51

C h a p t e r 2

THE VAMPIRE: GENERAL FEATURES

We have alluded to both the diversity and the complexity of

vampire folklore in the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaro-

Macedonia. We have also mentioned the importance to our

broader purpose of maintaining a distinction between the

literary and the folkloric vampires. Rather than assume that

these statements require no further elaboration, we shall

take this opportunity to see if we can develop a convenient

method for differentiating between the folkloric and pop-

cultural vampire (the difference running parallel to the

difference between folklore and mass media in general).

Also, since the bulk of the collected folkloric material

concerning the vampire is inaccessible to the reader who has

no Bulgarian, we shall summarize here the most salient

features of the folklore encountered in archives and

published sources from the last century or so. If nothing

else, such a presentation should acquaint the reader with

the scope of the problem, while providing something of a

52

contour around the concept of the vampire.

Dracula, Orientalism and the Popular Vampire

Outside the Balkans, mention of the vampire conjures up for

most people a vision that is very far removed from what a

villager in Bulgaria before (or even after) World War II

would have imagined. As we mentioned in the previous

chapter, the Slavic word vampir crossed the Serbian border,

out of the Balkans proper and into general parlance in

Europe around 1732, following an “epidemic” of vampirism in

Serbia that piqued the interest of people in the Austro-

Hungarian empire. Austro-Hungary was then struggling against

the further incursion into Europe of the Ottoman Turkish

empire.1

From the moment the vampire entered the consciousness of the

Western Europeans, it began to change its appearance,

adapting quickly to the purposes of a more literate, urban

culture:

1 The long occupation of most of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks, we may conjecture,

is at least partly responsible for the present cultural split between Western and Eastern Europe – perhaps more significant even than the schism between Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Thus from the very outset, the vampire was associated in Western Europe, consciously or otherwise, with the threat of invasion and occupation – the theme that pervades Dracula and much other vampire literature.

53

It is no surprise, however, that the vampire should come slouching into the literature of the late eighteenth century… Much of the macabre eighteenth century literature is absolutely dreadful in both the modern and eighteenth-century sense… But in retrospect it did the English Romantics a favor, for it made folk superstitions a legitimate subject of literature; it gave them a context. …The immediate predecessors of the English literary vampire were German. In the early eighteenth century as a result of the “vampire epidemics” in the Balkans, the vampire had become a serious subject of study on the Continent. Treatise after treatise was written, not necessarily affirming the vampire’s existence (that was already generally accepted), but rather explaining the vampire as a personification of demonic energies on earth.2

The history of the vampire as a literary theme has been

treated, understandably, much more extensively by Western

authors than has the history of the folkloric vampire. It is

not to our advantage to recapitulate that history here.

Rather, we shall simply observe that a profound difference

in the characteristics that were eventually ascribed to the

vampire in Western Europe (and the Americas) can be traced

to a particular time and set of historical circumstances. As

the vampire crossed a multi-layered cultural boundary, its

new identity enabled it to take on a new life. Yet, however

2 Twitchell, The Living Dead, 32-3.

54

much the European vampire tried to shed its resemblance to

the Balkan demon of the same name, it could never completely

obliterate the traces of its ancestry. Indeed, we might

speculate that the Western attitude towards Eastern Europe

enabled the vampire to survive. Consider the following

passages from the novel Dracula, entries in Jonathan

Harker’s journal:

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most Western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.3 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?4

In both of these passages from Stoker’s novel, now over a

hundred years old, there is an attitude that Eastern Europe

(geographically bounded, from the Continental perspective,

by the Danube) is essentially different (from Western

Europe, or more precisely, from the rational center of the

world, England). The orientalism implicit in Harker’s mental

3 Wolf, Essential Dracula, 1. 4 Ibid., 5.

55

game concerning train schedules in China pervades the novel,

and in fact, much of the imagery of the vampire that was

carried over into films several decades later. Stoker had

inherited a Romantic view of the Central Asian tribes that

had invaded Europe through the Middle Ages:

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the south, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the west, and Szekelys in the east and north. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting.5

Stoker, drawing upon both the Romantic and Gothic

traditions, as well as upon reports of folklore from the

Carpathians,6 gave shape to the less well-defined vampires

haunting European literature from the earlier part of the

century by attaching to the vampire a sense of ancient

entitlement. Count Dracula, after all, is supposedly

5 Ibid., 4. 6 Stoker consulted the work of a British traveller of the late eighteenth century, Emily

Gerard, author of a travelogue, Land Beyond the Forest. He also obtained details of Balkan and Carpathian folklore from his friend, the Hungarian adventurer Arminius Vambery.

56

descended from the nobility that arose in the wake of the

Magyar invasions of Central Europe. This notion of the

vampire as not merely old, but of foreign, warmongering,

noble, castled lineage, is perhaps the most significant

break with the characterization most commonly encountered in

folklore. In contrast to the Gothic vampire, the Bulgarian

one is generally anything but noble: by class, he is just

another villager, though often associated with a marked

occupation or avocation. He is not foreign, though he

sometimes hails from a neighboring village. Unlike Count

Dracula, the folkloric vampire is neither rich nor extremely

well educated nor worldly.

We mention this significant difference because, while the

literary and the folkloric vampires are both outsiders, in

the case of the literary vampire, the status of outsider is

prior and fundamental,7 whereas with the folkloric vampire,

that status is conferred under any of several conditions,

which we shall presently discuss.

7 In the terms of the novel, Count Dracula is presumed to be a vampire in his own land

before leaving for England. Nevertheless, the terror around which the novel is centered is located in Dracula’s strangeness and inscrutability.

57

The basis of the popular vampire from which later literary

and filmic versions derive is, of course, Dracula. It is

from Dracula, for example, that we learn that vampires have

sharp teeth, turn into bats, are immortal,8 and cause other

people to become vampires by biting them and drinking their

blood.9 None of these characteristics of the vampire are to

be found in the folklore. (Drinking blood is a common

vampire behavior, but the notion that the victims themselves

subsequently become vampires is a literary addition.)

There are, however, a number of features of Dracula and his

victims, and of subsequent Dracula-type vampires, that do

have parallels, not always exact, in Bulgarian folklore. The

fear of daybreak, brought out so strongly in F.W. Murnau’s

1922 silent classic, Nosferatu, is often attributed directly

to folkloric vampires.10 In even very brief discussions of

vampires, informants will state quite unequivocally that the

8 “To die…to be really dead…that must be glorious.” This famous line is spoken by Bela

Lugosi in the 1931 film version of Dracula. 9 Because of the epistolary structure of the novel, all evidence for these supernatural

attributes and behaviors is purely circumstantial. The “frame” that is put around a set of events in order to lend credence to the hypothesis that Count Dracula is a vampire is provided by another outsider, a Central European overachiever named Van Helsing. Although the novel itself does not supply any “hard evidence,” quite clearly Stoker intended for the reader to not question the quasi-folkloric attributes of the vampire that the Count possesses.

