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The Last Strigoi Hunt: The Vampire Panic of Marotinu de Sus, Romania

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In the rural and more superstitious parts of Romania, the fear of the undead is not necessarily something of the past. Although mostly done in secret and as a family business, the hunt for vampires or strigois, still happens. Something the family of Petre Toma experienced when he was accused of haunting extended family after death. 

In the shadowed villages of southern Romania, ancient beliefs about the restless dead linger alongside the hum of modern life. For while the medieval terror of the strigoi, vampires and morois may seem a distant superstition to outsiders, in certain corners of Dolj County, these spectral fears still pulse through the bloodlines of families whose lives are shaped by old-world rites. And if we are to believe some of the comments of the locals, it’s not necessarily that rarely it happens, it’s just not every case that makes it to the newspapers. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Romania

In the tiny village Marotinu de Sus where around 700 people live scattered around in the countryside,  locals gather in the village’s only store and bar for a chat, often drinking hard. If you ask them, they will say they have at least one vampire story in their families and that they have been thought to hunt down and kill vampires, or the strigoi since they were children. One of the most notorious modern vampire cases in Europe occurred not in some fog-drenched, Gothic past, but in February of 2004.

A Haunting in Marotinu de Sus

One dark night that December the year before, Petre Toma, a 76 year old villager had driven in a carriage pulled by his horse through the village southwest in the country close to the Bulgarian border. He was drunk and fell off the carriage, scaring the horse that stomped him dead. He was buried in the local cemetery and his family started their morning process. But it would not be in peace. 

In death, it seemed, he had not severed his connection to the mortal world and became a moroi, an undead. 

Moroi and Strigoi: Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. Moroi are often associated with other figures in Romanian folklore, such as strigoi (another type of vampire). In some versions, a moroi is a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living. They are also sometimes referred to in modern stories as the living offspring of two strigoi.

His own sister, Flora Marinescu, started to complain that her daughter-in-law had fallen ill and that it was Petre who was to blame. It was also said that their son and grand daughter became ill. The woman reported terrifying nocturnal visitations: a pale, spectral figure appearing in her room, its face unmistakably that of her deceased uncle.

According to Toma’s neighbour, Mircea Mitrica, she had been shouting: ‘He’s on top of me! He’s eating me! He’s killing me!’ She couldn’t walk and complained about feeling drained, as if something had taken her blood. In Romanian folklore, such occurrences were seen as ominous signs of a strigoi. Fearing this ancient evil had once again returned, Petre’s brother in law and husband to Flora, Gheorghe Marinescu, took decisive — and deeply traditional — action.

The Ritual of the Dead

They could have called for the local Orthodox priest to perform an exorcism, but he would have needed a permit, and they feared it would take too much time. After a couple of nights discussing and drinking, they decided to act themselves. After all, they all knew how to rid themselves of the strigoi according to the old ways. 

The first time Gheorghe Marinescu tried to do the ritual, he ended up drinking too much liquid courage and couldn’t use the shovel. But in his mind, it needed to be done. Marinescu gathered a small group of family members, friends and neighbours and tried again. Also in attendance was his neighbour, Mircea Mitrica. 

And after steadying their nerves with alcohol, the party made their way to the cemetery under the cover of darkness. They exhumed the body of Petre Toma to look for evidence of him being one of the undead. According to those present, they claimed that the man had what looked like fresh blood around his mouth, for them, clear signs of vampirism. 

After confirming their suspicions, they split his ribcage with a pitchfork to remove his heart and staked through the rest of his body for good measure. In some sources they say they sprinkled garlic over it, but this part is rarely mentioned from the sources of those actually in attendance. Many tall tales were added over the years of this mission. The neighbour, Mitrica, claimed that the heart was still pumping when they pulled it out from his chest and that the face of his former neighbour was red and his beard had grown. 

The group put his heart in a plastic bag and put the body back in the grave. According to some sources, they didn’t put it back with care, and left it in a state of filth, earth and decay. They went to a nearby crossroad to start the ritual, where the world of the living and dead meet. 

According to Gheorghe Marinescu, his heart squeaked and tried to jump away when it was burned on the bonfire, also something that happens to a strigoi heart according to legend. This was all to perform an age-old vampire ritual believed to protect the living from the vengeful dead.

According to custom, the heart of a strigoi must be burned. Its ashes are then mixed into water and drunk by those afflicted by the revenant’s haunting, believed to break the malevolent bond between the strigoi and its victims.

This is what they did when they went home and lit a second bonfire to make the mixture. They gave the tincture to the sick woman to drink. A local named Anisoara Constantin who lived there at the time commented in an article: ‘Well, the sick woman got better again, so they must have done something right,’

According to the party, they all went back to see the woman afflicted with the illness they tried to cure the very next day. She was better and could walk and talk without any pain and invited them all to her house to eat, drink and celebrate her recovery. 

