In some parts of Romania today, the vampiric strigoi and moroi are treated as dead legends, talked about with a lighthearted wink and a nod. However, in many areas of the country, their powers and influence remain unchecked.
Saint Andrew’s Day, November 30th, is the most important day on the strigoi-moroi calendar. On this day, a plethora of paranormal creatures, including the vampire-like strigoi and moroi, roam the night in Romania. According to the Romanian Private Tours Website, on the night before November 30th, “werewolves, ghosts, poltergeists, and other unnamable phantoms cross the barrier between worlds.” St Andrew’s Day is particularly significant among the strigoi, as that is when they battle to rule over the rest of the strigoi for the next year, reports Transylvania Hostel.
In this article, we will examine the true origins and history of Romanian vampires, usually referred to as “moroi” or ”strigoi.” Further, we will distinguish between the two, revealing a truth far more complex than fiction.
Many Locals Believe in Moroi and Strigoi
In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, an English solicitor named Johnathan Harker, on his way to meet the vampire, stops at an inn. An Innkeeper warns him that Dracula is a threat. He shrugs off the warning and, well, you probably know what happened from there.
If you were to drop by the general store and bar in the village of Marotinu de Sus in Romania’s Transylvania region, there is a good chance you might hear talk of vampires. No, not the fictional vampires from your favorite paranormal romance — real vampires who rise from their graves and cause tragedy, misfortune, and even sleep paralysis. To the locals, these mythological creatures can be very real.
Take, for example, Gheorghe Marinescu, who authorities convicted of desecrating a grave while killing a vampire, as reported by The Guardian. The courts sentenced five others alongside Marinescu. However, none served jail time.
A Real Moroi Hunt in Rural Romania
In some rural areas of Romania, killing vampires is a skill people learn from childhood.
Following the death of Marinescu’s brother-in-law, 76-year-old Petra Toma, in 2003, family members began falling ill.
A neighbor, shepherd Mircea Mitrica, was invited to Marinescu’s house to discuss the sudden and mysterious illnesses. He described the condition of Marinescu’s wife in an account that appears on award-winning journalist Michael Bird’s website.
“She was talking to herself, shouting: ‘He’s on top of me! He’s eating me! He’s killing me!’ She couldn’t stand on her feet,” Mitrica said. “She had lost a lot of weight. But that young woman was suffering from no disease.”
“That’s the problem with vampires,” Doru Morinescu, a 30-year-old shepherd, told McClatchy DC. “They’d be all right if you could set them after your enemies. But they only kill loved ones. I can understand why, but they have to be stopped.”
Killing a Moroi or Desecrating a Corpse?
Shortly before midnight one February evening in 2004, Gheorghe Marinescu, Mitrica, and four others stole into the cemetery on the edge of town. They made for Toma’s grave. When they opened his coffin, Toma was allegedly lying on his side with blood around his mouth, Marinescu and Mitrica reported in separate accounts. Both the position of Toma’s body and the blood on his mouth are considered signs that a corpse is a Moroi.
There was only one thing to do. The group performed a ritual that had been passed down through generations, dating back centuries.
They used a pitchfork to open Toma’s ribcage and pulled out his heart. When they did so, Mitrica described what they found.
“Inside his body was a pool of blood,” said Mitrica. “As we pulled out the heart, it was still beating. That’s when we knew he was a moroi.”
Marinescu refers to the undead Toma as a strigoi, while Mitrica uses the term moroi. Both are similar vampire creatures, but have distinct differences, which we will cover in more detail below.
Then they pounded stakes through various parts of his body and scattered garlic over him. With that, Marinescu and friends contend, Toma was at rest, and the relatives he had victimized were a step closer to being free of the torment he had inflicted on them.
A Traditional Cure for Moroi-Related Illness
Killing a vampire is one thing, according to Romanian custom — bringing its victims back to health is another.
Marinescu's daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and son, Costel, all became ill soon after Toma’s death. Marinescu attributed the illnesses to his dead, moroi brother-in-law.
Following the ritualistic vampire slaying, there was one more task to perform to cure those relatives. Marinescu had to burn Toma’s heart in an iron plate, mix the ashes in water, and have each ailing family member drink the concoction.
"The heart of a vampire, while you burn it, will squeak like a mouse and try to escape," villager Ion Balasa told McClatchy at the time. "It's best to take a wooden stake and pin it to the pan, so it won't get away."
According to several reports, when Marinescu’s relatives drank the potion, their health improved.
Costel said he got up and walked after weeks of being bedridden. His headache and stomach pains had also vanished.
"We were all saved," Costel said. "We had been saved from a vampire."
Questioned about the strange cure roughly a year later, village resident Anisoara Constantin told The Guardian, “Well, the sick woman got better again, so they must have done something right.”
The Strigoi: The Living and the Undead
According to Transylvania World, the origins of vampires in Romania stem from the melding of Greek, Roman, and Dacian cultures. (The Dacians were early Romanians.)
Greek mythology tells of Lamia, a beautiful queen who had an affair with Zeus. When his wife, Hera, found out, she killed Lamia’s children. According to World History Encyclopedia, as the story goes, Lamia became an insane child-devouring creature.
Lilith may have come from Mesopotamian creatures called Lilu, which means “night monster”, according to Gettysburg College. Jewish mythology adopted her, and a cult formed around her lasting into the Seventh Century. As a demon-witch, she was able to turn into an owl, which translates into the word “strix” in Latin.
The Dacians absorbed these creatures into their own culture. Over time, they mixed with Germanic traditions and other cultures to become modern-day Romanians. As they evolved, so did the blood sucking, shape-shifting monster they called strigoi or moroi. The word Strigoi has a direct link to the Latin term strix.
