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Vampire Stories in Greece and theReinforcement of Socio-Cultural NormsEvangelos AvdikosPublished online: 27 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Evangelos Avdikos (2013) Vampire Stories in Greece and the Reinforcement of Socio-Cultural Norms, Folklore, 124:3, 307-326, DOI: 10.1080/0015587X.2013.829666

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Vampire Stories in Greece and the Reinforcementof Socio-Cultural Norms

Evangelos Avdikos

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship of humans with the supernatural and thefunction of the latter as a normalizing factor in social organization. The focus is ontraditional Greek stories about vampires and the aim is to study therelationship between vampires and the ‘cultural capital’ of the local community, onthe one hand, and, on the other, beliefs about the progress of the soul after its departurefrom the body upon death. The Greek vampire (vrikolakas) is examined in relation to boththe concept of faith in Orthodox Christianity and traditional death rituals, some of thempagan survivals.

Worldview and Religion: An Outline of the Context

‘The vampire is the most exciting and the most fearful of the creatures of folk culture’(Dundes 1998, vii). When talking of vampires, most people feel revulsion towards them tovarying degrees. This may cover an unconscious fear, which is expressed by anunwillingness to continue the conversation. Despite this, from the nineteenth century tothe early twentieth century, vampires were an object of increasing interest on the partof both scholars and film directors, who created literary and cinematographic narrativesbased on popular tales about vampires (Comstock 1891; Hollinger 1989; Bailie 2011).The manner in which supernatural creatures are represented in people’s minds has

changed over recent decades, as modern culture spreads over an ever-widening group ofpopulations, affecting their relationship with their earlier system of beliefs. A Greekinformant quoted by Charles Stewart remarked on this recent change of attitudestowards exotiká (literally, ‘things from outside’)—supernatural beings of various kinds,including elves, fairies, ghosts, and vampires (vrikolakes):1

Earlier, when people were virtuous and had faith, they were often attacked by exotiká. Now people nolonger believe [in God]; they perform all sorts of horrible acts. They have gone to the Devil. There is noneed for the Devil to come in search of them. (Stewart 1991, 97)

The final words of Stewart’s informant suggest an oppositional schema of ‘traditional’versus ‘modern’ society for perceiving the supernatural world, in which the first pole isidentified with belief in a supreme being, God, while the second refers to the Devil andthe decline of piety that has allowed supernatural powers to settle within populatedareas and become an element in social behaviour (Berger 1969, 14; Kligman 1988, 2). Theinformant’s submerged fear and declaration that exotiká have disappeared indicates achange in the perceived relationship between humanity and the supernatural world

Folklore 124 (December 2013): 307–26http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2013.829666

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(Stewart 1989, 77–104; Kapferer 1991, 17). As Hermann Bausinger says, people are moretroubled by supernatural forces when traditional measures to prevent or cure themcease to be practised (Bausinger 1990, 47; Thomas 1971, 498).A dichotomy between modern scepticism and traditional understandings of the

supernatural also informs the relationship between the collector and the informant, anold shepherd named Yorgi, in the following story, collected on Evia Island, by AnastasiosD. Vlachos in 1953, and preserved in the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre Archive (KL)in Athens:2

A very old shepherd told me the following story:‘It was many years ago—over four hundred moons. I once had a very close friend. Together we hadsheepfolds and beehives. An epidemic once spread over the village and my friend died. Nobodyhappened to care for him and a dog strode over the corpse. All the people in the village whispered thathe had become a vampire, but I didn’t believe it. One pitch black night, blacker than the priest’scassock, I was sleeping in the sheepfold and not far fromme, towards the beehives, my three dogs weresleeping curled up and I cannot explain why I had a strange fear that night. The coals in the fire werehalf-extinguished. Suddenly it seemed to me that somebody was calling me from the adjacent gully. Ilistened and I recognized my dead friend’s voice. “Yorgi, hey! Yorgi”, he called me. I was in a coldsweat. It made my knees knock. Of course I am not a coward—I have proved it—but it’s a very differentthing to be called by a dead man. “Don’t be afraid, Yorgi”, he says to me, “I am coming to talk a bit.What you have to do is to cover your face with your clothes, so you will not be terrified”. Then he cameclose to me and I felt that he was sitting down beside me. He started asking plenty of questions aboutthe sheep, the cheese and in turn I replied to him, covered, as I was, by the clothes. Later, the talkturned to the beehives. The deceased was a good beekeeper, when he was alive. At one point, he toldme, “I want to eat some honey (you must know that the vampires like sweet things). I’ll go to thebeehives. Are the dogs there?”“No”, I said, “the dogs are at the pools”. Certainly I lied to him, for he took just a few steps towards thebeehives and the dogs pounced on him. Pandemonium broke out in the dark and icy night. “Hey! Yorgi,my friend Yorgi”, he started shouting to me. I didn’t say a word, for I knew that the dogs step back,when they hear somebody’s voice. In a few minutes the dogs had stopped. They had eaten him. When Iwent to the place in the morning, I saw just some blood stains. After that we got rid of the vampire’, hesaid crossing himself.

‘Could be possible that you dreamt it, Uncle Yorgi?’ I asked him.

‘Teacher, my hair turned white, but I have never lied’, he said angrily. ‘Write this story, so thatall the educated who don’t believe learn of it’, he told me, emptying his glass of raki.

‘I’ll write it, Uncle Yorgi’, I said, swearing never to question his words. (KL MS 2042, 53–54)

This example highlights the issue of ‘a traditional set of beliefs’ as a system of thoughtand behaviour (Toelken 1996, 56), especially in an era that has marginalized these andpromoted reason as the exclusive means of analysis and comprehension. In Stewart’sview, it is pointless to go in search of this kind of system where rationalismpredominates. The present paper deals with just such a belief system. It explores andaims to illuminate the relationships between people and the exotiká, between thesupernatural world and the social and cultural systems, or ‘worldview’ (Howell 1989, 58;Redfield 1968, 88).The concept of worldview includes the totality of assumptions and views relating to

the structure of the whole world, including nature, society, human and non-humanbeings, and all powers, visible or otherwise (Aswad 2002, 2). Roy Rappaport is of the view

