We have accounts of revenants dating from the 12th century or so. William of Newburgh (English canon from Bridlington):
> Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames, it was announced to the guests what was going on, who, running thither, enabled themselves to testify henceforth to the circumstances. When that infernal hell-hound had thus been destroyed, the pestilence which was rife among the people ceased, as if the air, which had been corrupted by the contagious motions of the dreadful corpse, were already purified by the fire which had consumed it.
This was allegedly a sinner who died and after death he was seen returning from the grave, “accompanied by a pack of barking dogs” and attacking people in the streets at night. Generally, it was supposed that some demon or evil spirit had possessed a corpse, reanimating it and returning it to the world to prey on the living. They were seen as spreading pestilences. After death, one sign that they had become such was if the body was exhumed and was found to be bloated, as if it were still living and gorging on human blood. Burning the heart or (in some cases) removing the head, was how to dispose of one. They were also associated with (and were sometimes said to appear in the form of) wolves or dogs, or crows.
In his *Daemonologie* , King James states that a devil may possess a corpse and return to haunt the living, having intercourse with them at night or stealing their bodily fluids:
> There is it which I told right now, would prove and strengthen my argument of the devils entering in the dead bodies of the faithful. For if he is permitted to enter in their living bodies, even when they are joined with the soul: how much more will God permit him to enter in their dead carrions, which is no more man, but the filthy and corruptible case of man.
Though these legends exist, the term “vampire” was not used to describe them until the 19th century; it being an Eastern European word unknown elsewhere at the time.
Lastly, I should make a mention of the Highgate Vampire. This was a bizarre case which occurred in the early 1970’s in Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian cemetery in north London. After a local newspaper received several reports of people sighting a terrifying apparition near the tombs, it was claimed by the locals to be a vampire. On Friday 13th a large mob of thrill seekers gathered outside the gates at night and began scaling the walls in an attempt to hunt the vampire. Needless to say, the local authorities were *not* amused by this sudden attention, but it helped boost tourism to Highgate (previously an overgrown and abandoned site), leading to its renovation and re-opening to the public for tours as well as burials.
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It’s the same in Germany. In fact all of Europe, even the Balkans.
The blood-sucking modern vampire is an invention of Bram Stroker.
In folklore it’s based on individual fantasies thus highly diverse but sharing the same trope of an evil dead leaving the grave and weakening the life force of the living. Mixed with other tropes of monsters in each culture.
The Balkan vampire takes a special role as it was the superstition remaining prominent in this more remote region of Europe during the enlightenment.
When Austria managed to drive back the Turks and settled Balkan people from the Ottonman Empire as frontier defendors, news about vampirism met with the recently developed newspaper.
They spread around leading to a vampire epidemic in Central Europe during the 18th century.
This in turn inspired British romanticists of the 19th century to write famous novels like Dracula which in turn became international bestsellers influencing back to the Balkans of today.
The best German equivalent is probably the [Nachzehrer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachzehrer). Doesn’t even have to leave the grave to attack the life force of its still living family. Very efficient.
Vrykolakas is what we call a vampire in Greece. They are very different though, at least from their literary / pop culture counterparts.
Here are some of their definitive traits.
1. Surest way to become a Vrykolakas, was via excommunication by the Church.
2. Another way is by not receiving proper funeral rites.
3. Vrykolakas eats the flesh of the living. He can even eat normal food but prefers human flesh.
4. Vrykolakas is not destroyed by sunlight and he can come out in the day just fine.
5. It’s actually only Saturday that a Vrykolakas is powerless and has to stay in his grave.
6. He could only be destroyed by burning his corpse or by exorcising him. Nothing else could stop him.
7. He cannot cross sea water though, so sone times, desperate people would move corpses suspected of being a Vrykolakas on tiny isles, to trap them there.
8. Looks varied. Sometimes he looked so frightful that one could die of fright just by seeing him. Other times he looked human enough that if you didn’t know him you could not tell the difference. Appearance sometimes had to do with how he became a Vrykolakas.
9. He was capable of performing a vast array of supernatural feats such as moving with superhuman speed, poltergeist activity, cursing humans to die merely for answering him, transforming into an animal or becoming invisible, etc.
10. A Vrykolakas would always haunt his own family first. The first thing they would do once fresh out of their graves, would be to return home. But surely enough, his evil would expand and eventually affect the lives of everyone in his community.
We didn’t really have different vampires
We did have a few Ghoul like beings though
Упырь (upir) is basically where the most popular vampire stereotype came from, even the word “vampire” originates from this. Restless dead (usually the one that was cursed, died violentlly or practiced witchcraft in life) that looks like human, sneaks into your house at night and drinks blood from you or your cattle and then returns to his grave.
Wąpierz. Which then travelled to Romania, becoming “vampir” and then Bram Stoker went to Romania and popularised the “copy”. So now we say “wampir” instead.
The closest would be our politicians, but so far empirical evidence shows they are not deterred by holy water or garlic, alas
Icelandic folklore doesn’t have any vampire-like creatures in the sense of sucking blood or life-force, although we do have revenants – they just behave more like ghosts or poltergeists. The only creature of Icelandic folklore that I can think of that sucks anything is the *tilberi*, a human rib animated by blasphemous magic to steal milk by sucking it out of sheep and cows and regurgitating it into a container provided by its mistress. It, in turn, suckles on the blood of its mistress through a hidden teat somewhere on her body.
This is a lovely write-up, thank you!
[Meçkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mhachkay) (a similar word exists also in Tatar and Azeri) is our vampire analogue. It seems to be a malevolent undead being that not only sucks people’s bloods, but also eats the insides. They have quite a few things in common with vampires in terms of how to get rid of them.
I didn’t know this before, I had to look it up. Now I learned something new 🙂
Upir’ and Yrka.
The first one is similar to what you describe. The second is a suicide who cannot rest in peace. He drinks a person’s blood and life force to “live his own.” Hunts at night, mostly in the fields. Knows how to imitate the voices of the victim’s loved ones.It looks like a corpse with ulcers, sharp teeth and glowing eyes. He is afraid of fire, prayers and protective ancestors.
In Irish folklore, the most obvious is [the Banshee/bean-síghe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banshee).
She appears when heralding the death of a family member or someone close to you by shrieking, screaming or wailing. As a kid growing up in Ireland Ireland, Banshees were very creepy to hear about.
I don’t think we have anything close to a vampire, usually french folkloric monsters are big beasts, nasty lutins or fairies.
The only thing vaguely close would be the Ankou in Britanny, which is a celtic-breton god of death and according to the tale he’s either a skeleton or an old livid man dressed with black traditionnal outfit, wearing a huge scythe and coming to people’s house by night with a rotten carriage and undead horse to take people when their time to go has come. Some popular representation [here](https://legrandcercleceltique.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ANKOU-666.jpg) and [there](https://www.dol-celeb.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ankou.jpg). Funnily enough in some comics and popular shows he’s often portrayed as a sinister yet unharmful creature just coming to do his job but no way he would take a life by himself
Upiór, Upir, Wieszczy, Strzyga, Wąpierz, Zmora, Mara, Bezkost.
The belief in undead was strong among slavs, most of them come from pre-christian times, but people stayed afraid of vampires even centuries after christianization (some argue that outlawing burning of bodies made it even stronger).
I think we basically invented the vampire funreals (mutilating corpses so they won’t come back) and people coming back from grave was accepted as real up to 20th century.
There is this story about peasant in interwar Poland that beheaded his newborn daughter because he thought she was born a vampire.
Slavic folktales and romanian strigoi stories are main inspiration for modern popculture vampire I think.