10 Georgieva, Mitologija, 155; Popov, dissertation, 39.

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vampire is nocturnal, wandering about during the ‘bad time’

[lo¹o vreme] between midnight and the first cockcrow,

sometimes appearing in dreams. Fear of crosses or ikons is

also a phobia that the literary and Bulgarian vampires

share. In terms of killing vampires, the most common method

in popular fiction and film is driving a stake through the

heart. In Bulgarian lore, it is more likely to be the

abdomen or even the head that must be pierced, and this

technique is only one of several that may be used to rid a

village of a vampire. Aversion to garlic is quite often

mentioned in the folklore, although the more common plant

for warding off the vampire is the black hawthorn – rarely

mentioned in the Dracula tradition.

An exhaustive comparison of narrative features belonging to

the literary and folkloric vampire traditions lies beyond

our scope. The number of fictional books, stories, poems and

films about vampires since the publication of Dracula, each

with its own version of the basic vampire plot, is in the

thousands. Still, there seem to be certain essential

markers, features without which a character cannot be

considered a vampire, or a given creative work cannot be

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included in the vampire genre. These features on the one

hand seem to reduce to a handful of abstractions, yet on the

other, together they form a category against which

subsequent authors (e.g. Anne Rice; see chapter one, above)

may intentionally rebel by excluding them. Folklore tends

not to have that motive: intentional deconstruction of a

traditional element of narrative for the sake of shock or

innovation belongs to the realm of authorship, not of

folklore.

The problem of defining the vampire

Before attempting to outline the most prominent features of

the Bulgarian folkloric vampire, we ought to try to see if

the collection of features of the literary vampire leads us

to any sort of definition that will enable us to either

differentiate it from, or unify it with, the folkloric

vampire. Most definitions of the vampire that have been

proposed suffer from one of two defects: they are either too

elaborate and fanciful, thereby including all kinds of

beings whose purported connection to the vampire in fact

obscures the boundary of the object of study, or else they

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are too vague or abstract,11 leading to the same result:

there is no clear contour for discrimination. Less

frequently, a definition will be too narrow, rejecting from

consideration material that perhaps fits into a workable

scheme for discussing vampire folklore.

As an example of the former, we find the following florid

entry for vampire in Bunson’s Vampire: The Encyclopedia:

One of the most unique beings in the world, surviving from the darkest times in history, existing for millennia among mortals, feeding on them and using them to create more of its own kind in order to ensure the continuation of the species, perhaps in preparation for a final struggle between the living and the undead.

A more level-headed definition, also in a popular

encyclopedia of vampiralia, Gordon Melton’s The Vampire

Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, begins thus:

A vampire was a peculiar kind of revenant, a dead person who had returned to life and continued a form of existence through drinking the blood of the living. In popular thought, the vampire was considered to be “undead,” having completed earthly life but still being tied to that life and not yet welcomed by the realm of the dead. The vampire is

11 Thus, Perkowski’s definition of the “general vampire” as “a being which derives

sustenance from a victim, who is weakened by the experience” (The Darkling, 54) would include virtually all parasites that are not symbiotic, as well as, perhaps, carnivores.

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distinguished from the ghost, a disembodied spirit, in that the vampire inhabited in [sic] an animated body.

In the case of the former “definition,” Bunson provides a

fantastic description that is essentially useless for any

intention to arrive at a clear understanding of the common

features of the vampire. Though Melton’s definition appears

to be more earnest, it raises so many questions as to be as

useless as Bunson’s: how is the vampire tied to life? What

is this “realm of the dead,” and by whom/what is it

occupied? Furthermore, it makes two general claims about the

vampire, assuming them to be universal, but which in fact

are incorrect if applied to the Bulgarian folkloric vampire:

blood drinking is not always mentioned in the folklore,

while vampires are frequently unseen.

The definitions of vampires in virtually all the popular

literature follow this pattern of romantic hyperbole or

complete ignorance of the folkloric data. The sensationalism

that seems to pervade popular discussion of the vampire is

actually completely lacking in the Balkans,12 where this

12 I perhaps exaggerate. The tabloid press exists in Bulgaria as elsewhere in Europe, and is

not above using the vampire to create sensational headlines. It is likely, however, that this

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mythological being is a more natural part of the cultural

landscape. This difference in attitude raises yet another

question concerning the place of the vampire in the cultural

systems of Eastern versus Western Europe. This problem

deserves further study, but we will suggest again that, in

general, the Western, literary vampire involves an eroticism

that is missing in Balkan folklore. The romantic desire for

immortality and the ability to transcend human law

characterizes the contemporary American fascination with the

vampire. The folkloric vampire, on the other hand, has no

redeeming or attractive features to speak of. We may thus

provisionally rely upon the presence of eroticism or

attractiveness in connection with a vampire as an index of

its ‘literariness’.

Such a functional definition of the vampire, however, is not

only difficult to justify, it also places the interpretation

of the vampire ahead of any agreement upon what a vampire

is. The entry of the vampire into the domain of mass media

and pop culture has led to a situation where the boundaries

of the category are intentionally stretched, and the essence

sensational aspect of the vampire is a cultural borrowing, miming the (feigned) alarm that vampires provoke in Western societies.

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of the vampire theme has become increasingly abstract.

Modern vampires may exist on the Internet, or come from

outer space; they may consume energy or fat rather than

blood; they may be visible to others, or merely to some.

There is, finally, no stable set of external characteristics

that could be used to define the popular vampire for someone

who was not already familiar with the very notion.

As the concept is creatively stretched by writers,

filmmakers, even storytellers, its lack of a coherent form

forces a reliance upon some intuition of its core, such that

the genre is only defined by a tacit understanding that is,

in the Western world, reflected in the consumer marketplace

(genre having been commodified). Like pornography before the

Supreme Court, the vampire is recognized when seen but

escapes a workable definition.

A definition of the modern vampire would ultimately have to

rely in part upon research into the forms that emulation and

imitation take. What, in other words, would someone who

wanted to become or imitate a vampire do? What features of

the vampire genre does a writer or filmmaker have to

include? Conversely, is there any feature or behavior that

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would mark someone or something as not belonging to the

category? The answers to these questions will have to await

further research,13 and they do not, in any case, directly

impinge upon our investigation. In general, however, the

essential features of the popular vampire14 seem to involve

(a) an erotic component, symbolized by drinking of blood as

a form of intimacy that violates taboos, (b) return from the

dead by a living being,15 (c) vulnerability masked as

immortality,16 and (d) the ability to change shape, or

possession of supernatural powers. The modern vampire is

also frequently linked to a dualistic conception of evil (if

that is not a tautology), although its power to overstep

social boundaries is a source of attraction. The individual

13 As of this writing, this subject is being investigated by Tony Thorne (London), whose

results have yet to be published. 14 This admittedly loose analysis is based upon observation of a sufficiently large corpus of

text exchanged between subscribers to an online listserv (Vampyres@the-institute.net) devoted to discussion of any and all topics related to the notion of vampires. The conclusions drawn here remain impressionistic; the data have so far not been subjected to rigorous organization and analysis.

15 Even in Dracula, there is no indication that Count Dracula has died and come back to life. Rather, it is hinted that he has lived a long time: “I have had a long talk with the Count. I asked him a few questions on Transylvania history, and he warmed up to the subject wonderfully. In his speaking of things and people, and especially of battles, he spoke as if he had been present at them all.” (Wolf, Essential Dracula, 38.) He does sleep in a coffin, but nowhere does Stoker state that the Count returned from the dead. Thus we may not even count on reanimation as a feature of the vampire, if we include Dracula.