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that principles informing worldviews function as axioms and as a contextual paradigmdefining how the entire world is constructed (Rappaport 1999, 264).A worldview may also be regarded as a web of cultural meanings (Geertz 1973, 5), the

study of which can contribute to revealing and understanding social structure. In myview, however, one captures the nature of a worldview more accurately if one adoptsClifford Geertz’s approach of ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973, 26), so that the significanceof particular cultural practices becomes clear. A worldview is a fundamental factor andcontext in constructing an identity, in transferring cultural materials, and in allowingmemory to function and human behaviour to orient and reorient itself. A worldview isalso an ideological complex that moulds the consciousness of peoples. It influences theirway of thinking, analysing, and understanding matters, and their view of themselves. Forexample, the funerary rites discussed below are performed to ensure a ‘good death’ andtheir performance ensures the transmission of the worldview within the community. Bythe same token, the worldview is also transmitted via the narratives about vampires thatare the focus of this article and which illustrate, by contrast, the dire consequences offailure to observe accepted rites and norms of behaviour (Aswad 2002, 2).A worldview is thus both a set of rules that organizes daily life and a mechanism for

comprehending the relationship between human beings, on the one hand, and divinepowers and the supernatural world, on the other. It is the means by which people makesense of their environment and their cultural practices whereby social relations areproduced and reproduced. In this sense, the worldview is not a visible, structuredsystem; rather, it informs every human activity.Religion is such a worldview, whatever the form in which it manifests itself. Scholars

of religion have remarked upon the fact that it consists of a totality of beliefs andpractices that, rather than being restricted to relations with divine power, in factsaturate daily life and behaviour and shape ideas about what happens after death. MaxWeber, in the first years of the twentieth century, showed the decisive influence ofreligion as an ethical system shaping human behaviour, both at an individual and ageneral level (Weber 1950, 36). In 1912, Émile Durkheim saw in religion and ritual ameans of tightening social relations and of continuation of the community via theinitiation of its members into social values (Durkheim 1995, 9). Such a theoreticalapproach concentrates upon the social function of religion (functionalism), in contrastto that of Geertz, who studied ‘religion as a cultural system’ in the 1970s and defined it asan organized system of symbols by means of which the members of a societycomprehend the world and its meaning (Geertz 1973, 87–126). Irrespective of thesedifferent scholars’ interpretations, religion is a worldview indissolubly linked to theconcepts of faith and of God or the supernatural. Thus, Durkheim’s definition isextremely useful:

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things setapart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called aChurch, all those who adhere to them. (Durkheim 1995, 44)

The present article analyses a system of beliefs and practices in Greece in the context ofOrthodox Christianity. Focusing specifically on the vampire (vrikolakas), this essayexplores aspects of the traditional worldview in Greece up to the 1960s. The stories aboutvampires are drawn from both archival and published sources, especially the archives of

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the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, and the Traditions of Nikolaos Politis (1852–1921),the founder of Greek folklore as a scholarly discipline (Politis n.d., 573–609; Herzfeld1986, 97–122; Avdikos 2010, 160–61; all translations of Politis’s material are my own).The stories form the reference point for an understanding of how Greek societyfunctions and of how the social and the supernatural worlds relate to each other. Inorder to understand traditional Greek supernatural beings, one must consider them inconnection with the Orthodox faith in Greece and its ideas regarding human life andone’s fate after death. In other words, vampires express the value system of acommunity, while also raising more general questions regarding body and soul.As with all religions, the Orthodox faith is not homogeneous: faiths consist of various

layers, old and new. Official Orthodox Christianity comprises principles that theologiansand Church Fathers formulated over many years. Their basic aim was, and is, to wipe outthe traces of paganism that sprang from ancient Greece and that were grafted on toChristianity during the first two centuries of the Byzantine empire (fourth to fifthcenturies CE; Alexiou 1974, 24–25). Death rituals are an area in which the presence ofritual practices that date back to the most distant past is still very strong. One example isthe display of intense lamentation, involving tearing the hair and lacerating the face,whereby the relatives of the dead express their pain during the laying out of the corpse,the funeral procession, and burial. The official Orthodox Church regards these culturalpractices as inappropriate to Christian conceptions about death. Such views form acontinuum, from extreme positions, such as that of St John Chrysostom (c.344–407 CE),who rejected mourning and lamentation as expressions of lack of faith, to more modernand tolerant theological views, which accept lamentation, but reject excessively great orlengthy mourning (Faros 2006, 151).While a knowledge of Orthodox faith and theology is essential for an understanding of

the vampire as an aspect of traditional Greek worldview and its relationship with faith,death, life, and community values, this alone is not sufficient because Orthodoxy as acultural practice has absorbed many of the elements of the paganism of ancient Greece.Stewart, in particular, having studied the place of the supernatural and of religion on theGreek Cycladic island of Naxos, discovered that, despite opposition on the part of theofficial Orthodox Church to the concept of exotiká, such entities form a component ofmodern Greek culture (Stewart 1991, 9).We must begin, then, from the position that modern Greek culture is not only made

up of beliefs drawn from the official Orthodox faith, but is also composed of powerfulsurvivals from ancient Greek culture that have withstood the denigration of the officialChurch. Thus, popular religion, a mixture of Orthodox and pagan beliefs, is shaped byfolklore/popular culture (Watkins 2004, 140–50) and forms both a system forcomprehending the world and a set of rules for organizing cultural practices.

Greek Vampires: Definition and Appearance

Those who committed plenty of sins in their life do not rest after they die. Instead, they leave their graveand return to the places where they used to spend their time, when they were alive. (Politis n.d., 573)

This extract from a vampire story collected on the island of Mykonos refers in generalterms to what causes the phenomenon: the commission of many sins in life. In addition,

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the narrator describes the basic feature of vampirism: the dead leave their graves. Assuch, a vampire is evidently a type of ghost or revenant. There are no clear dividing linesbetween genres of supernatural figures (Dégh 1996, 41); the different categories are allinterdependent (Dundes 2007, 194), and together they form the whole supernaturalworld (Stewart 1991, 162–63). This definition presents the vampire as a kind of ‘undead’or resurrected corpse (Murgoci 1998, 13), a phenomenon that appears to occur undercertain conditions and seems to arise independently in the traditions of many differentcultures. In Paul Barber’s words:

There are such creatures everywhere in the world, it seems, in a variety of disparate cultures: deadpeople who, having died before their time, not only refuse to remain dead, but return to bring death totheir friends and neighbors. (Barber 1988, 2)

The vampire’s malevolent disposition is exacerbated by its ugly and terrifying appearance,evident in the following descriptions (all from Politis n.d., except where indicated):

People thought that vampires were like a skin consisting of a trunk, without feet. (Thrakiotis 1991, 301)

A skin that stands upright. (Politis n.d., 575)