Two types of strigoi have been reported in Romania: The strigoi mort is a reanimated corpse, while the strigoi viu is a living being.
Strigoi Mort: The Undead Vampire Prototype
Strigoi Mort best fits what most people envision as a modern-day vampire. Of the two strigoi, this is the one you really do not want to meet in a dark alley — not that you would like to meet either anywhere.
Like the traditional vampire, the strigoi mort is a human spirit who returns to the world of the living after death. In essence, they are undead. The transformation to become this way, however, isn’t instantaneous. It happens in phases. For example, a strigoi mort might manifest as an invisible poltergeist playing tricks on family members by moving furniture and stealing food.
At some point later, the future strigoi becomes visible, appearing as it did in life. With visibility, the strigoi mort increases in malice and might steal livestock, kill crops, or bring disease.
The next stage, then, is feeding on humans. It usually begins with the strigoi’s family, and spreads to any human it can get its hands on, either by surprise or subterfuge.
According to Romanian lore, the strigoi morts’ need to return to their grave will end after seven years. At that point, it can relocate to any place in the world — even next door to you.
Strigoi Viu: The Cursed and Doomed Living Vampire
Any living human can become a strigoi viu by living a sinful life. Some people, however, are born to this cursed life. Traditions often say the seventh child of the same sex or an abnormal birth, such as being born with a membrane on their head called a caul, is resigned to this fate.
Considered witches or sorcerers, the strigoi viu possess an array of powers, including the abilities to shape-shift, stop rain, destroy crops, spread sickness and disease, and siphon the material wealth and physical vitality from others. As if that wasn’t enough, the soul of a strigoi viu can leave its body to commune with others of its kind.
According to Romanian legend, strigoi viu look and act like normal people. So, they could be someone you pass on the street or the couple at the next table in a restaurant. Upon death, however, this changes as the strigoi viu graduates to the strigoi mort.
Moroi: The Restless Vampire Ghost
The moroi, as mentioned before, is similar to the strigoi. It is a ghostly vampire in Romanian folklore that can appear in either a flesh or spectral form. The term moroi comes from the Slavic word mora, which means nightmare.
Moroi come from the “souls of unbaptized children or adults, souls of babies born dead, killed or buried alive, souls of bad persons with no faith in God”, according to Rolandia, a Romanian tour company. People who died violent or unnatural deaths, such as suicide, can also become moroi.
Although moroi are not always as malicious as strigoi, they can wreak a similar form of havoc, according to Rolandia. Many blame the moroi and strigoi for crop failures, livestock losses, and human deaths.
An unidentified eyewitness describes the exhumation of a moroi (via Rolandia):
“I had seen with my eyes when it was exhumed one man from our village who was supposed to be moroi. And I saw his body twisted in the coffin, and when they stabbed his heart, a strange cry was heard. I rapidly went to church to pray as I was so afraid! But after that, all things came to normal, and the moroi found its peace!”
It's said that you can easily identify a moroi in its grave by walking a black horse or black goose through the graveyard. If the animal pauses at a gravesite and stubbornly refuses to walk over it, that grave is inhabited by a vampire spirit.
Slaying the Strigoi or Moroi
The method villagers used in the Petra Toma case described above is the traditional procedure for killing a strigoi that has risen from the grave. However, if someone has died in a manner that makes their transformation to strigoi or moroi likely, there are other methods of dealing with the threat they pose.
According to Transylvania Live, a company that specializes in Dracula tours, participants perform the strigoi/moroi slaying ritual to shepherd the soul of the afflicted person to heaven.
Those carrying out the rite use candles, incense, garlic, holy water, and basil today as they have for centuries. Family and friends hold the candles to guide the soul of the deceased to the other side. They circle the body three times, symbolizing the Christian Holy Trinity.
The body of the supposed strigoi is laid to rest in a coffin and surrounded by family and friends, and a priest then performs a ceremony to set the soul free. In the ritual to put Toma to rest, Marinescu and his peers didn’t call a priest to help as they feared it would cause a delay. That said, the priest is traditionally an integral part of ushering the strigoi’s soul to heaven.
The ceremony concludes as they pound a wooden stake into the heart of the alleged vampiric spirit.
Traditional Methods for Preventing Strigoi or Moroi from Rising
Maria Drabomir, who lived in Celaru, a village near Marotinu de Sus, told The Guardian in 2005 that knitting needles stuck in the navel and heart of a would-be strigoi upon death are an effective means of keeping the creature at bay.
She also puts grain, small stones, a comb, a mirror, and an apple in small bags for area residents to put under the heads of the dead. Believers think the combination keeps the undead in their graves.
Other means of self-defense against strigoi and moroi include: stones, pitchforks, rugs, garlic, nails, rotten eggs, basil, wine, incense, and sand. However, some question the power of these defenses, claiming each has different uses and effectiveness — or none at all.
Conclusion: Reality or Superstition?
Questioning the existence of strigoi and moroi may seem ridiculous. In fact, many in rural Romania would agree, but for a different reason. To them, these creatures are real enough that locals will dig up graves to desecrate human remains. At least that’s how it appears through an outsider’s lens.
In some cases, such as that of Mitrica, Marinescu, and his son, Cost, that belief is based on personal experience. For others, stories told from one generation to the next over hundreds of years are enough to cement their belief. This is no different than other superstitions passed down in the West. As many in Europe and the United States believe in demons, possession, or even the fae, those in Romania have had their traditions shaped by the folklore of the strigoi and moroi.