Strigon

(STRAY-gun)

Variations: Vedavec

In Istria there is a type of vampiric REVENANT called a strigon. It is created whenever a sorcerer who drank the blood of children dies. It wanders the community during the midnight hour, knocking on doors or punching out windows. Within three days, someone in the knocked-upon houses will die. The strigon slips into homes and drains the blood of children, as well as has sexual relations with a woman while she is asleep without waking her husband.

To destroy a strigon it must be stabbed through the stomach with a stake made of ash or HAWTHORN wood, but only after its midnight wanderings are finished. When staked, the strigon will thrash about wildly and that blood will erupt from its body. While the vampire is in its death throes, it must be set on fire and burned down to ash.

The last known strigon outbreak was reported in Larbach, Germany, back in 1672; however, it is not wholly uncommon to find fresh corpses in the Istria countryside with stakes in them to this day.

Source: Oinas, Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology, 116; Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales, 326; Summers, Vampire: His Kith and Kin, 185