Rune Oracle

Greek folklore

Vrykolakas

The restless dead of Greek villages

the restless deadimproper burialcursesvillage fear

Also called Vourkolakas, Tympanaios, Katachanas (Crete).

The tale

The vrykolakas is a dead person who does not rest, because of a curse, excommunication, a violent death or an improper burial, and whose body does not decay. He was said to leave the grave at night, knock on doors and call people by name; whoever answered would die. The traveller Tournefort described a vrykolakas panic on Mykonos in 1701, and the scholar Leo Allatius wrote about the belief in the 1640s. Remedies ranged from prayers and exorcism to burning the body.

When they are met

  • In the forty days after death, when the soul was thought to linger
  • On Saturdays, when he was said to rest in his grave
  • At the exhumation of bones after a few years

Staying on their good side

  • None are traditional to him; proper funeral rites and memorials for the dead were the protection
  • Boiled wheat (kollyva) at memorial services, as in Orthodox custom

Honouring them, or keeping safe

  1. Honour the dead with proper memorials so they rest in peace, which is what the belief was really about.
  2. Do not answer a knock the first time it comes at night, as the old saying goes, if you enjoy the custom.
  3. Treat the stories with understanding; they explained grief, disease and fear of the dead.

What their tales teach

  • Understanding Greek funerary customs
  • The history of vampire beliefs
  • Respect for the dead

Symbols

  • swollen corpse
  • unrotted body
  • knock at the door

The name comes from a Slavic word for werewolf; the belief is Greek folklore, not ancient myth.

Sources

  • Leo Allatius, De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus (1645)
  • Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Relation d'un voyage du Levant (1717)
  • J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910)

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