The ritual, grisly as it may sound to outsiders, has ancient roots in Eastern European lore. The strigoi were thought to rise from the grave to drain the life force of their relatives, and unless dealt with through fire or staking, would slowly devastate entire families.

Modern Consequences for Ancient Beliefs

The following day, news of the nocturnal disinterment and ritual reached Dolj County police when his daughter complained about the disturbance and desecration of her father’s grave and corpse. 

The six who attended the ritual were arrested and charged with “disturbing the peace of the dead.” Despite their protestations that they had only acted in defense of their loved ones, they were each sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay damages to the family of the deceased.

In the end, they did not end up serving their sentence and had to pay a total of 900 Euro in damages to the family. The case drew widespread media attention, becoming a sensation in Romania and abroad, with international headlines decrying it as evidence of vampire hysteria persisting in 21st-century Europe.

A Legacy of Fear and Precaution

The case left a lingering mark on the region, but if we are to believe the comments of some of the locals, it seems that this case didn’t happen in isolation.  

‘No one is bothered who did it, it’s their own business. This ritual often takes place, but in secret, within the family. The problem comes when the police get involved.’ says 80-year-old Tudor Stoica in an article. 

In the nearby village of Amărăştii de Sus, local custom adapted to meet the lingering fear. Now, as a preventive measure, it’s reported that villagers drive a fire-hardened stake through the heart or belly of the recently deceased, especially those thought to have harbored grudges or strange tendencies in life. In the village where Peter Toma was exhumed, they also do something similar with knitting needles or other sharp objects.

Such rites, though rarely reaching world wide headlines, serve as chilling reminders of how the old beliefs still hold power in places where death is regarded with a wary eye and where the border between the living and the dead remains perilously thin. And most likely, this was not the last Strigoi hunt at all. 

As his sister and wife of the man accused of disturbing his grave, Flora Marinescu said: “What did we do? If they’re right, he was already dead. If we’re right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. … Is that so wrong?”

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References:

How Balkan vampires captured the world’s imagination – Emerging Europe

A village still in thrall to Dracula | World news | The Guardian

Romanian villagers decry police investigation into vampire slaying | McClatchy Washington Bureau

“I dug out his heart with a pitchfork” | Michael Bird Writer & Journalist

I-am scos inima cu o furcă – The Black Sea

VIDEO/ Reportaj în satul unde țăranii au dezgropat un mort și i-au înfipt un țăruș în inimă. Oamenii încă mai cred că l-au împiedicat să devină strigoi și-au salvat o fetiță!

Strigoi – Wikipedia 

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Jure Grando: The First Named Vampire in European History

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Who was the first vampire in history? There are many legends claiming to be the first. And one of them is said to be the Croatian Jure Grando, who terrorized his village for over a decade before they took measures to vanquish this štrigon. 

In the dimly lit annals of European folklore, few figures loom as ominous as Jure Grando, a 17th-century peasant from the small Istrian village of Kringa — in what is today Croatia. His story, still whispered in the shadowy streets of Kringa, marks one of the earliest and most documented accounts of vampirism in European history.

Jure Grando’s name is forever bound to the ancient Slavic concept of the štrigon — a revenant, or vampire, who rises from the grave to torment the living. And his tale is a particularly chilling one. The tale of Jure Grando is notably recorded by Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, a 17th-century Slovenian historian, in his 1689 work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. Valvasor’s account lends the story a degree of historical credibility, as he was a reputable chronicler of the customs, folklore, and strange happenings of the region.

Istria: Istria is the largest peninsula within the Adriatic Sea, shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. 90% of its area is part of Croatia. The wealthier coastal towns cultivated increasingly strong economic relationships with Venice and by 1348 were eventually incorporated into its territory, while their inland counterparts fell under the sway of the weaker Patriarchate of Aquileia, which became part of the Habsburg Empire in 1374.

The Death and Unholy Return of Jure Grando

According to local legend, Jure Grando Alilović, born in 1579, was a stonemason who lived in Kringa together with his wife and two daughters according to town records named Ana and Nicola. Not much is known about his life, some say he was just an ordinary man doing his best, some say that he was an awful character. Some say that to become a strigoi, you were actually dabbling in dark arts and feeding on the blood of children when alive. 

Kringa from Valvasor’s book were Jure Grando lived.

 Some say that he was actually a good man and more of a tragic figure. He was in love with Ivana, or Rose in some variations, and was planning to marry her in a time where the “jus primae noctis” rule was in place. This was a law and custom where the lord of the land has the right to have the first night with the bride, and all the maritals “duties” that entailed. Jure opposed this, defying the monks of St. Paulines who controlled Kringa. 

