The belief in the vampire and ghoul was prevalent even in Babylon and Assyria, where it was maintained that the dead could appear again upon earth and seek sustenance from the living. The belief is, in all probability, linked up with the almost universal theory that transfused blood is necessary for revivification. Baths of human blood were anciently prescribed as a possible remedy for leprosy.

Mr R. Campbell Thompson, in his work The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, states that the Ekimmu or departed spirit was the soul of the dead person unable to rest, which wandered as a spectre over the earth. “If it found a luckless man who had wandered far from his fellows into haunted places, it fastened upon him, plaguing and tormenting him until such time as a priest should drive it away with exorcisms.”

Mr Thompson also gives the translation of the following two tablets, which, it will be seen, contain references to this belief:—

Greek Christianity, as already stated, has been credited by many with the origin of the vampire belief, but this contention is hardly borne out by facts. The belief was undoubtedly developed greatly under the influence of the Greek Church, and utilised by the Greek priests as an additional power which they possessed over the people. It did not become prominent in Greece until after the establishment of Christianity, and there are many remarkable stories told of vampire apparitions among the Slavonic races bordering on Greece, as well as among the Arabians. In later times, Father Richard, a French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, went as a missionary to the Archipelago, and has left an account of the islands of Santerini in which he discourses at length upon the bucolacs or vampires of that district.

Some Greeks believe that the spectre which appears is not really the soul of the deceased, but an evil spirit which enters his body after the soul of the owner has been withdrawn. Thus Leo Allatius, in describing the belief, says: “The corpse is entered by a demon which is the source of ruin to unhappy men. For frequently emerging from the tomb in the form of that body and roaming about the city and other inhabited places, especially by night it betakes itself to any house it fancies, and, after knocking at the door, addresses one of the inmates in a loud tone. If the person answers he is done for: two days after that he dies. If he does not answer he is safe. In consequence of this, all the people in Chios, if anyone calls to them by night, never reply the first time; for if a second call is given they know that it does not proceed from the vrykolaka but from someone else.”

In the MenÉes des Grecs it is recorded that an ecclesiastic of Scheti, being excommunicated by his superior for some act of disobedience, quitted the desert and came to Alexandria, where he was apprehended by the governor of the city, stripped of his religious habit, and strongly solicited to sacrifice to the idols of the place. The man bravely resisted the temptation, and was tortured in several ways, till at last they cut off his head, and threw his body out of the city to be devoured by dogs. The next night it was carried away by the Christians, who, having embalmed it and wrapped it up in fine linen, interred it in an honourable part of the church with all the respect due to the remains of a martyr. But at the next celebration of the Mass, upon the deacons crying out aloud as usual, “Let the catechumens and all who do not communicate retire,” his grave instantly opened and the martyr retired into the church porch. When Mass was over he came again of his own accord into the grave. Not long afterwards it was revealed by an angel to a holy person, who had continued three days in prayer, that the deceased ecclesiastic had been excommunicated by his superior, and would continue bound till that same superior had reversed the sentence. Upon this a messenger was despatched to the desert after the holy anchorite, who ordered the grave to be opened and absolved the deceased, who, after this, continued in his grave in peace.

Pitton de Tournefort, in his Voyage into the Levant, gives the following interesting account: “We were present at a very different scene and one very barbarous at Myconi. The man, whose story we are going to relate, was a peasant of Myconi, naturally ill-natured and quarrelsome; this is a circumstance to be taken notice of in such a case: he was murdered in the fields, nobody knew how or by whom. Two days after his being buried in a chapel in the town it was noised about that he was seen to walk about in the night with great haste, that he tumbled about other people’s goods, put out their lamps, gripped them behind, and played a dozen other monkey tricks. At first the story was received with laughter, but the thing was looked upon seriously when the better sort of people began to complain of it: the papÁs themselves gave credit to the fact, and no doubt had their reasons for so doing; masses were duly said; but for all this the peasant drove his old trade and heeded nothing they could do. After divers meetings of the chief people of the city, of priests and monks, it was gravely concluded that it was necessary in consequence of some musty ceremonial to wait till the ninth day after the interment should be expired.

“On the tenth day they said one Mass in the chapel where the body was laid in order to drive out the demon which they imagined was got into it. After Mass they took up his body and got everything ready for blowing out his heart.... The corpse stunk so abominably that they were obliged to burn frankincense, but the smoke mixing with the exhalations from the carcase increased the stench; every person averred that the blood of the corpse was extremely red. The butcher swore that the body was still warm....”

