Blood sucking fiends

Twilight, Underworld, Blade, “True Blood”, Angelina Jolie — vamps have taken the world by storm in the last few years. But the idea of blood-sucking fiends rising from the grave to feed upon the blood of the innocent is far older than even Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia; ancient cultures have always had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to the modern sparkly vampires. Sink your teeth into these little known vampire legends from across the globe!

Jiang Shi

A Jiang Shi is a type of reanimated corpse vampire in Chinese legends and folklore. According to legend, the Jiang Shi rests in a coffin or hides in dark places in the day time. At night, the corpse moves around by hopping, and kills living creatures by sucking out their qi (life essence). It is said that the Jiang Shi is raised from the dead by a necromancer, or when the soul of a dead man becomes trapped in the body. They are pale with furry green hair and mould growing on their flesh. They are said to have extremely long tongues and black, sharp fingernails, and they walk along with their arms outstretched.

Safety Tip: Nail a 15cm piece of wood to the bottom of your door. This will stop a Jiang Shi from entering your home.

Aswang

The Aswang is a mythical creature in Philippine folklore. It is a vampire-like creature and is the subject of a wide variety of myths and stories, the details of which vary greatly. Spanish colonisers noted that the Aswang was the most feared among the mythical creatures of the Philippines, even in the 16th century. During the day the Aswang is a regular townsperson and prefers an occupation related to meat, such as butchery or making sausages. But at night it attacks its victims with a long tubular tongue and drinks their blood. It prefers to attack children. After feeding it appears pregnant and flies home and breastfeeds its children with the blood. In the province of Capiz, the locals believe that the Aswang is a handsome gay man that hunts women during the night and hungers for fresh blood.

Safety Tip: Protect yourself by bathing in salt. For a more intense form of protection wear a bottle of salt mixed with human urine.

Mulo

The Mulo is a vampire of gypsy (Roma) folklore. They are restless spirits who rise up from their damp and darkened graves to either avenge their own deaths or have sexual encounters with those they couldn’t have or were obsessed with in life. If a person died who didn’t like you and then became a Mulo, well you could most certainly expect to see them very soon. The Mulo seem to be invincible except where their lovers are concerned. They have a sexual desire that is insatiable. To get rid of it, townspeople would usually hire Dhampir (the son of a Mulo vampire and his female victim) to detect the vampire. To ward off vampires, gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse’s heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse’s sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs.

Safety Tip: Always wear red to protect yourself.

Baobhan sith

The Baobhan Sith is a type of female vampire in Scottish mythology, similar to a banshee. Also known as ‘the White Women of the Scottish Highlands’, the Baobhan Sith takes the form of a beautiful woman in a green dress. Once a year she rises from her grave to feed on young men by night. Usually operating in groups they seduce victims with their beauty, inviting the men to dance with them and eventually drinking their blood. Rather than using fangs to draw blood, they use their fingernails.

Safety Tip: Keep some iron handy as the Baobhan Sith cannot bear to be near it. If you encounter a Baobhan Sith grave then build a cairn over it to stop them from waking.

The Soucouyant

The Soucouyant in Dominica, Trinidadian and Guadeloupean folklore is a kind of witch vampire. It lives by day as an old woman on the outer edge of the village. By night, however, she strips off her wrinkled skin, puts it in a mortar, and flies in the shape of a fireball through the darkness, looking for a victim. It sucks the blood of women from their arms, legs and other soft parts while they sleep. If the Soucouyant draws out too much blood from her victim, it is believed that the victim will die and become a Soucouyant herself, or else perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin.

Safety Tip: There is no way to ward off a Soucouyant but you can keep one distracted by throwing rice around the house or at the village cross roads. The creature will be obligated to gather every grain (an almost impossible task to do before dawn) thus being caught in the act.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 12^th, 2012.