Vompir

In Bulgaria and Macedonia there’s a vampire spirit called Vompir or in the case of a female Vompiras.

The Vompir is created when a person isn’t buried or mourned properly, if one dies in disgrace or in an unnatural way: childbirth or suicide.

The Vompir can enter a body of a corpse and possesses it, at night. Once the Vompir has control of the corpse, it animates and seeks out a sleeping person.

The reanimated corpse then suffocates and drains its prey of blood. If you find yourself under a Vompir’s attack you must pray to the god of darkness and night, Troyan, or the goddess of beauty and love, Lada, for deliverance.

The Vompir can cause nightmares and create droughts and divert rivers. To destroy a vompir, it has to be in a corpse, capture, and decapitate it. Its feet and hands must be chopped off.
The body needs to be tied up tightly, then stabbed through the heart with an Aspen Wood stake. A Raven’s claw can be driven into the skull from behind the night ear. The body must be buried under a large millstone.

Oh. What a vampire. Bella Lugosi

Consumption

I’ve been so sick.

Last week in between bouts of coughing to death and NyQuil induced highs, I tried to tell you all about Consumption, sometimes it’s call the vampire decease. I wrote the post during the few hours I was awake and thought it was scheduled to go out last week. It wasn’t. It’s a good thing because it was so messed up, it didn’t make any sense.

Moral of this story, don’t write while high or dying from consumption.  On a side note you’ll all be glad to know I’ve risen again. (wink)

 

Consumption

Consumption is what we now call Tuberculosis. In the late 1800’s it was deadly and feared.

Consumption would cause the inflected to become weak, their skin gets pale, and they stop eating. Conditions get worse at night as they cough up blood.

A common belief in Europe and New England was that the deceased would consume the life of their living realitives When various family members would become sick and die, undead activity was blamed.

Some ways to stop attacks were: 1 turn the body over in its grave, and 2 burn organs and decapitate the bodies before re-burial.

The deceased (in the early 1890s) were likely not called vampires by their families. The word Vampire wasn’t common at that time. It was thought that a cure for consumption was to drink a vampire’s blood or a mix of burnt heart (sometimes the liver was included) with water. It didn’t work.