He came out (of the grave) like a ferret. (Politis n.d., 577)

A dreadful black dog was seen to emerge from the grave of Hondros, an old man. (Politis n.d., 578)

Vampires look like a fire at night. (Politis n.d., 581)

A noise in the grave is heard. (Politis n.d., 546)

Vampires are horrifying, black, with big nails dyed in blood. Their hair is long and their beard is rough.(Politis n.d., 587)

A vampire emerges from the grave, red, like a balloon and tumbles. (KL MS 2394, 12)

People imagine vampires to have a human body, with horns on their head, and big staring eyes andlarge, sharp teeth, with long nails. (KL MS 2442, 145)

Vampires return from the dead and cause harm to the living: ‘The dead often leave theirgrave shrouded. They walk up and down the roads at night, enter houses and breakwhatever they find’ (Politis n.d., 574). Vampires disturb private and public places byindulging in various types of antisocial behaviour, interrupting the rhythm of people’slives. They knock on doors, shout at, beat, and intimidate anyone they meet (Politis n.d.,578 and 585; Summers 1961, 135). They enter the houses of their relatives, where they eatwhatever food they find, such as flour, butter, cheese, andmeat, while also drinking waterfrom the pitcher and pouring wine from barrels (Politis n.d., 581). They drag beds fromtheir places and overturn furniture (Hufford 1982, 205). In one instance, a vampire entersthe bedroom of a Catholic nun. A poor woman gathering herbs in a field sees him and sheis so terrified by his appearance that she loses her voice (Politis n.d., 583). They suffocatepeople in their beds, especially newly married couples and babies in their cradles, whoseblood they enjoy sucking (Politis n.d., 586; Mouzakis 1989, 24). Vampires also steal eggs,hens, and goats, and suck nanny goats’ nipples until they squeal with pain (Politis n.d., 577and 587). They destroy agricultural produce, suffocate and kill animals, and spread illness(Mouzakis 1989, 22 and 27). They make women pregnant, and cause pregnant women tomiscarry (Politis n.d. 596 and 586). They drink oil from lamps in cemeteries, cause villages

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to be abandoned, and generally frighten everyone (Politis n.d., 596; Mouzakis 1989, 22;Summers 1961, 135). Naturally, all the villagers in question are upset, as they cannotdiscover what sort of being is causing the damage (KL MS 2394, 12–13).To sum up: vampires are often represented as monstrous, with large feet, nails, and

lips, swollen belly, red nails, and long red hair (Mouzakis 1989, 17–18). They are animal-like in appearance and endowed with an extraordinary transformative ability (Barber1988, 39–45), and when they do assume a human appearance it is grossly exaggerated. Inthis next story, the vampire at first appears in normal human form, but at the criticalpoint of exposure he is so exaggerated that he becomes merely a balloon full of air(hence tymbanieos ‘swollen’ as a term for a vampire):

A soldier killed in a war became a vampire. His sergeant, who buried him, sent a letter to his wife abouther husband’s death. The vampirized soldier succeeded in avoiding being eaten by dogs (if a vampirecan avoid dogs, it regains human form). So the soldier went back to his wife. They lived together excepton Thursday and Saturday nights, which he spent outside his house. He returned at dawn holdingpieces of liver. His wife fried them, but she did not eat them, for the liver smelled of soil (this showsthat he took the liver from the dead). Each Sunday her husband went to church, but some peopleobserved that he left at the point when the priest was preparing to take the sacred objects out of thesanctuary. He had two children whom he fed with livers. Such behaviour alerted and upset thevillagers, who started suspecting him. Their suspicion turned to certainty when the sergeant who hadburied him happened to come to the village. He went to the vampire’s wife and told her to press theskin of her husband to see whether he had bones or not. Indeed she did as the sergeant told her and shediscovered that her husband was just skin, swollen and boneless. Next Sunday all the villagers agreedto lock the doors and the windows in the church at the point when the vampire decided to leave. Infact, when the sacred objects were brought out they shut the doors and windows. The vampire and hischildren ran to leave the church, but they found the doors closed. At this moment, the priest came outof the sanctuary with the holy objects and a loud crack was heard. The vampire and his childrenexploded and they scattered like smoke, without leaving a trace. (KL MS 2042, 52–53)

Causes of Vampirism

Paul Barber identified four loose groups of causes of vampirism (Barber 1988, 29–37):

(1) Predisposition: notable delinquents, or, worse, alcoholics or suicides (Campbell1964, 337; Hufford 1982, 229); robbers or highwaymen; witches and werewolves(Barber 1988, 29–30 and 71); sorcerers (Cremene 1981, 85).

(2) Predestination: some ‘become revenants through no fault of their own:illegitimate children, a trait that can also be passed on for seven generations’(Cremene 1981, 38; see also Murgoci 1998, 20); babies born with certain defects orunusual signs, such as teeth, or a caul (Barber 1988, 30–31).

(3) Events: being bitten by a vampire, a very common motif in literature and films(Barber 1988, 32–37); a creature passing over the corpse (Cremene 1981, 84;Weigand 1894, 122); or a candle being passed over it (Blum and Blum 1970, 73).

(4) Things left undone: especially ‘funerary and burial practices’ (Barber 1988, 37):thus, those who die alone and unattended, or ‘unseen’, risk becoming vampires(Barber 1988, 71).

The circumstances and traits predisposing certain deceased to vampirism are as variedin Greece as elsewhere in the Balkans. Many were listed by J. C. Lawson and other early

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scholars, and archive sources provide further examples, most falling into Barber’s fourcategories.In the first category fall sinful people: money-lenders (Campbell 1964, 337); anyone

who is responsible for the death of a good man (Politis n.d., 576), or who eats the flesh ofa sheep slain by a wolf (Lawson 1910, 375–76), or who wishes to eat a child (Politis n.d.,590); Gypsy women and other strangers (Loukopoulos 1914, 450); individuals who do notgo to church regularly (Mouzakis 1989, 23); people of different faiths, apostates, andGreeks who ‘become Turks’ (i.e. become Muslims) (Politis n.d., 579).3

In Barber’s second category are also babies conceived during a holy period (Lawson1910, 375–76; Megas 1979, 37), or who died unbaptized (Mouzakis 1989, 13):

The baby was sinful from the minute it opened his/her eyes. If the baby died unbaptized, it wasregarded as a great sin. Each night the baby came to the house to bother his/her parents when theyslept. It wanted his/her Christian name and it became a vampire. A baby with a reddened face wasseen. It went up and down the house ladder for forty days. (Sarandi-Stamouli 1952, 186)

