Vampires
"There was a time when vampires were as common as leaves of grass, or
berries in a pail, and they never kept still, but wandered round
at night
among the people. They walked about and joined the evening
gatherings
in the villages, and, when their were many young people together,
the
vampires could carry out their habit of inspiring fear, and
sucking human
blood like leeches."
"Once a strigoi [i.e., a vampire] turned into a handsome
young man and a young girl fell in love with him. They were
married, but the girl also wanted a religious wedding. He
rejected this idea. Her parents insisted, so he agreed to go
to
the church, but when they emerged from the church he
looked at his wife in a strange way, baring his teeth. She
became afraid and told her mother about it. Her mother said,
'Don't be afraid. He loves you. So that's why he bared his
teeth.' When their parents came to visit them, they couldn't
find them. They had locked themselves in, but the people
could see them through the window. He was sucking her
blood. When the people saw it, they shot him through the
window."
There are also cases where undead vampires who have survived long enough after their burial reach a stage where they can not only
pass as normal mortal humans, but can successfully maintain a regular job
and marriage to a mortal woman, and raise children.
"If the vampire is not recognized as such, and rendered innocuous [i.e.: if it is not recognized that a person dead
and buried has become a vampire, and steps such as exhuming the corpse and driving a stake through its heart or cremating it are not taken], it goes on with its evil ways for seven years. First it destroys its relations, then it destroys men
and animals in its village and in its country, next it passes
into another country, or to where another language is spoken, and
becomes a man again. He marries, and has children, and the
children, after they die, all become vampires and eat the relations of their mother."
After seven to twelve years from the time of burial, the strigoi, the Romanian vampire, will have reached a stage where he is no longer tied to his grave, and will go forth in the world, moving to another village, marrying, and raising a family. At the beginning of this phase, the strigoi ceases to prey upon
humans but instead attacks wild and domestic animals. But then he reaches the
point where he can sustain himself on a normal diet and it is then that
he goes off to another village where he passes as a normal mortal human.
But even when the strigoi is living incognito in another village with
another family and doesn't have to take nourishment from the living, he is still
bound by the requirement of living for short periods of time as a vampire.
Usually, these times are from Friday night until Sunday morning. During
this time, he might find a resting place in a nearby cemetery or go cavorting
with other strigoi. Being bound by this necessity of joining his own
kind for this period each week, this type of strigoi must learn to be very
cautious about his doings so as not to arouse suspicions about his true
nature. This is a very hard thing to do for a long time, and also these strigoi
are not affected by sickness or aging, so they have the reputation of
being nomads. They wander into a village or town, take a wife, have
children, and eventually find it necessary to wander again and make a new
life somewhere else.
Horton gives several tales about the Greek vampire, the vrykolakas
that he heard during his travels among the Greek isles. One of these
involves the advanced class of undead vampire, though here it takes the
vampire little more than a week to reach the advanced stage. He then
leaves his home island and goes to another where establishes himself as the proprietor of a general store, marries a mortal woman, and has
children. Here too the vampire, after he reaches the advanced stages,
regresses from Friday night to Sunday. But he actually returns to his
original grave on his home island during this time.
According to St. Clair and Brophy, the Bulgarians in the village
that they themselves were then currently living in believed that nine days
after a person predisposed to become an obour is buried, "he returns to
upper earth in aeriform shape", invisible except that in the dark he
gives off sparks "like those from a flint and steel", and in the light he
casts a shadow. His harm is confined to such activities as roaring out in
a loud voice or calling out cottage dwellers in endearing terms and then
beating them black and blue, and entering cottages to turn things topsy
turvy like a poltergeist, spits blood on the floors, and smears cow dung
everywhere. But St. Clair and Brophy add that, after forty days from burial,
the obour arises from the grave in bodily form and is able to pass himself
off as an ordinary mortal human being "living naturally and honestly."
They give as an example an episode alleged to have happened thirty
years before in the village they themselves were living in. According to
what the villagers told them, a stranger arrived in the village,
established himself in a trade, and married a wife. The newly wed wife's only complaint
was that every night he stayed out until dawn. It was soon noticed that
there were many dead horses and cattle about, partially eaten. This came to
an end, but then cattle grew sick and died, and it was noticed that the
blood had been drained out of them. When the villagers learned from the
stranger's wife that her husband was always out all night, they suspected
that he was a vampire responsible for the animal deaths They examined him
and found that he had only one true nostril - a sure sign that he was
a vampire. So, they bound him, took him to a hill outside the
village, and burned him alive.
