Upiór

Upiór is the Polish form of the old East and West Slavic name for a corpse that leaves its grave, a close relative of the word 'vampire'. In village belief it is less an aristocratic bloodsucker than a decaying neighbour who suffocates sleepers, kills livestock and sometimes just comes home to work. Apotropaic burials across Poland and Ukraine, with severed heads, nailed bodies and objects in the mouth, reflect the measures taken against it. It is the eastern European walking dead in its original, pre-literary form.12