person or an "unclean" deceased.
The ghoul rises from the grave at night and eats people or sucks their blood. The worst thing is that a person who died in this way becomes a ghoul himself. The next night after his untimely death, the unfortunate man gets to his feet and begins to search for living blood and meat. In addition, he also attacks livestock, damaging the farm. Mentions of this are found in ancient Russian sources starting from the XIV century, but they only report about the sacrifices ("demands") that the pagans made to this evil.
This belief was strongest in Ukraine: local residents also believed in living ghouls - those whose souls could temporarily leave their bodies and harm people. Such people hide the soul under a stone and, while it is there, they cannot die. They also believed that a living ghoul carries a dead man on his shoulders, because he cannot walk on the ground on his own, which means that he is not dangerous without a living one.
Nothing can stop him: not the walls of the crypt, not the shots, not the prayers of the clergy. The revived dead man is indestructible, he achieves the goal with wild stubbornness, and instantly kills the victim in his hands and begins to devour. If he lacks the insides, then the devoured pieces of meat fall out. This does not bother the ghoul, because hunger sits in his soul, which has already gone to hell and from there controls its body.
Outwardly, ghouls are practically no different from humans, the only sign by which they can be identified is a double row of sharp teeth, because of which the mouth resembles a shark's mouth. Other recognizable features are bright blue or red eyes with lights and blackened skin on the hands, similar to frostbite, regardless of cause of death. The rest of the skin remains very pale to whiteness. In other beliefs, the ghoul was presented as quite strong physically and incredibly greedy. These creatures were divided into those born from mothers-witches and "made" (taught).
According to legend, there is a special kind of ghouls on the right side of the Dnieper. This is the name for children with a big head, long arms and legs, in a word, suffering from a special disease. Such monsters "without bones" are called administrator (in Great Russian exchange or sedun), because they are thrown to people by evil spirits instead of stolen human babies.
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According to the widespread belief of Ukrainians, dead ghouls rest in their graves during the day, as if alive, with a red or, more precisely, a bloody face. At night they get up from their coffins and wander around the world. At the same time, they fly through the air or climb the grave crosses, make noise, frighten and drive away travelers. However, they are more terrible in that, entering houses, they rush at sleepy people, especially at babies. Their walking continues until the roosters crow. Plague and other epidemic diseases, as well as drought, crop failures and other social disasters, are also attributed to ghouls and ghouls.
It is not difficult to imagine a moonless dark night enveloping the churchyard in gloomy blackness and hiding the last refuge of sinful human bodies from human eyes. The burial ground, dried up over a long summer day, is gradually saturated with night moisture, becomes pliable and soft. The air is fresh, and the coolness of the night brings a blessed state of relief and rest to all living things, tired of the exhausting heat of the day. But further … The grave ground begins to stir, and a human hand protrudes to the surface. But not at all alive and flexible, but clumsy, covered with cadaverous spots. She tosses and turns in the air, shaking off the soil with unsteady fingers, making her way further.
A second hand appears and the work is accelerated. Finally, the head, shoulders, body are shown from the grave. The dead man gradually pulls the body to the surface and eventually slowly rises to his feet. His empty eye sockets look indifferently into the darkness of the night, it seems that he does not see anything at all. But this is a misconception. An alien from the world of the dead takes one step, another. Then he begins to move confidently between the crosses. So he reaches the edge of the cemetery, freezes for a moment, and then only in a known way finds the right direction and finds himself on a country road.
The further path of the creature lies in the direction of the village, where people live. There is living flesh, thick blood, tender human flesh. An irresistible desire forces you to speed up your step, but you cannot lose caution: there are many dogs in the village that can easily smell evil spirits and raise a wild howl. A guest from the other world makes his way through backyards, vegetable gardens. He approaches the extreme hut and looks out the window. Through the half-open sash he smells living flesh, which drives you crazy and makes you lose your guard. Desire spills over the edge and, obeying it, the revived dead man opens the window and gets inside the house.