16 Immortality is a highly attractive feature of the vampire for many neo-cultists. However, in virtually all (online) discussions of the vampire’s supposed immortality, the question eventually arises of how one kills or disposes of the vampire. The implicit contradiction, that that which can be destroyed can also be immortal, seems to go largely unnoticed by these believers.

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or collective response to the presence of the vampire, or to

its deeds, relies upon the same symbolism that is evident in

much folklore: piercing with a stake, decapitation, and

incineration are all effective means of destroying the

vampire. Exposure to sunlight is also a common method. The

use of a silver bullet, which actually shows up in some

recently collected Bulgarian folklore,17 is now old-fashioned

(in American films, this was associated more with the

Wolfman, in movies of the Forties and Fifties) yet still is

considered a viable technique.

In the final analysis, the distinction we have made here,

following Perkowski and Twitchell, is in fact somewhat

arbitrary: the two domains of the popular (a term I find

often more convenient and inclusive than literary) and the

folkloric vampire are far from completely separated. The

popular vampire borrows heavily from folklore; contemporary

vampire writers scan ethnographic material from all sorts of

cultures to develop new modalities for the vampire theme.

Meanwhile, the enormous influence of Dracula and other works

has had undoubtable effects upon the folklore. While we may

17 AEIM No. 110-III-ii (Smoljan).

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never be able to completely disentangle the skein of

folkloric and literary narrative material about the vampire,

at least while vampire folklore continues to exist, we have

tried here to highlight how the modern, popular vampire in

the West grows out of, yet is sigificantly different from,

its folkloric antecedents.

The Bulgarian folkloric data

The folklore about the vampire that has been collected,

primarily by Balkan ethnographic researchers working in the

last hundred and twenty or so years, is available either in

published field reports, which have summarized or

highlighted the raw data, or else as archival materials. The

published references to the vampire on the one hand do not

capture all the linguistic details of transcribed interviews

with informants, but they also are not as repetitious.

Archived ethnographic materials are organized by region,

since field expeditions usually are made to specific areas.

Narrative material about the vampire, it must be stressed,

although extensive, does not particularly stand out. While

certain researchers (Popov, Miceva, Georgieva among

contemporaries) have a particular interest in demonology,

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the vampire is only a single member of a larger system, and

demonologija itself is only one aspect of the village world

view that is investigated during ethnographic expeditions.

Archival materials in the form of transcriptions of

interviews between ethnographer and informant are

characterized by their often fragmentary nature, containing

lapses of memory, inconsistencies, repetitions. Names for

the vampire are quite various, and some informants have no

problem equating one type of demon with another, without

providing a reason.18

Out of this mass of data, however, emerge narrative features

that recur with enough consistency to enable us to allocate

them to certain subcategories of vampire folklore. For the

sake of convenience, we shall use a slightly compressed

version of Perkowski’s outline analysis tool for arranging

the features of vampire folklore. However, this scheme was

designed to facilitate comparative analysis, and was not

intended for collapsing features from multiple narratives

within a particular category. Consequently, the links

between the various parameters (e.g. geographic location,

18 E.g. AIF No. 217: 168, 193, 315; AEIM No. 110-III-ii.

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name, activity pattern) will be obscured or conflated. This

methodological obstacle, however, does not interfere with

our preliminary goal, which is to provide an inventory of

the fundamental features of Bulgarian vampire folklore, from

which we should be able to demonstrate its ritual basis.

Etiology: How to become a vampire

Cats jumping

By any measure, the most common reason a dead person becomes

a vampire is that a cat jumped over the corpse before it was

buried.19 In the Smoljan region of the Rhodope mountains, for

example, as recently as 1987, a drakus (the local name for

the vampire, probably borrowed from nearby Greece) was said

to be caused by something jumping over a dead body.20 Though

the vampire disappears after forty days, or in some areas

after a year, he roams at night until the cock crows. Here,

the cause of the vampire is linked with a particular method

of prevention: to prevent someone from becoming a drakus, it

19 Vakarelski, Pogrebalni,164; Georgieva, Mitologija, 153; R. Popov, dissertation, 37; Miceva,

dissertation, 138; AIF No. 216: 65, 97, 137, 206, 286, ; AIF No. 217: 97, AEIM No. 313-III (Sakar-Xarmanlijskij 1996), R. Popov, coll.; AEIM No. 271-III (Dobriè & Provadija 1991), Magdalena Kuzmanova, coll.; AEIM No. 115-III (Kârdâ¾ali 1987), Valentina Vaseva, coll.; AEIM No. 116-III (Plovdiv 1987), Tanja Boneva, coll.; Marinov, ®iva starina, 41.

20 AEIM No. 110-III, No. 110-III-A (Smoljan 1987), Tanja Boneva, coll.

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is imperative to keep cats out of the house during the

wake.21

While the cat is the most frequently cited animal involved

in causing vampirization, other animals, especially dogs,

also produce this result,22 and it is sometimes believed that

the vampire then takes the form of the animal that jumped

over the corpse.23 Chickens flying over the body, and objects

handed over it,24 likewise yield a vampire. Finally, within

this pattern of some thing or animal interrupting the space

around the corpse, we also find that shadows (of people)

falling onto the corpse also portend vampirization.25

This last detail, when viewed alongside the notion that the

vampire takes the form of the animal that jumped over it, is

revealing: the vampire, as we shall see below, is often

21 Ibid. Similarly, AEIM No. 113-III (Blagoevgrad), where even a mouse can be the culprit;

No. 114-III (Kârd¾ali); AIF No. 284: 137; AIF No. 285: 166, 313; AIF No. 216: 233; Aleksandâr Martinov, “Narodnopisni materiali ot Graova,” SbNU XLIX (1958).

22 E.g. AIF No. 216: 63. 23 AEIM No. 110-III-ii; AEIM No. 111-III (Xaskovo 1987), Tanja Boneva, coll.; AEIM

No. 112-III (Pazard¾ik 1987), Tanja Boneva, coll.; AEIM No. 113-III; Georgieva, Mitologija,155. Interesting in this regard is the belief that when Turks are killed, they become wild boars [Bulgarian vâpâr], while Bulgarians become vampires [vampir]. AEIM 794-II; Miceva, dissertation, 116.

24 S.D. Bo¾ev, “Ot Demir-Xisarsko” (field report), SbNU IV (1891), 111; Jordan Zaxariev, “Kamenica” (field report), SbNU XL (1935), 260; AEIM No. 110-III-ii; AEIM No. 251-III (Love¹ko 1992), R. Popov, coll.; AIF No. 216: 239.

25 Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 68, 164; Georgieva, Mitologija, 153; Ireèek, “Stari pâte¹estvija, 118.

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described as a shadow.26 Nowhere is the equation made that

the vampire takes the form of a shadow only when the cause

of vampirization is a shadow falling on the corpse, but

there nevertheless is a formula relating the thing that

crosses over the body and the shape the vampire can acquire.

