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.
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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.
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
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