Strigoi; the real Vampires.

What we, nowadays, refer to as a Vampire is nothing more than a common misconception on our part, of the real myth. The undead, specifically the sort that preys on blood, have existed in every nation, region, zone or small hamlet, on the planet. They have infested our imaginations in every conceivable language.

After a time, the image of a monster suckling on someone’s blood was so gruesome and shudder-some that it was easily adapted into the fictional makeup of every conceivable dweller of the night. Every shadowy creature suddenly developed a certain taste for human blood. As such, the prime characteristic that single-out the vampiric nature of Lamashtu, had become a fashionable tendency.

From the Dacians, an Indo-European populace, located in the area in and around the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea, the mythology of the undead, rising from the grave, with the propensity for draining victims of their vitality, was first laid to script.

The Romanian Vampire, or the creature we normally cast in the role, was originally called: Strigoi. Unlike the swathe debonaire aristocrat or enchanting seductress we normally associate with the stereotype, these beings were only a step above a shambling pile of fetid meat. They resembled more the modern depiction of the Zombie, than the pale sexual beings made famous by Anne Rice.  

The Strigoi would surge up from his grave, stumble into town, bring misery, death and illness in his passing wake, only to return to his abode moments before sunrise.

Every ache and ailment that befell on the community, from an upsurge of the Black Plague, to a string of killings, was laid at the Strigoi’s feet. If the crops did not meet the yearly standard, or the weather would not clear, there was no doubt in the peasant’s mind that a powerful Strigoi was in their midst. 

Through out Europe and part Eurasia, particularly in the middle ages, there was an epidemic outbreak of tales concerning these hellions. Specially, if you consider that fact that, according to scholars of that ignorant Era, ‘strigoism’ was a frequent and proven scientific affliction.

According to many naturalists, one was destined to become an accursed if he or she displayed any of the following attributes:

To have been the 7th child of the same sex in a family.

Have been bitten by a werewolf or another Strigoi.

Having been born a redhead.

Lead a life of sin.

Die without being married, or by execution, or by suicide, or cursed.

Having been born with a caul; a piece of discardable membrane or placenta over the head.

Court the Devil, or his minions, in any way.

If your corpse was jumped over by an animal, in the space of time before your burial.

Having wounds that had not been treated with boiling water.

Some cultures believed that you had to be buried upside down, or with scythe or sickle, to prevent such a fate.

And the list is quite interminable; over a 100 criteria could transform you into a monster.

It is no wonder that vampires were such a common occurrence during our less enlightened periods.

Excerpt: The Wraith of The Obelisk- L.J. Gomez.