Imagine an isolated, remote little village in Eastern Europe, in which only a few peasants live with their families, a miller, a blacksmith, a couple of merchants, and perhaps a priest.
From time to time, it happens that a soldier passes or passes through this village. And in the surrounding forest, perhaps an old witch, a wise sorceress-witch or a hermit lives. And everyone knows what they are doing, but they are little concerned with it, until suddenly, in a completely inexplicable way, people begin to die.
And very often, instead of suspecting any disease (for example, the plague, which was popular in those ancient years), people begin to recall the ancient tales of vampires killing people.
“ Vampire's Grave ” In Bulgaria. In it, scientists discovered a human skeleton with a metal plow share sticking out between the ribs. And his left leg below the knee was found away from other parts of the skeleton.
The first step towards eliminating an alleged vampire is identifying the blood-sucking criminal. There were even special vampire hunters with "supernatural powers to resist them." According to some beliefs, people born on Saturday could also distinguish vampires. And besides, of course, there were always guesses and assumptions about who in the village could be a vampire.
Wasn't some strange guy buried before the Pomor started? Did something strange happen at someone's funeral? Sometimes people remember or pay attention to the most insignificant little things, and some of them can tell who, in fact, cannot rest in their grave.
To make sure that their guesses are correct, villagers can lead a white horse around the churchyard. If he refuses to step over someone's grave, then the dead man lying in it is a vampire. And the only question is how to deal with it.
Someone will ask the witch. Another will go to the priest for advice. If at that moment a soldier is on leave in the village, the peasants can turn to him for help. The witch will scatter hawthorn branches, a little millet, a little garlic, rearrange furniture or plant a sunflower near the door. The priest will read prayers, sprinkle holy water around the grave. The soldier will stick his sword into the grave and spend the night guarding the churchyard.
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Why Garlic?
One of the reasons why people thought that garlic scared away vampires lay in the fact that bloodsuckers in their minds were associated with the disease-causing, according to some people, the smell of death, or with supernatural diseases, the carriers of which many believed vampires. Since the smell of garlic drowned out the terrible smell of death (decay) associated with vampires, people thought it had power over the vampires themselves.
In folk legends or tales of vampires, a bloodsucker is usually identified and destroyed by one of the villagers or soldiers, then calmly and happily living out his day. A soldier can secretly steal the lid of a vampire's coffin and not give it to him until dawn, when the rays of the rising sun bring death to the bloodsucker. Or the vampire is harassed through a series of incredible yet powerful magical rituals.
The skeleton of a polish 'vampire' with a hole in the vertebra. Sometimes during funerals, vampires were nailed to the ground to keep them from getting out of the grave.
In fairy tales and legends, the victims of vampires are sometimes revived by pouring blood back into the same wound from which the vampire sucked it, or by pouring blood on their remains. Or they are carried out of the house in coffins and carried along underground passages - the murdered sprout flowers to the surface of the earth, which then turn into real people.
Sometimes a wise hermit tells the villagers where they can find a lizard with a magic herb in its mouth, capable of reviving people who died due to bloodsuckers. Smoke from a piece of vampire shroud burned on hot coals can revive their victims.
But a fairy tale is one thing, and quite another if a vampire is the result of superstition. Then people are much more anxious. They hope that the vampire hunter will kill the bloodsucker or be eaten by the wolf. But how much is it possible?
Fairy tales are fairy tales, especially since they always have a happy ending, but real life can make people tormented by doubts. Often people themselves multiply their daily fears and fears, being at the mercy of superstitions, including superstitions about vampires.
Many begin to think that they are the next to die. They have auditory and visual hallucinations, and they feel worse and worse. And then they resort to more aggressive actions. They dig up vampires.
A skeleton with a severed head at its feet in an ancient “ vampire graveyard ” in the Polish city of Gliwice
Vampire Massacre
Having dug up the grave of the alleged vampire, villagers are often amazed to find the body is not decomposing and pink (for recently buried it is quite normal). They are even more shocked when they see him bloodshot (decomposition that has begun). It happens that a vampire lies face down in a coffin, or there are other signs of his movement. On the shroud of a vampire there may be various traces of his "vital activity".
The methods of reprisals against vampires of villagers in such cases differ in the degree of their cruelty. It happens that they try to prevent him from leaving the coffin by nailing the shroud to its bottom, and sometimes they can chop both the body and the coffin of the vampire into pieces.
It happens that they put various objects in the coffin that prevent the vampires from "roaming around" - nails, coins, flaxseed or fishing nets. If the body is found face down, it is turned over. And if he was lying as it should, he may, on the contrary, be turned face down.
The skeleton of a polish 'vampire' with a brick in your mouth
More drastic methods include severing the tendons in the legs of the corpse or cutting off the head - usually with a shovel. After that, the mouth of the dead is often stuffed with garlic, which is also placed on the feet of the vampire. And, of course, the good old way is to pierce the bloodsucker's heart with a stake.
In traditional legends, hawthorn is preferred. Sometimes a vampire's heart is removed and burned, and sometimes all of its other insides are also removed. Or they can burn the entire body of a vampire, and feed the ashes / ashes / to living relatives in order to protect them from evil or not prevent them from becoming vampires themselves.
You might get the impression that the vampire - staked, veined, gutted, decapitated, and cremated - can be forgotten forever. No matter how it is! In one story about a vampire, it is said that birds, snakes and fly larvae can be in the belly of a bloodsucker.
And when a vampire is burned, the villagers must keep an eye on them, so as not to lose sight of any of these creatures - after all, a vampire can move into one of them and, breaking free under her guise, avoid reprisals!
After the massacre of a vampire, his grave is often destroyed from the face of the earth. Or the bones left after cremation are sprinkled with wine and burned again. All these actions can sometimes even be directed by a priest.
Burial of the 'vampire' with a severed head from Tsedyn (Poland) (artist's reconstruction)
Vampires from infancy
Some Slavs who moved to Germany had a belief about a creature called doppelsuger (double bloodsucker).
If the child is first taken away and then returned to the mother's breast, he, even when he becomes an adult, will never be satisfied, but will look for a breast to receive nourishment, even being already in the grave, after his death, trying to suck on his own breast!
According to popular belief, by doing so, he weakens all his living relatives.
To prevent this, either put a coin in the mouth of the dead man, or between his mouth and chest - some kind of barrier. If these precautions have not been observed, the body must be dug up and its head cut off!
Based on materials from Jay Stevenson's book "Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Ghosts"
