A vampire older than Dracula
Strigoi are evil spirits in Romanian Mythology who rise from the grave and terrorize people. They can take any animal form, be invisible, and live by drinking the blood and gaining the vitality of their victims. (Sound familiar?)
Strigoi is the inspiration for vampires which have never lost their popularity over time. Likewise, the Dracula novel, which is the holy book of vampirism in popular culture, is a modern strigoi interpretation of Bram Stoker.
Jure Grando Alilovic, who died in 1656, was recorded as the first strigoi case. It is said that 16 years after he died, he rose from his grave every night, knocked on the doors of the houses, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house died within the next few days.
Although the villagers caught him and pierced his heart with a hawthorn stick, they couldn’t kill him as the stick bounced off of his chest. Eventually, the whole people gathered with the led by the priest of the village and opened Grando’s tomb and sawed the head off the corpse. After this incident, the peace returned to the village.
- Strigoi can also be a living man, born under certain conditions:
- Born as the seventh child of the same sex in a family
- Lead a life of sin
- Die without being married
- Die by execution for perjury
- Commits suicide
- Die with the curse of a witch
- To be protected against Strigoi is as follows:
- Exhume the strigoi.
- Remove its heart and cut it in two.
- Drive a nail in its forehead.
- Place a clove of garlic under its tongue.
- Smear its body with the fat of a pig killed on St. Ignatius’ Day.
- Turn its body face down so that if the strigoi were ever to wake up it would be headed to the afterlife.
- A village still in thrall to Dracula, The Guardian
- Strigoi, Wikipedia
- In Search of Dracula, The History of Dracula and Vampires, McNally, Raymond T.; Florescu, Radu R.,1994
- Strigoi, fandom.com