In my day, there was a light at Agios Athanasios, which then moved to Agios Visarionas and all the wayover there, for in here illegitimate children and unbaptized babies are buried. They become vampiresand come back. (KL MS 2301, 469)

The fourth and fifth categories overlap to the extent that they involve the violation ofcertain social and cultural rules, either by the individuals while still alive, or by theirrelatives who fail to show them due respect either in life or in death by neglecting toperform the appropriate death rituals. This includes anyone who ill-treats his or herparents (Kassis 1981, 11); who dies under a curse, especially a parent’s (Lawson 1910,375–76); or who utters a profanity while dying, or is profaned by another at that time. Itis also important that the laid-out corpse be protected from being stepped over by a cator other creature: ‘Somebody died and before he was buried, he was jumped over by acat. After that, his blood revived and he appeared each night’ (KL MS 2394, 12; Politis n.d.,578; Avdikos 2002, 184). In her article about vampires, Juliet Du Boulay argues that thereis a particular cyclic pattern which is ‘fundamental to . . . beliefs relating to thevampire’ (Du Boulay 1998, 86). She uses cyclic imagery as an analytical concept

suitable for an analysis of the Greek vampire, because the customs which cluster around the vampireshow that what is on one level a principle of alliance can become on another level a principle ofdestructiveness, in which society appears as much threatened by the phenomenon as consolidated. (DuBoulay 1998, 87)

This is exemplified in the motif of a cat’s action in ‘crossing over’ the dead body. Such anaction would destroy the social fabric and the relatives of the dead would be sociallystigmatized as well. This argument is expanded by Gregory Forth and SvitlanaKukharenko, who widen their topic to explore the cross-cultural ‘theme of traversalleading to reanimation’ (Forth and Kukharenko 2012, 157 and 160). Interestingly, inGreece prohibition of ‘traversal’ is not limited to the corpse. Rather, it is part of a body ofGreek beliefs related to crossing over a person, alive or dead. This movement is thoughtto cause individual unhappiness to the person crossed over. By breaching the protective‘magic circle’ that surrounds an individual, crossing over is believed to be a violent,aggressive action that challenges individuality and insults the person.

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A personal example of ‘crossing over’ leading to vampirization comes from my ownfamily. My mother, Konstantina Avdikou, recounted the following story that her cousin’swife, Nikolena, had told her about what she herself had suffered in the 1960s after thedeath of her mother-in-law, my mother’s aunt, while her husband was away from home:

Nikolena’s mother-in-law died in the house. My cousin was not there, as he was away travelling. Whenher mother-in-law died, the daughter-in-law, [Nikolena] said nothing to anybody. She took the corpseout of the house into the courtyard. She put the body on two chairs, covering it with a blanket. Thenshe whitewashed the house and did the housework. Then she sent a message to the family andrelatives: the mother-in-law had died and they had to come and bury her.A cat stepped over my aunt, thus polluting her. My aunt returned at night. Nikolena, her daughter-in-law, heard repeated knocks on the door all night. ‘My daughter-in-law, Nikolena, open the door to letme enter the house. It is very cold outside’. Nikolena was terrified. She couldn’t sleep. She went to Olga,my sister, who sent her to the priest. He advised her to exhume and burn my aunt, as she had become avampire. They went to the grave. The priest read some chants. The daughter-in-law took my aunt outof the grave and burnt her bones. The priest advised her not to leave even a trace. After burning thebody, the daughter-in-law scattered the ashes. My aunt did not visit her again and since then Nikolenahas calmed down. (Konstantina Avdikou, pers. comm., 2006)

Vampires may also result from dying ‘before one’s time’; for example, a newly marriedman may appear to his wife as a vampire and make her pregnant (Kassis 1981, 187).Related to this is suffering a ‘bad death’, which includes people killed in their own fieldsand whose corpses lie unburied for a long time (Politis n.d., 581–90; Lawson 1910, 375–76), or who die by murder or accident, or especially suicide:

A soldier and I went to swim in a stream and he drowned. Nobody could save him. A swimmer cameand took him out of the stream. He was dead. After a few days he became a vampire and went andswam in this place. And I kept watch there and I heard a noise when he jumped in the stream. (KL MS2301, 231)

My son, I remember that in my day many vampire stories were told about people who haunted placesand it was not the case for all people, but just those who had a bad death—who had suffocated,committed suicide, fell over a precipice. Besides, those who are jumped over by a cat might then hauntthe place. That’s why the relatives sit around a corpse until it is buried. After that vampires terrifypeople, who pour wine mixed with oil on the grave in order to stop them appearing, especially on thepoint of the grave where the head is. So people propitiate them. (KL MS 1608, 100)

Several scholars have remarked that the causes of vampirism focus on violations ofsocial rules. J. K. Campbell noted this in his ethnographic study of the Sarakatsani(Campbell 1964, 337). Ariadni Gerouki’s two categories of vampire stories express thistoo: excess, whether in life or in death and burial; and lack of fulfilment, where thedeceased failed to undergo a ritual (Gerouki 1996–97, 110; Drettas 1985, 201–18)Likewise, Du Boulay considered that the first group of stories all referred to a memorablesin as the cause of vampirism, while the second includes all those in which vampirismoccurs because the living betray contempt for the deceased by refusing or neglecting theappropriate ritual (Du Boulay 1998, 88). The second category consists basically ofreligious practices performed during the death rites, specifically those associated withtransition from the world of the living to that of the dead, which is regarded as veryimportant both for the living and the dead (Gennep 1960, 146; Turner 1967, 94; Danforth1982, 45).