This formula is far from absolute: there are many additional

shapes that the vampire assumes that have nothing to do with

the set of animals and objects that cross over the corpse.

If we are to view this group of events – cats, dogs,

chickens, shadows, and transactions (handshakes, exchanges)

entering the space around the body – as a single cause of

vampirization, then we would like to discover what these

have in common, from a structural perspective.

Improper life; improper burial

Disposing of the dead body in a proper manner is of great

significance in Bulgarian spiritual culture, as we shall

witness in more detail in the following chapter. Anything

that disturbs the natural sequence of rites is associated

with, at the very least, unpredictable consequences for both

the deceased and those who survive him. In one sense, we may

26 Miceva, dissertation, 111; R. Popov, dissertation, 39; AEIM No. 116-III; AEIM No. 251-III.

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view the taboo against an animal jumping over the corpse as

a special case of this general concern, a form of heightened

attention to the possibility of an interrupted burial

process.

A cat jumping over a dead body can affect anyone. Therefore,

it is the most general cause of vampirization, which takes

place regardless of the status of the person who died. Other

disturbances in the funeral process are more directly linked

to how the deceased lived, or how he died. The most

significant lapse is the failure of the priest to read the

mass.27 This failure is usually not accidental, but rather a

result of some transgression on the part of the dead that

disallows a proper funeral (suicide, lack of baptism28). A

rite similar to singing the funeral mass is pouring

[prelivane] a wine mixture over the dead; failure to

complete this libation is also a cause for vampirization.29

Both of these Christian rites have pre-Christian

27 Georgieva, Mitologija, 153; Mad¾arov, “‘Poganoto’ (Pogani dni) vâv vjarvanijata i bita na

strand¾anskite sela,” Bâlgarski Folklor 4 (1982): 92; R. Popov, dissertation, 37; AIF No. 206: 361; AEIM No. 111-III; AEIM No. 115-III; AEIM No. 116-III.

28 R. Popov, dissertation, 35; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 85; Miceva, dissertation, 137; Martinov, “Ot Graova”, SbNU XLIX (1958), 201; AEIM No. 110-III-i; AEIM 111-III; AEIM 313-III.

29 Miceva, dissertation,137.

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antecedents, and Georgieva points out the link between

vampirization and the incorrect execution of a Christianized

rite:

Parallel to lamenting and with the same function are reading the funeral service [opjavane] over the dead and rebaptizing [prekrâstvane] by the priest, which are secondary phenomena. The imposition of Christian rituals involves a change in conception, a new interpretation of pagan ritual, that is, the dead person becomes a vampire if he is not buried according to Christian ritual. Those who have been anathematized and excommunicated from the Church will become vampires.30

Generally speaking, proper rites cannot be performed if a

person (a) has not been initiated into the Church

(baptized),31 (b) has led an evil life,32 or (c) has died by

violence or, especially, by his own hand. Related to these

circumstances are beliefs about dying either too early or

too late: those who die by violence or by accident (e.g.

lightning strike, drowning) somehow have failed to live out

the time alloted to them by the fates.33 Similar beliefs were

30 Georgieva, Mitologija, 154. 31 This belief is found in Serbia as well. Cf. Slobodan Zeèeviæ, Mitska bièa srpskix predanja.

(Beograd: Vuk Karad¾iæ, 1981), 123. 32 The claim that vampires were bad or evil people when alive is widespread: AIF No. 216:

67, 358; AEIM 793-II; AEIM 110-III-i, 110-III-ii; AEIM No. 112-III. 33 R. Popov, dissertation, 35, 43; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni,164.

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common among the Romans, and are thus clearly of pre-

Christian origin.34 People who were very old when they died –

that is, who lived past the time allotted to them – are

similarly dangerous after they die, thought in some regions

of Bulgaria to become vampires.35 Thus, not only the manner

of life and death can disturb the sense of the natural

order; even the age of the individual when he or she dies is

critical.

Time of birth

From the preceding, it would appear that in the most

abstract terms, a vampire is the end result of serious

disturbances in the process of death and burial. The manner

of life prior to death is a factor to the extent that it has

an effect upon the performance of funeral rites, and thus

upon the ability of the soul to depart from the body in a

proper way. Clearly, the possibility of vampirization

represents a moral sanction, but it transcends an individual

34 “In pagan antiquity a distinction was drawn between an end in conformity with nature

and one unexpectedly provoked by extraneous intervention, between an early death and Fatum. It was believed that the hour of death was determined at the time of birth.” Rush, Death and Burial, 24.

35 R. Popov, dissertation, 39; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 68, 163; Georgieva, Mitologija, 154. There is Russian testimony of the belief that very old people become vampires: A.I. Jacimirskij, Bibliografièeskij obzor apokrifov v ju¾noslavjanskoj i russkoj pismennosti (spiski pamjatnikov), I: Apokrify vetxozavetnye. (Petrograd: Otd. Russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti, Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk, 1921), 130.

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decision to choose evil over good. More is at stake than

simply controlling behavior: vampirization is not, in other

words, merely a punishment for an evil life. One may become

a vampire merely having one’s corpse jumped over by a

domestic animal, and vampires so created are no different in

principle from those who reflect a lifestyle outside the

law, or a style of death outside the Church.

Another general means of becoming a vampire is to be born

(or conceived) at the wrong time of year. Two calendrical

points figure heavily in vampire lore, namely the so-called

Unclean Days [Mrâsnite dni], the period between Christmas

Eve and Epiphany [bogojavlenie],36 and Saturday. We will

discuss the significance of the Unclean Days in chapter

four. People conceived or born during this twelve-day period

are destined to become vampires, or, more commonly, a type

of demon with a different name but quite similar

characteristics, the karakond¾ol.37 Since no Christian rites

may be performed during this time, when demons and evil

spirits roam, anyone who has the misfortune to die during

36 It is believed in some places that during the twelve days between Christmas and

Epiphany, Jesus had not been baptized, and therefore evil spirits are especially strong. The Unclean Days are also known as “Pagan Days.” Mad¾arov, “Poganoto,” 93.

37 R. Popov, dissertation, 39; AIF No. 216: 62, 63, 65, 68; Georgieva, Mitologija, 154.

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the Unclean Days will be buried, but without rites, until

after Epiphany. They may, but do not automatically, become

vampires.38

People who are born on Saturday, meanwhile, may become

either vampires or a special type of person with the ability

to detect vampires, a sâbotnik.39 Thus, we see that vampires

arise not simply from mode of life or death, but also birth.

The “etiologies” discussed above represent the basic

categories of vampires. It is not clear from the folklore

whether vampires arising from these various causes differ

from each other in significant ways, but it would appear

that there is no consistent relationship between cause of

vampirization and the characteristics of the vampire so

engendered. In addition to these frequently cited methods of

becoming a vampire, a number of other causes whose

distribution is not as wide are also cited by ethnographers.

