Vampir (South Slavic)

The vampir of the Balkans is the original vampire, and in its folk form it is a walking corpse and not a caped aristocrat. It rises from a neighbour's grave, takes forty days to become solid and preys on its family and village until the body is staked, beheaded or burned. Austrian officials documented the belief in occupied Serbia in the 1720s and 1730s, and the word spread across Europe. It is included here as the base tradition from which the literary vampire and the plague-like walking dead both descend.12