When exorcisms fail, they tear the heart out, cut it to pieces, and then burn the whole body to ashes.
At Stampalia (Astypalaea), he proceeds, a short time before my arrival (about the middle of the seventeenth century) five bodies were so treated, those of three married men, a Greek monk, and a girl. In Nio (Ios) a woman who was confessing to me affirmed that she had seen her husband again fifty days after burial, though already his grave had been once changed and the ordinary rites performed to lay him. He began however again to torment the people, killing actually some four or five; so his body was exhumed for the second time and was publicly burnt. Only two years ago they burnt two bodies in the island of Siphanto for the same reason; 'and rarely does a year pass in which people do not speak with dread of these false resuscitations.' In Santorini a shoemaker named Alexander living at Pyrgos became a vrykolakas; he used to frequent his house, mend his children's shoes, draw water at the reservoir, and cut wood for the use of his family; but the people became frightened, exhumed him, and burned him, and he was seen no more. . . . In Amorgos these vrykolakes have been seen not only at night but in open day, five or six together in a field, feeding apparently on green beans.
I heard, continues the holy father, from the Abbé of the famous monastery of Amorgos, that a certain merchant of Patmos, having gone abroad on business, died. His widow sent a boat to bring his body home. Now it so happened that one of the sailors sat down by accident upon the coffin and to his horror felt the body move. They opened the coffin therefore and found the body intact. Their fears being thus confirmed, they nailed up the coffin again and handed it over to the widow without a word and it was buried. But soon the dead man began to appear at night in the houses, violent and turbulent to such a degree that more than fifteen persons died of fright or of injuries inflicted by it. The exorcisms of priests and monks proved useless, and they thought best to send back the body whence it had been brought. The sailors however unshipped it at the first desert island[1] and burnt it there, after which it was seen no more.
- ↑ In many places at the present day it is believed that vrykolakes (and sometimes other supernatural beings) cannot cross salt water. Hence to bury (not burn) the corpse in an island is often held sufficient.