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Vampires and Cultural Capital

Vampires offer both threat and stability to a group (Du Boulay 1998, 87). This apparentcontradiction is linked with the rituals of death and with the social crisis brought aboutby the failure of the deceased to be incorporated fully into the world of the dead. Thisconcept is found in both paganism and Christianity. Death is regarded as a journey that iscompleted only once the deceased are definitely integrated into the world of the dead,thus avoiding the possibility of remaining in some intermediate no-man’s land.The relatives of the deceased believe deeply in the importance of this journey and

take care to carry out all of the necessary rites both before and after the intermentof the deceased—mnimosyna (mnhmósyna, ‘memorial services’)—so as to ensure thecompletion of the whole ritual. Because the deceased are unable to help themselvesfinish the journey to the world of the dead, it is the responsibility of the family to ensurethat their passage is aided by the prescribed ritual practices. Such practices include theclosing of the eyes of the corpse, so that it is unable to find the way back to the land ofthe living, in the form of a vampire. In fact, all bodily orifices are sealed, so that thewhole body is closed and there is consequently nothing to hinder the journey. The ritesalso include lamentation and the mnimosyna, all of which derive from ancient Greekreligious practice. The Church has accepted the mnimosyna, which include the trita(tríta), three days after the death; the niamera (niamera), after nine days; the saranta(sara nta), after forty days; the sto hrono (sto xróno), after one year; and the trihrona(tríxrona), after three years—to give them their folk names. This cycle of ritualpractices is completed in the third year after the death and links the Orthodoxconception of the soul after death to the folk prevention of vampirization. In contrast,the person who dies alone, remains unburied, blasphemes while dying or is the object ofblasphemy during the rite of passage, or whose relatives for some reason do not performthe correct rituals, fails to be incorporated into the world of the dead and runs the risk ofbecoming a vampire, which is a source of disgrace to his or her family. Improperperformance of the funerary rites may include excessive lamentation at the momentwhen the soul leaves the body, as this may have frightened away the angels whodescended to earth to accompany the soul of the dying person.Furthermore, the deceased becomes a vampire if his or her life is not consonant with

the ‘cultural capital’ of the community. As Pierre Bourdieu defines it, cultural capital (asdistinct from economic and social capital) is the totality of ways of thought, ideas,cultural practices, and cultural representations, which are amassed over the centuries asthe cultural heritage of a community. Of his three forms of cultural capital (embodied,objectified, and institutionalized) it is ‘embodied’ cultural capital that most concerns ushere. Bourdieu himself defines it as ‘the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind andbody’ (Bourdieu 1986, 244). Thus, the basic concepts on which further analysis ofvampirism rests are the relations between worldview and cultural capital, and betweenworldview and conceptions of life and death.Narratives convey cultural capital—including representations of the supernatural

world, social relations, and cultural practices—to members of a community. Throughvampire stories, the community transmits not only cultural traditions about vampires,but also the norms of local culture that the vampires illustrate by antithesis. When adeceased person becomes a vampire, this generates both discussion about the subject

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and a social crisis that is capable of reordering the position of the affected family withinthe community. As a result, the members of the group become acquainted with, orrefresh their memories of, the local value system and cultural capital is reproduced inthe process.The cultural capital of a community is also employed in the funerary rituals that aim

to avoid the social crisis that arises upon the failure of the deceased to be incorporatedinto the world of the dead. Vampires emerge during ‘critical phases’ (Blum and Blum1970, 1), and paradoxically support cultural capital and social structure. Transitionaltimes and phases are commonly associated with danger. Midnight is ‘the dangeroushour’, as Richard and Eva Blum state, for it marks the transition between one day and thenext (Blum and Blum 1970, 1; Megas 1979, 37). Similarly, the transition of an individual toa new social position is a critical—or liminal—phase, during which the object of the riteof passage loses his or her old social identity (Turner 1969, 15). This liminal phase canbecome a crisis if something goes wrong and the transition remains incomplete. Death,already the greatest of individual crises, may become a serious social crisis, especially forthe family, in the event of a ‘bad death’, where there are grounds for thinking that thedeceased has failed to become incorporated into the world of the dead and has become avampire. The deceased individual, the family, and the extended kin run the risk ofnegative social consequences if there is any undesirable development arising from thedeath rituals. They all face being stigmatized by the suspicion that they have committedsome sin.Du Boulay argues that a vampire both threatens and stabilizes a society (Du Boulay

1998, 87). Despite its apparent paradox, the correctness of her argument becomesobvious when we consider the causes of vampirization and how the vampire contributesto supporting cultural capital. The vampire is a physical expression of liminality,accompanied by signs of opposition to the cultural capital of the local community.Although Du Boulay tries to explain prohibitions such as that against allowing a cat to

walk over a corpse by arguing that the space above the body is the meeting pointbetween the upper and the nether world, which nobody is permitted to enter, shereturns to society and its cultural capital in her effort to interpret this magic circlearound the corpse (Du Boulay 1998, 103). She believes that the possibility ofvampirization for those who disregard the value system of their community forces theyounger generation to look after the old, because such behaviour is fundamental for thestructuring of society (Du Boulay 1998, 103).At this point, the role of cultural capital as a cohesive force in a community becomes

apparent. Causes of vampirization may lie, for instance, in indifference shown by thedeceased to his or her parents, or lack of respect on the part of the daughter-in-lawtowards her mother-in-law. Both of these causes stem from failure to observe basiccomponents of cultural capital that, when correctly observed, contribute to theperpetuation of the traditional kinship structure of society. More specifically, Greekfamilies in the past were extended, consisting of parents, one or two married offspring,and the latter’s unmarried children. The maintenance of such a social structure restedupon respect for cultural capital. Thus, the appearance of a vampire implied theexistence of a social crisis, since certain members of the local community now haddoubts about the stability of the cultural capital of that community. At the same time,

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the existence of the vampire offered younger persons the opportunity for initiation intothe value system of the community by means of a particular example.Another nexus of reasons for vampirism lay in practices that weaken religious belief,

such as insufficient attendance at Mass, or behaviour that violates religious norms, suchas conceiving children on holy days like the Feast of the Annunciation. These reasonsalso included suicide. The aim behind these types of explanations for vampirization isthe strengthening of the position of the Church as a social institution. For Christianity, asfor other religions, faith alone is not sufficient. What makes one a member of the Churchis participation in religious practices (Alfeyef 2011, 19).In other words, this complex of beliefs about vampires in relation to mortuary rituals,

to proper behaviour towards kin, and to religious practices as a whole protects socialcohesion by preventing both religious belief from weakening and cultural capital fromfading away. However, sin is not restricted to religion. It includes all the actions thatundermine the social structure. A sin can be considered any activity that is in oppositionto cultural capital and belongs to the impure pole (Stewart 1991, 106). In this sense, sin iswidened to include all negative behaviours pertaining to cultural capital as well as to thecommunity itself as a structure. Anybody who disputes the institutions and structures ofa community, such as kinship networks or the overall value system, runs the risk ofvampirization. Vampire narratives also attempt to control families that have no head,because of the death of the husband, and to protect them and manipulate the availablepotential population, in the form of widows. So in the case of a widow who gives birth tochildren only after her husband has died, the dead husband is considered to have becomea vampire, since he was unable to become a father while he lived, which is necessary fora man to enjoy social honour (Avdikos 1996, 53).

