ceremony which took place when a Vampire had been tracked. He writes:[123] “I was creditably informed of a case of this description occurring not long ago at Alistrati, one of the principal villages between Serres and Drama. Someone was suspected of having turned into a Vampire. The corpse was taken out of the grave, was scalded with boiling oil, and was pierced through the navel with a long nail. Then the tomb was covered in and millet was scattered over it, that, if the Vampire came out again, he might waste his time in picking up the grains of millet and be thus overtaken by dawn. For the usual period of their wanderings is from about two hours before midnight till the first crowing of the morning cock. At the sound of which “fearful summons” the Vrykolakas like the Gaelic sithehe, or fairy, vanishes into his subterranean abode.”
The Turks on occasion have had recourse to the remedy of burning to put to rest a Greek Vampire, for Crusius in his Turco-Graecia relates:[124] ‘In sabbato pentecostes Turcae combusserunt Graecum, biennio ante defunctum: quod uulgo crederetur noctu sepulcro egredi, hominesque occidere. Alii autem ueram causam perhibent, quod quindecim pluresue homines spectrum eius uidentes mortui sint. Sepulcro extractus, consumpta carne cutem ossibus adhaerentem integram habuit.”
William of Newbury speaking of the vampires which infested England in the twelfth century says that similar molestations had often happened and there were on record very many famous cases. The only way in which a district could be completely secured and an end put once and for all to these hideous visitations was by exhuming the body and burning the Vampire to ashes.[125]
The following form of exorcism is described as having been employed in Rhodes on a woman who returned as a Vrykolakas. “The priest of the village laid on the ground one of the dead woman’s shifts, over the neck of which he walked, held up by two men, for fear the vampire should seize him. While in this position he read verses from the New Testament, till the shift swelled up and split. When this rent takes place the evil spirit is supposed to escape through the opening.”[126]
The first precaution taken by the Wallachians to prevent the Vampire from ravaging is to drive a long nail through the