They say that the living dead possess the rudiments of intelligence. But it is only enough to unite in flocks, to make the activity purposeful, organized. These servants of the devil are not alien to the sense of self-preservation and mutual assistance. If one of them gets into trouble, then the rest immediately rush to his aid. Their main goal is to create their own kind, so when attacking they show enviable tenacity. If someone naively thinks that they can escape behind a locked door, then a bitter disappointment awaits him: such obstacles are not terrible for the dead.
Even a steel structure cannot guarantee complete safety: the ghoul has tremendous strength. He will crush and twist the metal, rip such a door from its hinges and burst into the shelter where the man is hiding. What can we say about village huts! Here for the devil's offspring full expanse. In one night, a huge village can lose all its inhabitants. But the ghoul is active only from midnight to the third roosters. The rest of the time he is weak and defenseless. Therefore, on the eve of dawn, the creature stops its terrible activities and returns to the grave until the next night.
Most often, the ghoul appears in the guise of a specific deceased, he is dressed in the same clothes in which he was buried. It can be recognized by the presence of a tail, and according to some beliefs, by a growth under the knee, hiding the hole through which the soul flies out. From the grave, ghouls can come out not only in human form, but also in the form of a cat or a bat.
In some places, there are beliefs that the dead still feed mainly on large animals, but sometimes they do not disdain people either. Having attacked the victim, the ghoul drinks all the blood, after which he eats the flesh. Moreover, if the monster leaves its victim bloodless, but not eaten, then it will also turn into a ghoul. Sometimes creatures remember who they were during life and retain a piece of mind, but most often their memories of life are limited to the moment of death, especially if it was violent. The ghoul will never forget the one who killed his former personality, and will look for the killer until he finally dies or avenges his death.
The enemies of ghouls are many wild animals, so ghouls often clash with wolves and bears, who are infuriated by the smell of the grave. Uncleanness is inferior to the beast in agility, distinguished by a slow reaction and sluggishness, but it possesses such physical strength and speed that it can decapitate an enemy with its bare hands. She is capable of lifting a huge weight, punching through log walls with a blow of her hand, and it is impossible to catch a running ghoul even on a horse. Another distinctive feature is their amazing vitality: they practically do not feel pain and have complete immunity to stabbing and cutting blows.
These creatures do not rot, or at least decay extremely slowly. Cadaverous worms do not live in their bodies; scavengers in the forest do not eat them. Dogs and horses are very afraid of ghouls - even when they are not active, they cannot be led to the ghoul in any way. Often, the severed limbs of ghouls continue to live an independent life.
Who, according to the Slavs, could become a ghoul and what are the reasons for such a transformation? One of them is premature death (that is, the life force of a person was not fully realized) or unnatural: suicide, death from wounds, during epidemics, death without confession or absolution. The likelihood that the deceased can become a ghoul is high if the person was previously a lecher, a murderer, a miser, or just evil and greedy. This cup of evil witches and sorcerers who sold their souls to the devil will not pass. Actually, the East Slavic area (especially for the North of Russia) is characterized by just such an idea of the origin of the ghoul, which was here called the heretic.
The circumstances of birth could have played a role: the South Slavs believed that some were destined to "rise" after death. This was attributed to people who were conceived in the "evil" moment (only no one knew when it came, on fasting or on a holiday). Another reason for the appearance of a ghoul can be the wrong behavior of people between the moment of death and the burial of a person.