These include: repeated breast-feeding; dying with a large

38 D. Marinov, ®iva starina, 41; 39 Bo¾ev, “Ot Demir-Xisarsko,” 111; N.S. Der¾avin, “Bolgarskie kolonii v Rossii

(tavrièeskaja, xersoskaja i bessarabskaja gubernii),” SbNU XXIX.(1914), 177; AIF No. 216: 65; AIF No. 216: 206; Vampires are also “reincarnated” on the Saturdays before Easter: K Telbizov and M. Vekova-Telbizova., “Tradicionen bit i kultura na banatskite bâlgari,” SbNU LI (1963). In some places, vampires are only visible on Saturday: AIF No. 216: 67.

76

bleeding wound;40 being buried with clothing made during the

Wolf Days;41 dying with open eyes; being buried without being

washed (with basil and water).42

None of these additional causes lie outside a general

pattern whereby the vampire results from some transgression.

Either a ritual has not been carried out or not carried out

properly, or taboos surrounding certain periods have been

violated, or, in the most general case, the obligation to

watch over the body has not been met. Such causes as dying

with open eyes or dying with open wounds can be viewed as

signifying disruptions in the period of one’s life, or dying

in an unnatural fashion. (Openings in general provide entry

and exit points for spiritual substance; see chap. 3, p. 135

below.) While there is certainly a moral aspect to the

notion of the vampire, it extends beyond a concern with

lawful or decent behavior, to include obedience to an entire

40 R. Popov, dissertation, 39; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 163. 41 The Wolf Days [vâlèite dni], in the area of Bulgaria known as Trakija (Thrace),

correspond to the Unclean Days. Other taboos connected with this period are still observed: one may not utter the name of the wolf, but instead must use euphemisms. Otherwise, the utterer will be reincarnated after death; meat may not be eaten during this time. The wolf ’s name is used in blessing sick and weak children, and magical charms are made from a dead wolf. (R. Popov, dissertation, 54). Children who are born from a mother who ate meat during pregnancey that was killed by a wolf also become vampires (Georgieva, Mitologija,154).

42 Georgieva, Mitologija, 153.

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range of taboos and conformance to natural laws as well as

social ones. As a result of transgression of these rules,

the vampire is said to be “rejected by the earth.”43

The external appearance of the vampire

Like the list of causes, the list of external features of

the vampire is also long. Vampires range in appearance from

being invisible to being virtually indistinguishable from

humans. They also occupy categorical positions in between

(assuming the human form to be at one end of a continuum44):

shadows, animals, or animated objects with some human or

animal characteristics.

Invisible vampires

In contemporary ethnographic data, the vampire is most

frequently unseen, recognizable only by sounds (knocking,

tapping, shrieking, lamenting)45. Popov divides conceptions

of the vampire into the categories (1) unseen and (2) seen

43 Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 166; AIF No. 241 (Xaskovski 1982); AEIM No. 110-III-ii; AEIM

No. 313-III. 44 Miceva, dissertation, 111ff. Miceva sees the increasing resemblance to a human as a

phased process, corresponding somewhat to ontogenetic maturation. 45 AIF No. 216: 65, 62 (tapping and shouting “like at a wedding”), 97, 203, 206; AEIM No.

110-III-i; AEIM No. 112-III; AEIM 793-II; Georgieva, Mitologija, 157; Miceva, dissertation, 102.

78

with (a) zoomorphic or (b) anthropomorphic features.46

Shadows, which fall closer to the invisible end of the

spectrum, may be ill-formed simulacra of humans or animals,

or else their form may not be specified.47 One curious image

of the vampire as formless is that of fire.48

Animals

We have already discussed the relationship between the

animal forms of the vampire and the domesticated animal that

jumped over the corpse. However, the vampire may take on the

attributes of other animals as well. Around Smoljan, a

vampire that takes the form of a goat is known as an

opaèina.49 Popov attests metamorphosis into a duck.50 While a

horse may jump over a grave and thus initiate vampirization,

only a karakond¾ol can take the form of a horse.51 Miceva,

discussing the classes of animals that these ‘shapeshifting’

demons can take, points out that, within a demon type

(vampire, karakond¾ol, talasâm), a demon can take the form

46 R. Popov, dissertation, 40ff. 47 Bo¾ev, “Ot Demir-Xisarsko,” 112. 48 AEIM No. 115-III; G. B. Angelov, “Ot Bitolsko,” SbNU XII (1895), 126. 49 AEIM No. 110-III-ii. 50 R. Popov, dissertation, 40. 51 Marinov, ®iva starina, 40.

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either of a domestic animal (dog, cat, horse, sheep, goat,

ox, buffalo) or (less often) of a wild animal (deer, wolf,

bear, snake). Bird transformations (primarily hens and

roosters, and ducks) are of limited distribution.52

Monsters (ill-formed)

One extremely frequent image of the vampire that curiously

seems never to have been adapted for vampire literature is

that of an amorphous sack of blood, moving about the

countryside.53 The sack is usually made of some sort of skin

(leather)54, or even resembles the head of an ox or a pig. It

is red and becomes “puffed up” [nadul; podpuxnal] after

drinking blood, and has no skeleton.55 Sometimes, it has a

long pointed (“awl-like”56) snout [mucuna], capable of

puncturing, through which it sucks blood. It may, on the

other hand, have no nose, merely some cartilege in the nasal

region.57 It is said to “roll”, since it has no limbs, though

52 Miceva, dissertation, 113. 53 Mad¾arov, “Poganoto,” 64; Georgieva, Mitologija, 155; Popov, dissertation, 40; Miceva,

dissertation, 111; Bo¾ev, “ot Demir-Xisarsko,”112; AEIM No. 110-III-i, ii; AEIM No. 111-III; AIF No. 285: 547.

54 The skin is sometimes likened to the Balkan bagpipe, the gajda (Georgieva, Mitologija, 156).

55 Mad¾arov, “Poganoto”, 92; Popov, dissertation, 40. 56 AEIM No. 111-III. 57 There is a contradiction, of course, between the notion of formlessness and the idea

that the ball can have a face (without a nose). In some cases, the informant is oblivious

80

it may take on human form if not destroyed by puncture

within forty days, when it becomes especially dangerous.58

When the vampire is destroyed, regardless of its original

form, it usually turns into a mass of bloody ‘jelly’

[pixtija].59

This monstrous form is the most horrific, yet according to

Miceva, within the system of vampire narratives, it

represents an intermediate (or, rather, embryonic,

considering the imagery) stage of development of the

vampire. Indeed, the discarded jelly is reminiscent both of

placenta and of coagulated blood. In fact, in some areas it

is believed that blood itself becomes animated, comes to

life, and behaves like a vampire.60

Human-like vampires

Vampires also take human form, almost invariably resembling

the person who died to become a vampire. A vampire who has

“taken on flesh,” that is, become humanoid, is sometimes

to the contradiction, while in others, we may suspect that the informant has a more complex image in mind than can be inferred from the description.

58 Popov, idem. 59 Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 165; AIF No. 217: 168, 193; AEIM 251-III. 60 AIF No. 77; AEIM No. 115-III; AEIM No. 110-III-A. In Sakar-Karmanli, the blood of

a slaughtered animal, especially a pig, becomes a vampire that inhabits the location where the animal was sacrificed: AEIM 313-III. A cat jumping over spilled blood causes the

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called a plâtenik.61 When the vampire does look like a human,

it is thought to have no bones, and sometimes no legs or

arms. It has red eyes.62 In the form of a person, the vampire

may appear to those who knew him or her. If a man, he may

visit his widow, sometimes in a dream.63 There are many tales

of a dead suitor returning from the grave to visit his

fiancée.

