Whoever answers is lost

In the Carpathians there is a rule children learn early and adults never forget: if a voice calls your name at night, do not turn around and do not answer.

Where the superstition comes from

Whoever hears their name at night with no one behind it is hearing — so the belief goes — not people but the voices of the dead. To turn or to answer is to accept their visit. And a visit once accepted cannot be undone.

Why the name

In folk belief a name is not a label but a handle: to speak it is to hold power over the one called. That is why the stafii call by name — and why the word for the undead, strigoi, is kin to a striga: to call, to cry out. In Stafii, Florica waits forty years for a voice she once answered. Read more in the Carpathian Chronicles.