Vampires and Retribution

One of the characteristic features of vampires in Greece seems to be retribution. ÉvaPócs has argued that ambivalence towards the living was characteristic of the Slavicmora, a supernatural figure or dead soul who could be either benevolent or retributive,either bringing help to the living or inflicting punitive harm on those who brokecertain taboos. Thus, the mora was part of ‘a system of jurisdiction sanctioned by thedead’ (Pócs 1999, 30).Similarly ambivalent characteristics can also be seen in Greek stories of vampires. In

the following example, there is a stark contrast between a vampire mother’s retributivetreatment of one daughter and her compassionate haunting of the other, according tohow the respective daughters behaved during their mother’s lifetime. The storyillustrates how vampires served to safeguard accepted norms of conduct:

There were two sisters. The younger had an affair with her brother-in-law, who took her andabandoned his wife. Her mother was very distressed. She wanted to go to the vineyards. She walkedtowards the church in the field to light the small pendant oil-lamp. She took oil, candles and about tenoranges. On the road to the field it started snowing. She threw down an orange in order for the othersto find her. She realized that she might lose her way, because of the snow. People saw that she did notcome back. They took lamps and set off to walk towards her hut. They found the oranges on the road. Inthe end, they found her corpse beyond the hut and some ravens were eating it. They took and buriedher. It was said that she became a vampire. One of her daughters loved her mother and was unmarried.So she [the vampire] went to the other daughter, who was married to her brother-in-law, and she filled

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the flour with blood and tipped over the water cauldron. She also went at night to the other daughter,the one who loved her. She used to tidy her house and clean the fireplace. (KL MS 1479, 134–36)

In most cases, as here, the deceased still harbours a strong desire to punish someone whohas harmed him or her. This is evidence that Greek vampires were retributive guarantorsof social cohesion, which again supports the notion that they upheld cultural capital.

Otherness and Vampirization

In her analysis of vampire narratives, Juliette Wood notes that the manner in whichGreek and Balkan cultures deal with vampires is an expression of otherness (Wood n.d.).This otherness may take various forms. Anyone who apostatizes from the OrthodoxChurch, or who is already a member of a different faith, is a visible threat, raising thepossibility of doubts regarding the validity of the cultural capital of the community. Sucha person also undermines, as it were, one of the basic institutions of the social structure—the Orthodox Church.An interesting point in these stories is associated with cultural otherness (Görog-Karady

1992, 116; Oinas 1985, 121–50). Gypsy women and strangers fall into the group of personswith a potential for becoming vampires: ‘A vampire-stranger reached Samos Island comingfrom a foreign place and married. When his wife realized that he was a vampire, hedisappeared and did not return again’ (Politis n.d., 593). The corpus of stories related tovampirized strangers is very rich and interesting. Sometimes the stories move the scene toother places: ‘a vampire went to a foreign land and married. He had children and lived likeother people’ (Politis n.d., 593). Here the local people sometimes recognize the subjects asvampires from their peculiar dietary habits, as is evident from the following examples: ‘Theyare told that he always buys black meat’ (Politis n.d., 593); ‘He never ate meat, just entrails’(Politis n.d., 595); and ‘He held the liver and his hands were stained with blood’ (Politis n.d.,597; also cf. the narrative of the vampirized soldier from the Vlachos Collection, cited earlier).In general, strangers and Gypsy women represent what is not native and embody the

social and cultural otherness that threatens the local community (Hart 1992, 21). LaurieHart argues that local cultural capital holds first place in the local hierarchy, whichcreates a tendency towards demonizing strangers who come from elsewhere and havedifferent patterns of behaviour (including dietary habits) that make the boundariesstrengthening the local identity even more visible. To regard strangers as embodying apotential threat of vampirization underlines the confusion felt by the local communityin the face of anything that cannot be classified within its cultural capital. Persons whobelong to different faiths are bearers of disorder, since their views and opinionsnecessarily differ from the worldview held by the local community. Thus the importanceof religious convictions in the make-up of cultural capital and worldview becomesapparent. In Greece, the Orthodox faith and the survivals of paganism from ancientGreece have created a system of religious convictions that form part of cultural capital.

Soil and Water

Exhumation

The stage on which everything so far discussed is both tested and given form is the graveand the graveyard. This is the physical arena in which the social crisis of death is given

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expression, while both the deceased and his or her family enter upon an extended stateof liminality, generally lasting about three years. The family of the deceased is expelledto the margins of society as a carrier of pollution that affects the community. During thelength of the period of grief and the attendant state of liminality, the family is obliged toperform all the religious and cultural practices that facilitate the completion of the finalrite of passage. This includes ritual exhumation at prescribed intervals to check for and,if necessary, prevent vampirization.The grave is important as an intermediate station on the journey of the deceased

towards integration into the world of the dead, a process which assumes various formsdepending on the specific doctrine and the local cultural capital (Muir 2000, 48). Forexample, in the Egyptian worldview, the grave is the crucial point between the twoworlds, which ‘marks the transition between them’ (Aswad 2002, 150). Such arepresentation and perception of the grave as a liminal space is generally shared by mostcultures (Gennep 1960, 147). The grave—a cavity in the soil—is the enclosed, liminalspace that holds the human body during its final rite of passage back to its original stateof non-existence, as the womb holds it during its initial one (Metcalf and Huntington1991, 114–15).Moreover, the grave constitutes the basic unit of a cemetery, which is analogous to the

relationship of a house to a neighbourhood and to a community (Barley 1995, 169). Inthis sense, the cemetery, which consists of multiple graves, defines the polluted pole thatstands in antithesis to the pure pole of the community of the living. As a result, the graveexpresses impurity and an attendant vengefulness against the living who inhabit a pureand sanctified social place (Lagopoulos 2002, 159). According to traditional thinking, asociety consists of both living and dead members (Gerouki 1996–97, 110). Consequently,the cemetery, when regarded as an ‘anti-structure’, corroborates and reinforces themaintenance of the cultural and social capital of the main structure (Turner 1974, 192–94; Muir 2000, 48). Thus, the grave has two dimensions: it is a liminal space, and it is aphysical representation of anti-structure.As a place of dangerous liminality, the grave holds the possibility that the

funerary rites of passage may not be fully successful. It is a place for hosting thehuman body until it decomposes (Danforth 1982, 61). The process of decompositionoffers tangible proof regarding the success of the journey of the deceased towardsthe world of the dead. In order to check this, the relatives exhume the body one,three, and five years after burial to look for signs among the bones that indicatewhether the deceased has been integrated into the world of the dead or whetherthis process is not yet complete—a failure that may result in the vampirization ofthe dead person: ‘The relatives of the deceased look very worried during the processof the disinterment, lest the deceased be polluted’ (Dimitrakos 1975–76, 43). If thebones are not black, or if they do not display marks, it means that the deceased hasnot become a vampire. The bones are then washed in wine (Alexiou 1974, 47–48)and reburied or placed in a special box that is shelved in the osteofylakeio(ost1ofVlakio, ‘ossuary’), a room reserved for this purpose.Besides the series of regular exhumations, there are special circumstances and

situations. The decision to exhume the corpse can be taken if several people have seen avampire, whose manifestation has disturbed the order of the community. Then theprocedure just described is followed and the relatives take note of signs presented by

