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Vrykolakas

Also called: βρυκόλακας, vourkolakas, vorvolakas, katakhanas
Folklore and mythUndeadA curse1500 to 1899

The vrykolakas is the Greek undead: an undecayed, bloated corpse that walks out of its grave to plague its village. Seventeenth-century churchmen and travellers described islanders exhuming and burning suspect bodies, and Tournefort's eyewitness account of such a case on Mykonos became famous across Europe. Greek and Ottoman-era graves with corpses nailed or weighted down show how old and how practical the fear was. Its contagious, door-to-door spread makes it one of the closest folkloric relatives of the modern zombie plague.12

⚔️ Battle it
First recorded
1645
Described by Leo Allatius in 1645; Tournefort witnessed a 'slaying' on Mykonos in 1701
Origin
Greek
Greece, Cyprus
What causes it
A curse
Greek tradition blames excommunication above all, along with grave sin, a parent's curse, burial in unconsecrated ground or an animal jumping over the corpse.
How you become one
Dying excommunicate or cursed; anyone who answers its first knock dies within days and becomes one too.
Intelligence
Some intelligence
Weak spots
  • cremation
  • exorcism by a priest
  • impaling, beheading or cutting up the corpse
  • opening the grave on a Saturday, when it is at rest
  • never answering a door on the first knock

When did it first appear?

Ancient world
Middle Ages
1500 to 1899
1900 to 1967
1968 to 1999
2000 to 2009
2010 to today
1645

Described by Leo Allatius in 1645; Tournefort witnessed a 'slaying' on Mykonos in 1701

field notes

What the sources say

1

The body does not decay but swells taut like a drum and turns ruddy12

2

The name is borrowed from a Slavic word that originally meant werewolf12

3

It crushes or suffocates sleepers by sitting on them12

4

Some accounts make it an eater of flesh, especially human livers, rather than a blood-drinker12

5

During the famine of 1941-42 some Greek families beheaded relatives who had to be buried outside cemeteries, to stop them rising12

Sources

  1. Vrykolakas - Wikipedia
  2. Vampire folklore by region - Wikipedia

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

Folklore from the same lands

Erichtho's reanimated soldierRoman (literary), 61PhilinnionAncient Greek, 150The corpse of ThelyphronRoman (literary), 170Vrykolakas of MykonosGreek, 1701BouplagosAncient Greek / Roman, 150PolykritosAncient Greek, 150

Same era: 1500 to 1899

JiangshiChinese, 1789Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750StrigoiRomanian, 1714Vampir (South Slavic)South Slavic (Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian), 1725AbhartachIrish, 1870Arnold PaoleSerbian, 1732