Excerpt seven: “In Želazo there was a man and he was a vjìešce [variously translated as vampire, sorcerer, soothsayer, witch or warlock – the etymology is from Common Slavic *ved-io- in which the root means ‘knowledge’]. When he died, they then kept him in the Gardno church graveyard. And then in broad daylight he walked in the fields, in the yards, and in the cottages just as he wished.”30
Excerpt eight: “In February 1870 the wife of Mr Gehrke, the forest keeper at Pniewo in the West Prussian District of Schwetz, passed away and was buried in the Biechowo cemetery. Immediately thereafter her husband and her children as well became violently ill. There exists in this (mostly Polish) region the superstition that, when a family is beset by sudden illness after the death of a family member, the deceased is to be blame in that he comes for his relatives so that he will be reunited with them in the grave.”31
Excerpt nine: “‘I’, says Gengell, S.J. in Eversio Atheismi [Editor: The Destruction of Atheism], ‘have frequently heard from credible eyewitnesses, that human bodies have been found not only incorrupt, flexible, and ruddy for a long time, but, moreover, the head, the mouth, the tongue, the eyes sometimes move. The winding-sheet in which they are wrapped is undone and parts of the body are devoured. At time it is also noted that a body of this kind rises again from the grave, wanders past crossroads and houses showing himself now to one, now to another, and also attacks many, trying to suffocate them.”32
Excerpt ten: “We six went out to guard the cattle-run. Toward eleven we heard a snicker from along the stockade fence and saw a man pass by. It was a vampire (upir/opir). He was headed for the cattle-run and set about chasing the horses, neighing like a horse. Two of us see him but the other four do not. But they notice him later without us. At first they took us for fools, and later, after they had seen him themselves, they said that it was true enough. The vampire can be a man, a horse, or a dog… When one goes fishing, one gives him some fish to eat. In the end he takes enough fish to fill a cart. But one must not speak to him.”33
The Vampire as Scapegoat
From the above excerpts, we can gauge some interesting things – there’s significant daemon contamination with the mora (nightmare spirit) whenever there is mention of suffocating or visiting at night, some contamination with a water spirit (the mention of giving fish to eat), as well as ghost or revenant contamination (when the supposed vampire does nothing but walk about in the daylight after death, without actually attacking anyone), and also contamination with the poltergeist (knocking on doors, moving objects). It’s an expected development in folklore – the lines often blur between the concepts of various monsters.
Significant, too, is something of extraordinary importance to our understanding of this creature. In Slavic folklore, the vampire is usually inferred, not by actual sightings of a vampire, but by the presence of disease, pestilence, or the wasting away of purported victims. Any explanation of vampires in Slavic folklore must not depend upon conditions that affect the so-called vampire, because in almost every instance it is the victim who defines the existence of a vampire. Therefore, the explanations ought to focus upon this aspect, not upon porphyria, catatonia, and so on. If such conditions ever played a part in the development of the Slavic vampire cults, it must have been peripheral at best.
31 Globus XIX Braun-schweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn (1871): p. 96.
32 Rzaczynski, Father Gabriel. Historia Naturalis Curiosa Regni Poloniae. Sandomir, 1721, p. 365.
33 Bogatyrev, P. "Les Apparitions et les êtres surnaturels dan les croyances populaires de la Russie subcarpathique." Le Monde Slave, No. 7, Paris: Librarie Félix Alcan, July 1926: p. 40.