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the bones. These signs may be varied: ‘Then they realized that he had become avampire. They disinterred him and they found his body filled with earth and mud’(Politis n.d., 592); or ‘Their bones are phosphorescent and so people are terrified’(Mouzakis 1989, 22).Exhumation either confirms the completion of the death ritual or reveals that the

deceased is still left exposed in an intermediate state and has taken the form of avampire. In this latter case, in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, the deceased hasdescended into Hell. In other words, the bones and the grave form the tangible proofthat the social crisis that commenced with the death of a member of the community hasnot yet been resolved. Rather, it continues in intensified form. Furthermore, therelatives are held to be responsible for this vampirization, as they did not honour thedeceased properly by carrying out the appropriate death rituals to aid his or herincorporation into the world of the dead (Muir 2000, 48). Confirmation of the fact thatthe deceased has undergone vampirization, then, has negative consequences both for theliving and for the deceased. The living are stigmatized. Consideration of the marks on thebones—which is a pagan concept—is used by the local community as a pretext for notingthe side-effects that arise from the failure to adhere faithfully to the basic principlesinforming the cultural capital of the community. Moreover, the position of the familiesof the deceased in the social structure is reduced, and their social status is seriouslydamaged. In traditional communities, status is a form of symbolic capital, which hascultural, social, and financial aspects. Members of families stigmatized by vampirismcannot contract hypergamic marriages, nor enjoy a positive presence in the public arenaof the community.

Location

The relationship between a local community and its graveyard is reflected in theorganization of space. Social space is sanctified in various manners, such as the placing ofchapels around the settlement, or the symbolic ploughing of throniasmi (uróniasmi,‘magic circles’). Supernatural entities are thus placed outside social space. Vampires/vrikolakes, however, reside in graveyards (Stewart 1991, 165), so that the grave iscapable of turning into a place of danger, where the validity of the social capital of thecommunity is either doubted or confirmed. It is also regarded as a source of illnesses,and a place of vindictive attacks and strange noises. In such a case, the extermination ofthe vampire and the purification of the soil can reinstate some sort of balance betweenthe structure (the community) and the anti-structure (the cemetery). Politis describesthe island of Samos, where the residents considered profane both the cemetery and itssoil, which hosts the dead. They also believed that this profanity could be counteractedby making a magic circle, or throniasma (uróniasma). There were many vampires inPagonda; so the villagers invited a yiteftis (ghteyth , ‘charmer’), to make a magic circlearound the cemetery. He took three oxen born to the same cow and made a magic circlearound the cemetery three times, uttering some magic words. After it, nobody sufferedvampirization. What is more, many people came across from the mainland and took soilfrom the Pagonda cemetery and took it to their own cemeteries, to avoid their own deadsuffering vampirization. Some visitors put the soil in bags and hung them on the walls oftheir houses as talismans (Politis n.d., 580).

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This is a clear illustration that among the physical factors which play a significant rolein the process of vampirization are soil and water. The former is mainly associated withthe polluted nature of the grave and the cemetery, while water is connected withpurification. Vampirization in the story of Pagonda is envisaged as a contagiousepidemic that spreads to all the graves via the soil. This undermines the complementaryrole of the anti-structure in relation to the structure. One response to such a situation isthe throniasma, which essentially transforms the cemetery into part of the encircled,‘pure’ community (Megas 1923, 489).Graveyards always form a long-term threat for the community. For this reason, they

are usually located outside settlements and care is frequently taken to ensure that astream or spring lies between community and graveyard. This is in part because water isnecessary for the thirsty soul of the deceased (Lekatsas 1957, 115). However, the mainpurpose is the washing of the hands of those who have accompanied the deceased to thecemetery, so as to avoid bringing ‘pollution’ into their homes. The funeral procession,upon its return to the house of the deceased, will take care to cross water after the burial,so as to break the chain of death (Mouzakis 1989, 42–43).A vampire may also be exterminated by transporting it to a place surrounded by

water, which acts as a means of purification. Here the water forms another kind of magiccircle, which stops the vampire from taking any action. The water serves to break downthe physical cohesion of the soil, while also creating an obstacle against the malevolentbehaviour of the vampire (Vakarelski 1960, 32). It is universally believed in Greece thatthe soul of the deceased is unable to walk on water, and the location of cemeteries on theother side of a stream from a settlement clearly illustrates this belief. Thanks to thisquality of water, vampires are frequently transferred to islands. Thus, in the Greekparadigm, the barren islands of vampires become equivalent to the islands inhabited bypolitical exiles in times of political turmoil (Kenna 2001). In general, any impurity, whenit reaches a certain threshold, is transported to an island, so as to restore tranquility tothe social structure of the community. In Athens of classical times exile calledeksostrakismos (ejostrakismó6, ‘ostracism’) used to be a way of protecting the townfrom a potential political imbalance when some leaders had acquired excessive powerwhich could be a danger for the democracy in Athens.Furthermore, Greek islands in the Aegean Sea became places for receiving political

opponents during the period of the Roman Empire. Much later, the islands that were thesmallest, most isolated, and most remote from Athens (Ai Stratis, Gyaros, Ikaria, Kythira,Leros, Makronisos) were used to exile people of leftist ideology from the 1930s (thedictatorship of Metaxas) to the civil war and the seven-year junta of 1967–1974 (Kenna2001, 31–41). Both political opponents and vampires relate to the main social structurein the same way. They threaten to destabilize it. So their essential role lies in reinforcingthe social balance by allowing the pole of impurity to be marginalized.