The monks feared others would follow suit by his example, and got the leader of the town, Miho Radetić to kill him. Although he hit him with a hammer, it only knocked him unconscious. People thought he was dead and buried him. When he woke up, he started shouting for help. To cover their tracks they claimed he was a vampire and killed him, properly this time. 

It’s a fanciful story, perhaps not true at all. He did however die in 1656 and it could even have been natural causes as he was getting quite old by some of the sources. But unlike other villagers, his death did not mark the end of his story. 

For 16 years after his burial, it is said that Grando would rise from his grave at night, prowling the narrow paths of Kringa. He would walk and sometimes he stopped in front of doors, knocking on it, waiting for those inside. It was believed that if he knocked on your door, someone would die in the house in the following days. 

Villagers reported seeing his pale, grinning face in their windows. They started to call him a štrigon, a variant of the Slavic myth of a blood sucking entity closely knit with the vampire lore. With its close ties to Venetian word strìga, meaning witch. The case of Jure Grando was one of the first real people described as such.

He would even come back to haunt his widow, Ivana. With a grotesque smile permanently fixed on his face he was standing outside looking in. According to what she told the authorities, he also climbed inside. Sometimes, he would even attack and rape her.

The hauntings became so unbearable that the villagers, driven to the brink of hysteria, sought help from the local priest, Father Giorgio. Some say that Father Georgio was actually one of the monks of the order and had his own encounter with the vampire.  

Juro had appeared before Father Giorgio when he held a mass at his graveside. Some say that he was actually hunting down the vampire to put a stop to his terror. He had panicked and put a crucifix in Jure’s face and shouted at him to stop terrorizing the villagers. It seemed to work and Jure turned and ran back to the graveyard. County Prefect Miho Radetić was also there and tried to stake him with a hawthorne, but it simply bounced off his chest. A much more heroic character in the other version of Juro’s death. 

Gathering a group of nine brave men, armed with tools, stakes, and crosses, the villagers including County Prefect Miho Radetić and Father Giorgio, marched to Grando’s grave under cover of darkness in 1672.

The Vampire Hunt

Upon opening his tomb, the men reportedly found Grando’s body unnaturally preserved — his face serene and blushed, with a sinister smile upon his lips. Shocked and terrified, the priest attempted to banish the evil with holy water and prayers, but it had no effect.

The villagers then attempted to pierce his heart with a wooden stake, but even this effort reportedly failed until one man present in the vampire hunt, Stipan Milašić, decapitated the corpse with a saw or an axe. A horrible howl came from the grave and the vampire reportedly started thrashing and twitching in its grave before being vanquished. 

It is said that peace was restored, but the world was rattled. His children fled the city their father had terrorized for years and went to Italy according to some sources. 

How True is the Story of Jure Grando?

Now, how true was this story actually? By all accounts, Juro Grande has been treated as an actual person. And although there are in depth details, names, dates and the legend is very well known, there are still a lack of primary sources. 

About the other legend of him being a victim of the monk order trying to uphold the law of a jus primae noctis, there is still something that seems to be rooted in a fanciful story than an actual account as well.

By monk order, this probably means The Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, commonly called the Paulines or Pauline Fathers, a monastic order of the Catholic Church founded in Hungary in the 13th century and held much power in Istria. How much they controlled the Kringa area and had anything to say in a law of “jus primae noctis” is dubious. But it is true they were a powerful order throughout Europe, especially in Istria. 

The claim of  “jus primae noctis” being a law was certainly a popular tale and perhaps to an extent a tradition throughout the world. But, scholars don’t think it was as widespread or lawfully right as the myths and anecdotal stories about it were. With that said, who really does now, it is perhaps more easy to believe than in a vampire legend?

Legacy in Kringa and Beyond

Today, the village of Kringa openly embraces its morbid history. It’s a small place with around 300 people living there today. In this typical Istrian village, consisting of a church, stone houses, ancient Roman dry-stone walls. Today, it is believed that his grave is located under a stone path behind the church, near the current cemetery in Kringa and that the church has more information that they are willing to share. 

Kringa: Source/Petr Štefek

Visitors can find bars and shops playing upon the vampire theme, and tales of Jure Grando’s nocturnal wanderings continue to fascinate those drawn to Europe’s darker legends.

Some say that the story of Jure Grando could have contributed in inspiring John William Polidori to create the vampire archetype in his story „The Vampire“. Even if it wasn’t a true story, it certainly seems like it inspired real people. 

Some still claim that it really was a true account, and he might have been one of the first true vampire accounts we have. And in the quiet cemeteries of Istria, some still claim that when the wind howls just right, you can hear the knock of a long-dead hand upon your door.

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References:

Vampire of Kringa – Secret Dalmatia Blog – Travel Experiences in Croatia

Jure Grando

Croatian ‘Dracula’ revived to lure tourists – The Mail & Guardian

Strigoi – Wikipedia