Vampire (tradition)

Within the regional folk cosmologies summarized in the sources, vampires are understood primarily as reanimated dead: corpses of persons judged evil in life, suicide victims, witches, or bodies said to be possessed by a malevolent spirit. The modern English term was popularized in Western Europe in the 18th century after reports and moral panics concerning alleged vampirism in southeastern and eastern Europe (for example the widely reported panics of the 1720s–1730s), which brought South Slavic local terms into wider European usage.

Folk accounts from southeastern and eastern Europe typically describe vampires as human-like undead corpses often wearing burial shrouds; older folk descriptions emphasize a bloated form and a ruddy or dark countenance rather than the gaunt, pale image that became common in 19th‑century literature. Exact appearance details vary by locality but the revenant is consistently presented as a corpse returned to activity.

The defining behavior is subsisting on the vital essence of living humans—generally blood—and returning after death to visit kin and neighbours, causing illness or death in the community where it lived. Some traditions recorded in the sources also attest that vampirism could be transmitted by the bite of a vampire; other creation motifs include corpses of those who died unnaturally or were thought evil, or bodies inhabited by hostile spirits. Folkloric accounts functioned as explanatory models for unexplained deaths, decomposition, and contagion anxieties in pre-modern communities.