Kozlak

What happens when a child is weaned before its time and dies as a result?
In the Dalmatin region of Croatia the dead child becomes a a Kozlak.

The Kozlak raises from the dead and acts like a poltergeist breaking and throwing kitchen items, shape-shifting unto a bat or carrion animal. It will attack live stock and feed from it.

While in a solid but nondescript form it can be hypnotized by a branch of Hawthorn. While in a trance it can be stabbed in the heart with a branch of Hawthorn or a ritually blessed daggar. Its best if a Franciscian monk does the killing.

Eretik

Eretik
Russian folklore believes any dying person can be possessed before death a witch will reanimate the possessed body. The body will become an Eretik or “heretic”.
Other ways of becoming an Eretik are living life as a heretic, selling your soul to the devil, sleeping on a grave, or making inappropriate noises in a bathhouse.

As soon as the vampire is created, it begins its hunt of consuming flesh and blood first from its family, then from others. Its feedings will make people die.
Eretiks have the most vicious look that anyone who sees his angered expression will die.
It lives in dry riverbeds where it routinely performs Black Masses. It’s most active at night and in spring and fall.
While this vampire is, a living being it must be killed by traditional vampire killing methods: a stake through the heart followed by beheading and burning the remains to ash.

 

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Blut Avssauger

The Blut Avssauger or “drinker of blood” is a vampire revenant from the folklore of Bavaria, Bosnia and Germany.

Blut Aussauger is similar to the Bluats Avger, but there are enough differences to be a separate species. They may share an ancestor.

Blut Avssauger can convert people if a human eats dirt from its grave (by force or trickery.) A person can become a Blut Aussauger if they eat meat killed by a wolf, commits suicide, dies unbaptized, dies a witch, leads a immoral life, or if a nun walks over his grave.

His nightly search of human blood reveals his true form. Waxy pale skin, large eyes, and slightly hairier than a normal person, are normal vampire characteristics I’ve already told you about.

The Blut Aussauger has no skeletal system, this gives its supernatural strength a little extra because it’s movements aren’t hindered. It also allows it to attack from any angle or location.

It can also shape-shift into a bat, dog, rat, snake, and wolf.

Sunlight and garlic can keep this vampire away, but so can black dogs that have eyes painted in white on their heads. You can also hang some Hawthorn or smear garlic paste in your window if you don’t want to paint white eyes on your dog’s head. If you palnt Hawthorn on your property it will keep the Blut Avssauger off your land.

Garlic is important in killing the Blut. Trick or force feed it some garlic that will weaken it enough to be able to stake it through the heart. Holy Water and of course garlic need to be placed in the grave. You should burn incense during the burial.

If you can get some garlic in the Blut Avssauger’s mouth prolong exposure to sunlight will also kill it.

Got to love Bella Lugosi

Witching Hour Werewolf Style

Upyr

A vampire revenant in Russia is called an Upyr or Oupyr. This vampire is created when a heretic, sorcerer or witch dies.

It can also be created when a werewolf and witch have a baby.

The Upyr looks like a normal person. It’s active during the hours of noon to midnight. It attacks people in their own homes, killing the children first, then the parents.

It drains his victims of blood, then using iron like teeth it chews into the chest to eat the heart. Its teeth are its greatest asset and it uses them to gnaw through the frozen ground during the winter to escape its own grave.

Destroying this creature is difficult. The only way to find its grave is to attach a string to the Upyr’s clothing when it flees from an attack. –Easier said than done- Follow the string to the grave.

Soak the ground –all of it completely- With holy water. The Upyr must be staked through the heart to keep it in its grave. –It must be done in one blow or the creature will rise again.

Another way is to decapitate it and burn the corpse to ashes.

The Belated Witching Hour.

So it’s been called to my attention there wasn’t a Witching Hour post this month.

I’m so sorry for the ooops. I’ll make it up…

Here is an interesting witch myth I just heard for you today…

The Black Walnut Tree

If you suspect a witch is hexing you. You must find a black walnut tree. Draw her picture on it.

Mark her heart with an X. Hammer a nail into the X, just a little every day.

The witch or someone she sends in her place will try to borrow something from you.
Don’t lend it!
Continue to hammer the nail farther into the tree something will happen either the witch will stop hexing you; or she will try to borrow something from you.

You must not lend her anything, the protection will stop if you do or she will die.

All right, now my questions. What if you can’t draw worth squat? Does it work as long as you know who it is? I hope so. What if you can’t find a black walnut tree? Could any tree do or would any nut tree do?

What do you think about this myth? I’m starting to believe that what we’re told in myths to protect ourselves are just silly stories to make us feel safe.

A stake through the heart?

Okay, so we know that a stake through the heart kills a vampire.

I want to know WHY?

If a vampire is “undead” and no longer has a beating heart, how would a stake through the heart kill him?

So when I started writing my vampire story (Awakened By Death is what I’m calling it) I researched this heartbeat thing.

First , we all agree that the point of staking the heart is to stop the heart from pumping blood right? Yes. Okay. So, you’re being chased by a vampire you just happen to have some sharp object and are alive and close enough to shove that object into the vampire’s chest. Oh Yeah! You just killed your attacker, right? But wait! His heart doesn’t beat. He glares at you, pulls that stake out of his own chest and proceeds to see you as a steak.  Yummy, a fiesty one, he thinks. So all you accomplished was really pissing him off. NOW you’re in for it. Prepare to die at the hands of an Angry and hungry vampire.

OR! Maybe you are lucky and our beliefs of vampires are wrong and he does have a beating heart. Not beating as your’s or mine (some 60 – 72 beats per minute, more like under 25 beats per minute) but beating none the less. That stake sticking out of his chest, stops him for enough time that you are able to get away. (HOPEFULLY) We all know vampires have incredible rates of recovery.

Many ancient legends believed in living vampires, so we would have to agree there is a chance of a beating heart. The idea of killing a vampire with a stake only makes sense if the heart beats. Also we have to think why a vampire needs to feed off living blood. Most agree that he needs the blood of the living to keep him in a state of reanimation. Once the blood he’s fed off of gets to the stomach, what happens?

Somehow that blood has to move from the stomach to the rest of the body to allow him to move. I read somewhere that the muscles move the blood to various places in the body, instead of the heart. However, that would mean (under normal circumstances) that the muscles would have to spasm to push the blood through the veins. Yet, we never see or hear of a vampire having constant muscle twitches in able to move. Normally the muscles aren’t able to do that job of moving the blood, so either that was very wrong or Vampires have some special rule for their blood flow.

Please don’t tell me they don’t need blood moving through the body! They would not be able to move if blood was not in their whole body some way or other. Unless you want to say Vampires are a fictional character and as such don’t have to follow any of biology’s rules! In which case I would smile slyly and turn. “To each his own.” But, if you are like me and want to believe in the possibility of a true creature…

Leave me your thoughts. Lets get deep into this.