Regardless of whether the external appearance of the vampire

more closely resembles a human, a monster, or a shadow, it

is endowed with human intentions. It is linked to evil, to

the Devil, and always is tied to a human death. Animals born

on taboo days may be able to detect vampires, but this extra

sense is not considered human.

Vampire Activity Patterns

In those cases where the vampire is invisible, it is known

only by its traces: voices or sounds, for example, or the

blood to become a drakus in Smoljan. AEIM No. 110-III-ii.

61 Marinov, ®iva starina, 42. “Плътеник се представа като човек, но само душата на тоя човек, която имала същия образ на човек; тоя образ (облик) можал да види само събботник или глог.”

62 Georgieva, Mitologija, 156; Popov, dissertation,40; AIF No. 284: 137; AIF No. 216: 292. The vampire also has long claws and rough, dirty flesh. He is described as extremely “ugly” [грозен], but lives in the village among people.

63 AEIM No. 116-III.

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physical evidence of its activities. Again, the list is

long: vampires, in various forms, engage in all sorts of

activities in the human world. While the details of vampiric

behavior are numerous, by theme the narratives nevertheless

tend to fall into a limited number of categories.

Blood drinking

Blood drinking is an activity that more than any other is

associated with vampires,64 whether literary or folkloric.

Blood drinking is not, however, an obligatory feature of

vampire reports. It is clear that this behavior is thought

to satisfy hunger, or to provide the animated corpse with

the “life force” necessary to exist and move about. In the

case of both the literary and folkloric vampire, blood

drinking is a form of energy drain. In the agrarian world,

livestock are more often affected by it than people are.65

This fact may be explained in terms having to do with

animals dying or becoming weak from unexplained causes

(animals not being able to complain or describe symptoms),

64 The Bulgarian word кървопиец, literally ‘blood-sucker’, means both an extortionist and

a vampire. Another word glossed as ‘blood-sucker’ is изедник, literally one who eats (everything) up, someone who is all-consuming.

65 References to blood drinking are ubiquitous. Popov, dissertation,40; Georgieva, Mitologija, 157; Marinov, ®iva starina, 38; Miceva, dissertation,119; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 167; Bo¾ev, “Ot Demir-Xisarsko,” 111; Mad¾ârov, “Poganoto,” 92; AIF No. 216: 206, etc.

83

but as we shall see, it is probably also linked to the

notion of animal sacrifice.

“Pressing” and strangling

Vampires attack people in a different way from animals.

While there are reports of vampires drinking human blood,66

more often they attack victims who are sleeping, by pressing

them [natiskat, pritiskane].67 This attack may be fatal, but

more often it corresponds to the feeling of having been

squeezed or pressed during sleep. The vampire, in

materialist terms, is responsible for nightmares, anxiety

attacks, and perhaps even cardiovascular events while people

sleep.68

Actually, in comparison with his Western European

counterpart, the Slavic vampire is less aggressive towards

humans. Whereas the literary vampire is in fact a

“character,” having a personality, usually complex, evil

66 Mad¾arov, “Poganoto,” 92; Der¾avin, “Bolgarskie kolonii,” SbNU XXIX (1914), 176;

AIF No. 216: 167; AIF No. 217: 168; AEIM No. 111-III. There are occasional reports that a vampire doesn’t drink blood: AIF No. 217: 97. According to Miceva’s analysis, drinking of human blood corresponds to an advanced stage of development of the vampire. (dissertation, 119).

67 Georgieva, Mitologija, 157; Marinov, ®iva starina, 42; Miceva, dissertation, 117; AIF No. 217: 117; 358; AEIM No. 115-III; AEIM 313-III; AEIM 251-III.

68 Perkowski devotes a good deal of attention to a demon known among the West Slavic Kashubs as the mora¸which attacks sleepers. Many cultures, in fact, link nocturnal episodes to demons. See The Darkling, chap. 4.

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motives and specific features, the Bulgarian vampire’s

presence in the human world is not so definite or

immediately obvious. Consequently, attacks upon humans will

tend to take the form of less describable encounters.

Destruction of objects

In contemporary folklore, the vampire is most often held

responsible for mischief rather than crime. Vampires are

often said to “frighten people,”69 and their actions are

frequently no more serious than making noises (especially in

the roof70), knocking things off shelves,71 turning jars

upside down,72 or painting on walls. It may be that this

decrease in aggressiveness corresponds to a weakening of the

influence of vampires in general. Several informants, even

from the turn of the century, claimed that “vampires are

harmless”73 or “they don’t come around anymore.”74 Tales are

69 AEIM No. 110-III-A. 70 AIF No. 216: 68, 203, 206. The frequent references in the folklore to vampires knocking

in the attic or roof (tavan) may have ritual antecedents. Joseph Henninger points out that “Flat roofs and thresholds can also be preferred locations for sacrifice” (The Encyclopedia of Religion, q.v. “Sacrifice”), while Marcel Detienne observes that “[Dionysus] attacks the carrying structures and destroys roofs.” (Marcel Detienne, Dionysos à ciel ouvert (Paris: 1986), 81). Cited in Evgenij K. Teodorov, Drevnotrakijsko nasledstvo v bâlgarskija folklor (Sofia: Izdatelstvo nauka i izkustvo, 1972), ch. 3.

71 AIF No. 259; AIF No. 285-313; AEIM 251-III. 72 Georgieva, Mitologija, 157; AIF No. 216: 63; 67. 73 Der¾avin, “Bolgarskie kolonii,” 176. 74 The basic reason vampires have ceased to haunt Bulgarian villages, apparently, is because

85

frequently attributed to “old people,”75 as though the

younger generation could not vouch for their existence.

One variable affecting the scale of aggressiveness, then, is

the nature of the transgression that leads to vampirization:

people who were evil in life are more hostile vampires,

while people who were essentially good, but became vampires

through accidental circumstances (e.g. a cat jumping over

the corpse), tend to be less hostile towards the human

world, and are on occasion even beneficent.76 For example,

vampires can chop wood for their widows in winter, or do

other types of (male) work.77 A second parameter, however,

seems to be the decline in the significance of the vampire,

or of folkloric narrative in general, in modern life. As

fewer “eye-witnesses” can attest to real vampire events,

details about vampires tend to disappear from the

narratives, and these demons become less menacing in

general.

the availability of electric lights gives them no place to hide: AEIM No. 110-III-i;ii; A; No. 112-III.

75 AEIM No. 112-III; No. 110-III-A. 76 AIF No. 216: 67. 77 AIF No. 216: 145, 66; No. 217: 358.

86

The folkloric vampire, then, seems to have a less definite

set of attributes, or certainly a less singular purpose,

than the literary counterpart that is based upon Dracula.

His appearance and behavior are reminiscent of the human,

but the vampire is ultimately demonic, and his existence is

episodic: unlike a literary character, he has no identity

(vampires rarely have names) and only comes into brief

existence upon discovery of his actions or traces, and

either disappears or is destroyed fairly soon thereafter.

