Stafii – the ghosts the Carpathians won't name

“Stafii” is not an invented title. In Romanian it is an everyday and deeply unsettling word: the singular is stafie, the plural stafii — ghosts, specters, the dead who do not stay where they were laid.

Where the word comes from

In Romanian dictionaries stafie sits beside fantomă (phantom) and moroi. It means the apparition of a dead person — less the blood-soaked undead of films than the thing that returns and stays: a voice, a shadow at the window, a knock with no one behind it.

Why a village stays silent

At the foot of the Carpathians such names are never spoken aloud — to name a ghost is to call it. That comes with a rule: if a voice calls you by night, do not answer. The stafii are kin to the strigoi and moroi, the dead who do not rest. This is exactly what the Carpathian Chronicles are about.