history & documentation
Emily Gerard’s Transylvanian Superstitions, first published in 1885 in the British periodical The Nineteenth Century, is an important early English-language source on Transylvanian vampire folklore. Appearing twelve years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the...
The word vampire almost immediately conjures up Dracula: an aristocratic nocturnal figure with sharp fangs, a black cape, and an irresistible allure. Yet this image is surprisingly recent. Long before Bram Stoker published his...
The Evil Eye is still very much alive. Across the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, and the eastern Mediterranean, blue-and-white glass eye amulets are sold everywhere, from jewelry shops to tourist stalls. Today they...
The zmora is one of the most complex beings in Polish and Slavic folklore, often described as a nocturnal entity that suffocates sleepers, drains vitality, and causes oppressive nightmare experiences. In modern terms it...
Peter Stumpp (1535,- 1589), also known as Peter Stubbe, Stube, Stumpf, Stübbe, and Stubbe Peeter, was executed near Cologne on 31 October 1589 after being accused of murder, cannibalism, incest, sorcery, and transforming himself...
An Authenticated Vampire Story by the famous occultist Dr. Franz Hartmann was first published as a true account of vampirism in The Occult Review, London, in September 1909. The magazine’s founder and editor was...
Werewolves belong to the oldest and most persistent supernatural traditions of Europe. Long before the werewolf became a monster of horror movies—a human transformed into a wolf by a bite and condemned to change...
Vampire stories and accounts of animated corpses were once widespread throughout Russia and the Slavic world. Behind their many regional variations lies the same disturbing idea: under certain circumstances, the dead may return in...
The incubus and succubus are among the oldest and most persistent sexual spirits in European demonology and folklore. An incubus traditionally appears as a male entity that approaches women at night, while a succubus...
