Gierfrass

(GEAR-firss)

In Germany, when a person commits suicide or is buried in clothes that still have his name sewn into them, he may return as a disease-carrying vampiric REVENANT known as a gierfrass (see GERMAN VAMPIRES). It attacks all of its family and friends first before moving on to strangers.

Source: Briggs, Encyclopedia of Fairies, 206; Curtin, Hero-Tales of Ireland, 482; Gaelic Society, Transactions of the Gaelic Society, 236; Lecouteux, History of Vampire; O'Donnell, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, 124, 132