Bantu, Africa

(Ban-TOOAf-ri-ka)

The people of the Republic of Zambia in South Africa fear a vampiric REVENANT known as a bantu. It is created when the spirit of an evil person or a person who feels that he did not receive proper respect during his funeral returns and occupies their corpse.

The bantu is mystically drawn to blood, even a single drop, and drinks it out of both a compulsion and necessity, for without the blood, its corpse will begin the natural process of decomposition. Many victims of the bantu survive the experience, waking up with a fresh wound on their body and no memory of the attack.

The Zambian people are largely hemophobic,as even a single drop of blood on the ground will alert the vampire, who will now come when night falls. The only way to stave off the arrival of the vampire is to dig up the area where the blood fell and bury it in a secret location. The person from whom the blood came must go through an elaborate ritual purification process.

Source: Melland, In Witch-Bound Africa, 188; Peek, African Folklore, 105, 153; Summers, Vampire: His Kith and Kin, 10, 15­16; White, Speaking with Vampires, 9­12, 18­22, 51­54