The vampire is anything but immortal: he is a flash of post-

fleshly existence, an aberration caused by some ritual

impropriety or the transgression of some taboo. He causes

mischief or brings about sickness and death, but he exists

to be eliminated, and this is easily accomplished. There do

not seem to be many stories where the first attempt to

eliminate a vampire fails.78 We shall turn now to the methods

for eliminating and avoiding vampires.

Apotropaics and Methods of Destruction

Vampires are undesirable beings, whether hostile or not,

since they represent an undesirable situation: the

78 In AEIM No. 313-III, however, the vampire is buried three times; the first two times, the

“earth rejects him.” It is not until a dog is buried in the grave first that the vampire is not

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interruption of the natural process of death and decay.

Since vampires come into being due to some transgression,

intentional or otherwise, it is critical that precautions be

taken to block vampires from producing their effects. The

most efficient mechanism, naturally, is to prevent the cause

of vampirization in the first place. Ordinarily, this means

making sure that all ritual actions surrounding death and

burial are properly carried out. We shall discuss these

procedures in detail in the next chapter. If a vampire is

thought to exist, however, then steps must be taken to

prevent it from leaving its home (usually, the grave79), from

entering a house, or from attacking animals or humans. In

these cases, the precautions taken serve to prevent an

actual encounter with the vampire, and no further actions

are required. Unlike the literary narratives about the

vampire, in the folklore there is no dramatic tension

whereby the vampire cannot be stopped although appropriate

ritual measures are taken. Informants recall whatever

traditional techniques of blocking the vampire’s incursion

they are familiar with, and leave it at that. If the

rejected by the earth.

79 Demons related to the vampire, such as the talasâm, have different habitats, such as watermills, abandoned buildings, or in general locations that people have abandoned, if

88

prescribed actions are performed properly, they have the

intended result. Chance, will, or even supernatural power do

not contradict the ritual purpose.80 We must thus infer that

entertainment is not the primary purpose of vampire

folklore. Rather, vampire narratives encode a good deal of

traditional ritual behavior, whose connection to a belief

system in which the corresponding gestures might once have

been more easily interpreted has been lost.

Apotropaics

Apotropaics are gestures, speech acts or objects that are

used in an attempt to avoid or turn away undesirable demons

or consequences. The Greek word apotropaios is glossed in

English as “a turning away, esp. of the gods that avert

ill.”81 Thus, an apotropaic in the classical sense would be

something of an invocation, an address or offering to the

gods that help to avoid catastrophe. It is a religious act,

something like prayer, designed to appease the forces that

are capable of preventing evil.

only temporarily. The vampire proper, however, occupies a grave during the day.

80 Compare the figure of Dracula in Stoker’s novel, who is able to subvert attempts to eliminate him by mesmerization and other displays of mental craftiness. Bulgarian vampires aren’t usually so clever; in fact, an oft-cited feature is their stupidity. See chapter seven, below, fn. 180.

81 Liddell and Scott, A Lexicon (abridged), q.v. “¢potrÒpaioj”.

89

In the case of vampire lore, preventive actions are taken

that may have another divinity in mind (for example,

Christ82), but equally common are acts specifically directed

toward physically or symbolically blocking the vampire as a

creature, by setting up some sort of impassable boundary.

The actions in this second category are not always

distinguishable from methods of destroying a vampire, or at

any rate, they rely upon the same set of objects and

symbols. For example, poking the grave of a suspected

vampire with a stick or pouring hot water on it83 are two

methods of preventing the vampire’s egress from the grave,

but the intention to destroy [= kill] the buried corpse is

implicit. Pouring hot water, however, is highly reminiscent

of ancient practices of libation, and thus may constitute

more of an offering than a method of destruction.84

82 The use of holy water, crosses or icons to repel vampires is clearly an invocation of

Christ’s power. 83 E.g., AIF No. 216: 193. 84 Blood, wine, water or some mix thereof was often poured on graves in offering to the

dead. Rush, Death and Burial, 116. Vakarelski (Pogrebalni, 166) observes the practice of “scalding” the exhumed corpse with boiling water and olive oil. The presence of olive oil marks this as a libation rather than a means of inflicting injury, although the original purpose has been supplanted by a folk etiology. Popov in one place reports that if someone pours wine or olive oil on a body or a grave, the soul will take on flesh and be reincarnated. (dissertation, 38), while in another (p. 40), he claims that boiling wine or water is used to destroy a vampire, in agreement with Vakarelski.

90

Georgieva considers there to be four main measures that are

most often taken against vampires. The use of fire, garlic,

thorns, and iron85 is generally effective, although the

precise methods differ. These are used immediately, she

adds, when taboos are broken. Fire is generally applied to

the corpse, or to the grave itself, in the form of

inflammable materials.86 Thorn bushes, in fact, may be set

around the grave and then ignited.87 Garlic may be hung from

doors or other architectural appurtenances, or fashioned

into a wreath or necklace. In the case of a wreath, it may

be mixed with hawthorn.88 Hawthorn, in Bulgarian lore, is

also useful against the plague.89 Iron, finally, often takes

the form of a spike or nail,90 with which the corpse is

transfixed, or else just an object put in the coffin or

grave.91 In the Verenica valley, when a vampire was dug up,

his eyes were open and red. Iron was placed on his eye and

85 Georgieva, Mitologija, 154. 86 The Serbs burn hemp, or scatter sulfur or gunpowder near the grave. (Vakarelski,

Pogrebalni, 168.) 87 AIF No. 269. 88 AIF No. 216: 193, 316. 89 R. Popov, dissertation, 45. 90 Mad¾arov, “Poganoto,” 92. A pitchfork is sometimes specified, which is made of iron.

AIF No. 216: 358. 91 “Salting iron” (iron used for pounding salt) is thrown behind a vampire if it enters a

house (Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 166).

91

then he was reburied.92 Iron is also the material from which

a cauldron [kazan] is made. Cauldrons are involved in

various ways with the destruction of the vampire. In the

village of Korten, for example, a vampire was boiled in a

cauldron full of sheep’s blood.93

Hawthorn [glog] is a plant used widely in European magic and

folk medicine, and against the vampire, its use is quite

old. Konstantin Ireèek writes that in the villages near

Kotel, on New Year’s eve they put thorns in the stoves so

that vampires cannot enter the houses.94 Hawthorn may also be

stuck in keyholes, and little crosses may be made of

hawthorn twigs and kept under a pillow to protect the

sleeper from vampires.95 The use of thorns may be included in

actions intended to destroy a vampire, as well. In 1872, a

vampire was dug up by a gang of masons and riddled with

bullets, after which the gang took the corpse out of the

grave and covered it with thorns.96

92 AIF No. 284: 137. 93 Ibid. 94 Ireèek, “Stari pâte¹estvija,” bk. II (1880), 117. Cited in Vakarelski, Pogrebalni¸162. 95 AEIM 251-III. 96 Vakarelsi, idem.

92

Aside from the apotropaic objects mentioned by Georgieva,

vampires, being afraid of daylight, are also afraid of sun

symbols. (It is possible that the fear of daylight

attributed to the vampire derives from the supposed aversion

to sun symbols rather than the other way around.)

