VAMPIRE (Sere., Bulg. eampir, Russ. vain pini, Little Russ. ram pyr, alter, White Russ. upir, vampire, probably from North Turk. abet., witch). In Slavic folklore, a corpse that rises at night from his grave, and drinks the blood of the living, which he obtains by sucking, with out arousing the sleeper. He may not only ap pear in human form, but can assume the shape of a dog, cat, toad, or any blood-sucking The victim loses appetite. wastes away, and after a few days expires without any visible dis ease. The corpse of the destroyer, hieing thus supplied, remains pliable and life-like. The veins are full, the cheeks ruddy and plump, and the mouth is go•y—properties which enable an inquirer to ascertain the vampire quality. The most effective remedies against the vampire are cremation of the corpse. or nailing it by a thorn or aspen stake driven at one blow through the breast to the bottom of the grave to prevent the body from wandering. Yet another mode of kill ing the vampire is to chop off the head of the corpse with a grave-digger's shovel.
Communities as well as individuals may be at tacked by the vampire. In general, children are first destroyed. The demon may, however• be traced by sprinkling salt on the floor of the house which it haunts. Vampirism is sel dom a matter of choice, but a necessity depend ing on criminal character, or some other reason which is likely to render a spirit uneasy in the grave. Thus witches, wizards, suicides. children of the devil, or illegitimate offspring of parents themselves illegitimate, are vampires, while the leap of a cat or the flight of a bird across a corpse may force even the innocent dead to be come a vampire. Vampirism is, moreover.
garded as infectious, since, it is believed, a man who has been the object of attack is himself thereby turned into a vampire. The practice of burying murderers and other criminals with a stake through the body was evidently brought about by dread of their turning into vampires: as regards Suicides, this custom was only abolished in England by a statute of George IV. A survival of the super stition has been cited in New England as late as the first half of the nineteenth century, while in 1870-71 there were several trials for vampir ism in West Prussia, Pomerania, and Neck lenburg.
The belief in vampires is part of the wide spread fear of malignant ghosts (see Guosys), especially the Laurin (q.v.), fostered by the mediaeval belief of the Greek Catholic Church that all who (lied under ecclesiastical ban were kept alive by the devil for the ruin of their surviving friends. The belief is an ancient one. treated by Philostratus and Phlegon of Trallos, by in his Brant von KorintThand in operas by Palma ( 1812 ) , Hart ( 1820 ) , Marselmer (1828), and Von Lindpainter (1828). Consult: Hertz, Der Wcricolf (Stuttgart, 1802) ; Ralston, Russian Folk-talcs (London, 1873).