Pitton concludes the story by ridiculing the theory that this was the body of a vampire or vroucolaca.

The practice of burning the body of a suspected or proved vampire does not appear to have found general favour in Greece, doubtless by reason of the fact that the Greeks possessed a religious horror of burning a body on which holy oil had been poured by the priest when performing the last rites upon the dying man.

Leake, whose Travels in Northern Greece were published in 1835, says in the fourth volume of that work: “It would be difficult now to meet with an example of the most barbarous of all these superstitions, the VrukÓlaka. The name being Illyric, seems to acquit the Greeks of the invention, which was probably introduced into the country by the barbarians of Sclavonic race. Tournefort’s description is admitted to be correct. The Devil is supposed to enter the VrukÓlaka, who, rising from his grave, torments first his nearest relatives and then others, causing their death or loss of health. The remedy is to dig up the body and if, after it has been exorcised by the priest, the demon still persists in annoying the living, to cut it into small pieces, or, if that be not sufficient, to burn it.”

In Crete the belief in vampires—or katalkanÁs, as the Cretans call them—and their existence and ill-deeds forms a general article of popular belief throughout the island, but is particularly strong in the mountains, and if anyone ventures to doubt it, undeniable facts are brought forward to silence the incredulous.

One of the stories told by the Cretans is as follows: “Once upon a time the village of KalikrÁti, in the district of Sfakia, was haunted by a KatakhanÁs, and the people did not know what man he was or from what part he came. This KatakhanÁs destroyed both children and full-grown men, and desolated both that village and many others. They had buried him at the church of St George at KalikrÁti, and in those times he was regarded as a man of note, and they had built an arch over his grave. Now a certain shepherd, believed to be his mutual SÝnteknos,[1] was tending his sheep and goats near the church, and, on being caught in a shower, he went to the sepulchre that he might be protected from the rain. Afterwards he determined to sleep and pass the night there, and, after taking off his arms, he placed them by the stone which served him as his pillow, crosswise. And people might say that it was on this account that the KatakhanÁs was not permitted to leave his tomb. During the night, then, as he wished to go out again, that he might destroy men, he said to the shepherd: ‘Gossip, get up hence, for I have some business that requires me to come out.’ The shepherd answered him not, either the first time, or the second, or the third; further, he knew that the man had become a KatakhanÁs, and that it was he who had done all those evil deeds. On this account he said to him on the fourth time of his speaking: ‘I shall not get up hence, gossip, for I fear you are no better than you should be and may do me some mischief; but if I must get up, swear to me by your winding-sheet that you will not hurt me, and on that I will get up.’ And he did not pronounce the proposed words, but said other things; nevertheless, when the shepherd did not suffer him to get up, he swore to him as he wished. On this he got up, and, taking his arms, removed them away from the monument, and the KatakhanÁs came forth, and, after greeting the shepherd, said to him: ‘Gossip, you must not go away, but sit down here; for I have some business which I must go after; but I shall return within the hour, for I have something to say to you.’ So the shepherd waited for him.

“And the KatakhanÁs went a distance of about ten miles, where there was a couple recently married, and he destroyed them. On his return the gossip saw that he was carrying some liver, his hands being moistened with blood; and, as he carried it, he blew into it, just as the butcher does, to increase the size of the liver. And he showed his gossip that it was cooked, as if it had been done on the fire. After this he said: ‘Let us sit down, gossip, that we may eat.’ And the shepherd pretended to eat it, but only swallowed dry bread, and kept dropping the liver into his bosom. Therefore, when the hour for their separation arrived, the KatakhanÁs said to the shepherd: ‘Gossip, this which you have seen, you must not mention, for if you do, my twenty nails will be fixed in your children and yourself.’ Yet the shepherd lost no time, but gave information to the priests and others, and they went to the tomb, and there they found the KatakhanÁs, just as he had been buried. And all people became satisfied that it was he who had done all the evil deeds. On this account they collected a great deal of wood, and they cast him on it, and burnt him. His gossip was not present, but when the KatakhanÁs was already half-consumed, he, too, came forward in order that he might enjoy the ceremony. And the KatakhanÁs cast, as it were, a single spot of blood, and it fell on his foot, which wasted away, as if it had been roasted on a fire. On this account they sifted even the ashes, and found the little finger nail of the KatakhanÁs unburnt, and burnt it too.”

The 22nd formula of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, published by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Mr Edwin Norris in 1866, reads:—