Methods of countering these monsters are traditional and well-known. First of all, there are "soft" methods that are used in relation to all the dead. It is believed that moonlight, as a powerful source of energy, can resurrect the deceased, and also attract a ghoul, therefore, until the very burial, in no case should the deceased be left unattended and under the light of the moon: you should curtain the windows and not extinguish the light in the house. To prevent the soul of the deceased from hiding in the mirror and resurrecting it, the mirrors are also covered with an opaque fabric. It is impossible to transfer objects over the body of the deceased, and even more so to drop anything on him; it is necessary to ensure that no animal (especially a black cat) jump over the body and a bird does not fly over. Also, one should not allow rain to drip on the deceased, and the people who carry it to the cemetery,you can't turn around. In addition, it is recommended to avoid longing for the past (especially for mothers and wives) and to remember the due days. Tough measures are applied to the deceased who, as fellow villagers believe, can "rise": they pierce the skin with a needle, cut the corpse into several parts, stick sharp objects into the heels, scatter poppies or coals over the grave.
There are also punitive measures - this is when the ghoul has already made itself felt. And not necessarily by bloodsucking: these creatures, as they said, could send pestilence (equally to people and cattle), could hail crops or, conversely, destroy the fields with drought. In such cases, as Maxim the Greek wrote in the 15th-16th centuries, "the bodies of those drowned or killed and defeated are not suitable for burial, but after removing them in the field, we take them away with a stake."
In other words, it was necessary to use proven means - a stake (for the eastern Slavs aspen, for the southern - thorns), fire and holy water. Dismemberment also helped: as stated in the prescription, “the grave should be dug, the head of the ghoul should be cut off (just watch that the ghoul juice does not splash on people), and if it turns into reptiles, then suppress those reptiles without shutting down, so that from a particle of your little ghoul not reborn in full force. Then put the ghoul face down, and pierce the body with a stake. Better yet, burn it to dust and scatter it."
Such deceased were usually buried outside the cemetery and away from their homes. Since the grave was considered a dangerous and unclean place, it had to be bypassed, and if you had to pass by, you had to throw something at it: a chip, stick, stone or just a handful of earth. In order for the deceased, who “did not live up to his life,” not to turn into a dangerous evil, his knee tendons were cut off so that he could not walk. Sometimes coals were sprinkled on the grave of the alleged bloodsucker or a pot of burning coals was placed.
Sometimes the dead, suspected of vampirism, were dug out of the grave, sometimes whipped with an aspen whip and then burned on aspen brushwood. Later, under the influence of Western mythology, a silver dagger or silver bullets began to be considered an equally reliable weapon. Sprinkling wild poppy or millet over the grave is considered an effective remedy; you can also sow the poppy during the funeral from home to the cemetery - the deceased will not be able to return until he has collected all the grains.
There was also another tradition - the Slavic spring-summer holiday called Semik. Among the Eastern Slavs, it was considered a special day of commemoration of the "pledged" dead. On this day, all untimely deceased relatives were certainly remembered: unbaptized children, girls who died before marriage, etc. In addition, those who died not by their own death and therefore remained unburied were buried in Semik. For them, a common grave was dug and buried with a prayer service and a funeral service. It was believed that otherwise the "pawned" dead could take revenge on the living, sending them various disasters: drought, storm, thunderstorm or crop failure.
It is curious that some historical figures were considered ghouls. For example, the general convoy, Chernihiv Colonel Vasily Dunin-Borkovsky. Within a year after his death in 1702, 30 people went missing in the vicinity and about 20 died of "German death". It was then that they remembered that during his lifetime the general train was known as an alchemist and a sorcerer, and besides, he did not confess, did not receive communion before his death and did not order to invite a priest to his funeral. There were rumors that every night a carriage pulled by six black horses flies out of the grave and rushes to the Dunin family estate. There, the dead man bypasses his estate, terrifying the servants and households. Before the first roosters, he stops near an old well, points at it with his finger, and then disappears after the crowing of a cock. A procession was organized to calm the evil spirits,who met the ghost on the bridge over the Strizhen river. In the morning they opened the tomb: the colonel was lying in the sarcophagus as if alive, ruddy and with a smoking pipe. The body was pierced with an aspen stake and reburied. Later, this event was reflected on the wall of the Trinity Cathedral in Chernigov.
Pernatiev Yuri Sergeevich. Brownies, mermaids and other mysterious creatures