Vampire
The vampire denotes the dead that will not stay dead, feeding on the living, seductive and repugnant at once, draining what it claims to love.
Our paraphrase of what the sources say it carries.
At a glance
- Type
- Image
- Group
- Spirit World / Mythical Beings
- Borne by
- 5 figures
- Traditions
- Chinese mythology (1)Ewe folklore (1)Greek mythology (1)Philippine folklore (1) and 1 more
- Same group
- AngelCyclops/GiantDragonFuriesMermaid and 3 more
Figures that bear it
A model judged each figure against its own description, one term at a time. Is: the figure is a kind of this thing. Bears: it carries the thing or is marked by it. What a figure does is filed under motifs and powers. Open "why" for the sentence the judgement rests on.
- Adze is Ewe folklore
why
The neighboring Akan have their own distinct witch-vampire figures, the obayifo and the forest-dwelling Asasabonsam, which are separate but comparable beings rather than variants of the Adze itself.
- Aswang is Philippine folklore
why
In Philippine folklore, the Aswang is an umbrella term for a shapeshifting ghoul or vampire figure that hunts by night, disguises itself as an ordinary neighbor by day, and preys on corpses, organs, and the unborn.
- Jiangshi is Chinese mythology
why
The jiangshi, sometimes rendered in English as the "Chinese hopping vampire" or "hopping corpse," is a reanimated cadaver from Chinese folklore, with roots in Qing dynasty tales and older Taoist and folk-religious ideas about the human soul.
- Mormo is Greek mythology
why
In that nursery office she passed from Greece to Rome and far outlived her own monstrosity, dwindling from vampire to bogey while keeping the same name.
- Strigoi is Romanian folklore
why
In Romanian folklore, the Strigoi is a restless, blood-drinking undead being said to rise from the grave to torment the living, widely regarded as a direct folkloric ancestor of the literary vampire.