Strigoi, moroi and the dead who will not rest

Long before Bram Stoker set his count in Transylvania, the people of the Carpathians knew their own undead: strigoi and moroi. They are the root of the vampire myth — and far older.

Strigoi – the callers

The word strigoi comes from the Latin strix (night bird, witch) and is kin to the verb a striga: to call, to cry out. Folklore separates the strigoi viu (the living one) from the dreaded strigoi mort — the dead who leaves the grave.

Moroi – the breath that draws strength

The moroi is close kin: the phantom of a dead person that draws strength from the living. Its name is traced to the Old Slavonic mora — the nightmare. Whether stafii, strigoi or moroi, one idea underlies them all: death is no certain border; something returns and calls. This is exactly what the Carpathian Chronicles are about.

Documented Cases

The belief in such undead is not mere folklore invention – it has left paper trails. In 1725, the Habsburg official Ernst Frombald documented the case of Petar Blagojević (recorded in Western sources as "Peter Plogojowitz") in the Serbian village of Kisiljevo: after his death, nine villagers died within eight days, the grave was opened, the corpse was described as undecayed, and it was staked. Frombald's report appeared in the Wienerisches Diarium and is considered one of the triggers of the European "vampire craze" of the 18th century. That such fears reach into the present became clear in 2004 in southern Romania's Marotinu de Sus: relatives exhumed the body of the deceased Petre Toma, removed the heart and burned it – six participants were later convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead. As early as 1888, the Scottish author Emily Gerard devoted an entire chapter to Romanian vampire and werewolf belief in her book The Land Beyond the Forest.