Vampire by Any Other Name: Vampires, Werewolves and Witches of the Slavs, Balkan Peoples and Other Lands: A Linguistic and Cultural Adventure

The suave, pale, bloodsucking vampire that is most familiar to us first burst onto the scene in the works of 19th century Western authors such John Polidori’s Vampyre (1819) or in the much better known Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. The folkloric vampire of the peoples of Eastern Europe differ quite a bit from this popular literary depiction. The Balkan and Carpathian beings featured in this exhibit form a complex of basically three major ghouls. These beings are common to the Slavs, and the non-Slavic Albanians, Romanians, Greeks, and Romanies (i.e. Gypsies). In some cases the names of these ghouls are synonymous, and in other cases there are fine distinctions between them or overlap in their characteristics.Catalog of exhibit held in Watson Library, University of Kansas, May-June 2010