Sunflowers, which grow plentifully in Bulgaria, are hung on

gates to prevent vampires from entering.97 The crucifix

itself is a solar symbol, and Popov mentions that the use of

fire and sieves [sito] is also linked to solar cult.

Vampires are in general afraid of sharp blades or pointed

objects, such as scythes and axes, as well as thorns. As we

shall discuss in chapter seven, the reasoning provided by

informants, namely that these objects can puncture or cut

the skin and allow the vampire’s blood to drain, obscures

the reason that blades are often included in coffins. More

likely, these implements functioned as ritual objects or

grave equipment at a much earlier time.

Ways to kill vampires

Occasionally, it is necessary to kill a vampire. Such an

action may involve a direct attack upon an exhumed corpse,

97 R. Popov, dissertation, 39; Vakarelski, Pogrebalni, 166.

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or it may be more indirect, working on the vampire’s locus

operandi. The actions necessary to destroy a vampire are in

general taken by a group within the village, or by

“professionals” known as vampird¾ii. The reasons

necessitating collective, rather than individual, action

against the vampire constitute a major theme of the present

work, but we shall point out here that the vampire’s very

existence portends a threat that is greater than merely to

the individual or household. For that reason, it is in the

best interests of the group, whatever its size and

constitution, to join together to eliminate the vampire.

Professionals are called upon, in some circumstances, to

serve as intermediaries, in much the same way that priests

are called upon to intercede with the divinities, or to

perform certain rituals. They insulate the individual from

dangerous contact with supernatural forces. Their actions,

like collective action, also absolve the individual from any

sinfulness that might result from destroying a corpse, since

they validate the necessity for such aggression.

The most frequently used methods to destroy a vampire

involve incineration, transfixing the body, drowning,

94

driving (or luring) to another location, and saying the mass

over the grave (which effectively reverses the consequences

of improper burial rites).98 Severing the head is also

common.99 In Samokov, according to Georgieva, when a vampire

goes to sleep, the villagers “reverse” his head, so that the

soul (presumed to have departed) will not know how to re-

enter the body, and this kills the vampire.100 According to a

report from Smoljan, in the case of a drakus that had been

afoot for three years, the priest read the funeral mass over

the head of the suspected vampire: the villagers dug up the

entire corpse, severed the head, and brought it to the

church.101

Piercing the body with a stake of some sort is quite common,

and this technique is called upon in vampire literature as

well. One informant in the Rhodope Mountains, a certain

Tsvetana Dimitrova, at the time ninety years old, told of

the time when it was permitted to go to the graveyard to

exhume vampires. She went to the graveyard, saw a hole in a

98 Georgieva, Mitologija, 158. 99 E.g. AIF No. 233. 100 Ibid. 101 AEIM No. 110-III-ii.

95

grave (a certain sign that the body beneath is a vampire),

and dug up the corpse. The dead woman was pure red. Tsvetana

took red-hot skewers and punctured the corpse, and it

disappeared.102 In the Strandja, after discovering a vampire,

the villagers took a long iron spike [¹ila] and pierced the

grave. Eventually, they dug it up and saw that it was full

of blood (after which, naturally, the vampire caused no more

harm).103 Transfixing or piercing the body with knives,

stakes, or thorns is extremely popular,104 as is hobbling the

corpse by cutting its limbs (especially the heels).105

Taking the vampire to a point out of town, or getting it to

jump or fall into a river and drown (vampires are

notoriously afraid of water106), is accomplished by sly

means. For example, the vampire will follow into the water a

sock full of earth from his grave.107 Vampires will also

follow someone taking warm bread (i.e. something of a

102 AEIM No. 313-III. 103 Mad¾arov, “Poganoto,” 92. 104 E.g. AEIM No. 113-III. 105 AIF No. 217-II: 97; No. 216: 193, 206. 106 Vampires are so afraid of water that they can cross a river only if carried. They will

stupidly try to fetch things thrown into water, such as a fur cap or a kerchief. (Georgieva, Mitologija, 159). According to some reports, their voices can cross water, however, and do mischief. Bo¾ev, “Ot Demir-Xisarsko,” 111; AEIM No. 112-III.

107 AEIM No. 251-III.

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sacrificial offering) to a site out of town: having invited

a vampire to a wedding as a guest, the people put warm

bread108 in a red bag, which they then take to the border.

The vampire, not being very bright, chooses to stay there,

outside of town, with the bread. Sometimes the bread is

taken to the forest, with the same result. Vampires can also

be charmed by drums and organs, a technique that is used by

vampird¾ii in Bitola, Macedonia.109

Finally, as we have mentioned, the vampire is afraid of

Christian symbols and Christian rites. One curious report

concerns a vampire who appeared to his widow in a dream and

first asked her to become his wife, then begged her to say

prayers over him so that his soul could rest.110 Whereas in

vampire literature Christian religious paraphernalia seem to

be used almost as weapons, in Bulgarian folklore the idea is

much more clearly directed at resolving the vampire’s

problem, so that the body can decay and the soul can move

on.

108 Bread is also used in magical rites against the vampire: spells [bajane] accompany the

rubbing of honey and bread across the body and face of a corpse in the shape of a cross (the torso, chin, and two sides of the face) (AIF No. 216: 286).

109 Angelov, “Ot Bitolsko,” 127. 110 AEIM No. 116-III.

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Summary

Our intention in the foregoing has been to expand upon the

notions put forth in the first chapter and to provide a

significant amount of detail from the enormous corpus of

Bulgarian vampire folklore. This catalogue should give a

sense both of the variety of notions about the vampire and

of the patterns into which those conceptions tend to fall. A

complete database of the collected lore about the vampire

and other demons in the Balkans, though desirable, is not

necessary for our purpose, which is to demonstrate

conclusively that there is a ritual basis to much vampire

folklore. Some of the elements we have encountered here are

rare or regional, and we did not examine many others that

fit even less neatly into clear-cut categories. Interpreting

many of these seemingly arcane elements, even those that

occur with a high degree of frequency, is difficult in the

absence of an overarching idea of the “red thread” that runs

through them. Before looking in more detail at some related

customs, such as burial rituals, it has been necessary first

to distinguish between the often confused literary and

folkloric traditions, and second, to suggest some of the

contours of Bulgarian vampire folklore from the last

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century. Although we shall decline at this point from

proposing a definition of the folkloric vampire (since it

should be clear that such a task is impossible without

providing numerous exceptions and qualifications), we now

have a significant context for discussing the field of

vampire lore in terms of a system that reflects a ritual

origin.

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THE VAMPIRE: GENERAL FEATURES ..............................................................51

Dracula, Orientalism and the Popular Vampire ....................................................52

The problem of defining the vampire ....................................................................59

The Bulgarian folkloric data .....................................................................................66

Etiology: How to become a vampire...................................................................................... 68

The external appearance of the vampire................................................................................ 77

Vampire Activity Patterns .......................................................................................... 81

Apotropaics and Methods of Destruction ..................................................................... 86

Apotropaics................................................................................................................... 88

Ways to kill vampires .................................................................................................. 92

Summary ......................................................................................................................97