Body and Soul

Running through everything that we have so far considered is the presence of the bodyand soul as a pair that forms the central point of reference for the death ritual and forthe completion, or otherwise, of this ritual upon the incorporation of the deceased intothe world of the dead. The link between body and soul is a universal motif, found in all

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religions, and is a basic problem for philosophers. For Plato, in particular, the soulexists prior to the body. It comes from the world of the Forms, of eternal truth, and isincorruptible. On the other hand, the body is corruptible and is the grave of the soul,which constantly attempts to escape, in order to attain its earlier state. This it achievesonly upon death, which is to be regarded as form of liberation for the soul (Plato,Phaedo, 81b).Plato’s views introduced an extreme dualism that held sway for a considerable time. It

was, however, tempered by Christianity. As they studied the Bible, Christian theologiansand Church leaders put forward the view that body and soul are not two entities foreignto each other that simply dwell together for a certain period. Rather, they form a unity.The soul is, as it were, betrothed to the body (Alfeyef 2011, 126). Although it has oftenbeen noted that Christianity finds the body abhorrent and that St Paul stresses thehostile relationship between body and soul, neither is believed to be independent of theother.The Orthodox Church considers that a human being is composed of body and soul,

both of which will be resurrected on the Day of Judgement. Nevertheless, this progresstowards the ideal incorporation of the dead in Paradise may be hindered by the body,which is weak and liable to sin. It is not a matter of chance that most of the causes ofvampirization are to do with the sins of the body. For example, one such cause is thefailure to control the sexual instinct on religious festivals, with the fruit of the actbeing a vrikolakas. Orthodox Christianity does not actually despise the body. Its aim isto release the body from the weaknesses of the flesh that lead to sin and thus to theexclusion of the soul from the world of the dead, which is the ante-chamber toParadise, and to the prevention of the resurrection of both body and soul together(Alfeyef 2011, 375).The body is therefore a field of conflict, which decides the progress of the soul after

death. For this reason, all ritual practices concentrate on the body. The body is carefullywashed with wine, so as to facilitate its decomposition. Then it is clothed in a shroud,thus becoming a ritual object, ready for its trip to the next world. Furthermore, the bodyfunctions as evidence of the fate of the soul, which for forty days haunts the place whereit separated from the body. Exhumation is an action vital for the relationship of body tosoul. Marks on the bones or the failure of the body to decompose in the grave are proofof the inability of the body to unite itself with the soul once more. This may be due tosome sin which the person committed in life, or to the failure of the family to perform allof the necessary rites correctly.The state of the body at exhumation may be proof that the soul of the deceased has

been incorporated into the world of the dead. On the other hand, it may reveal that theperson has become a vampire, whose soul usually migrates to grotesque caricatures ofhuman bodies. Thus the soul loses the chance of uniting with the body. The variousmeans of destroying vampires, such as by burning the body or by banishing it to anisland, are confirmation of this condition. Curiously, vampire stories are not interestedin giving information about what ultimately happens to the soul and body if the vampireis successfully destroyed. Instead, these stories focus on the fact that the relatives of thevampirized dead get rid of a nightmare that had terrified them since its first appearance.The main social structure, the local community, attempts to solve the problem either inviolent fashion or by driving vampires outside the limits of social space. In this process, a

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primary role is played by the Orthodox priest, who is present at the exhumation of thedeceased who is suspected of being a vampire. Nevertheless, the social crisis, at least asregards the family of the deceased, has not been solved. The community has used thesocial crisis to demonstrate that its members should abide by the norms imposed by itscultural capital. The vampire narratives, which draw on local material, remind the wholecommunity of the social dangers confronted if the members do not follow the culturalnorms. In addition, the stigma never disappears fully, as all the vampire narrativescontribute to a social hierarchy of local families.

Conclusions

This article shows it is clear that vampire stories should be contextualized, if one is toread them correctly. Such stories speak of critical social and cultural issues. They focusupon the anti-structure—the cemetery—which is a prerequisite for the social structureitself—the community. A study of vampire stories, the types of punishment imposedupon vampires, and the causes of vampirism provides a solid basis for reconstructing thecultural capital. The cemetery and the vampires, in the context of the view of death as ajourney that is complete when the deceased is integrated into the underworld, makeup one pole of the antithesis: that of impurity. The vampires’ appearance comes to beregarded as undeniable proof of the smouldering social crisis caused by failure to adhereto social and cultural norms. To put it another way: the presence of the vampire makes asocial crisis tangible, for the vampire is the visible indication of such a crisis. Thus, a caseof vampirism actually reinforces social introspection and belief in the values of thegroup.

Notes1In addition to the common Greek word for vampire, vrikolakas, there are other terms that can be used assynonyms: tymbanieos (swollen), alytos (unresolved), sarkomenos (incarnated), katahanas (gobbling up), andanakathoumenos (sitting up in the grave-bed) (Lawson 1910, 377). Vourvoulakos, vourdoulakas, and vourkolakasare variants of the word vrikolakas (Politis n.d., 589).2The Hellenic Folklore Research Centre Archive in Athens is known by the acronym K.E.E.L. in Greek. I wouldlike to thank Dr Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki, Head of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, and DrMaria Androulaki, researcher at the Centre, who facilitated my access to and research in the archives.3While some Greeks believed that only Muslims became vampires, and thus avoided passing Muslimcemeteries (Akoglou 1938, 330), the opposite was maintained on the Cycladic island of Amorgos, wherethe abbot of the monastery claimed that the incidence of vampires indicates the correctness of the faithof the Greek Orthodox church, as no one of a different faith has become a vampire after death(Simopoulos 1984, 540).

Archival Sources

KL MS 2442. Alexandros Adamidis Collection, Damaskinea, Kozani. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (KL),Athens, 1962.

KL MS 1608. Nikolaos Dalianis Collection, Orion, Evia. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (KL), Athens, 1930.

KL MS 1479. M. Ioannidou Collection, Skopelos island. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (KL), Athens, 1942.

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KL MS 2301. Dimitrios Loukatos Collection, Redina, Karditsa. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (KL), Athens,1959.

KL MS 2394. Georgios K. Spyridakis Collection, Edessa, Pella. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (KL), Athens,1961.

KL MS 2042. Anastasios D. Vlachos Collection, Vareleoi, Marmari, Evia. Hellenic Folklore Research Centre(KL), Athens, 1953.

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Biographical Note

Evangelos Avdikos is Professor of Folklore in the Department of History, Archaeology, and SocialAnthropology at the University of Thessaly in Greece. His main research interests are culturalidentities, rituals, and the supernatural.

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