VAMPIR-MOROI (ORIGINS SERIES)

Muroi or Moroi , and in western Romania known as Strigoi, represent a particularly specific form of vampire. In western Serbia they are often associated with Detince (Детинци) or Black Children (Црна Деца) . According to legend, children who died unbaptized or who were miscarried become Muroi.
A particularly significant element is the connection to the “baptismal name,” as noted by Veselin Čajkanović. Children or adolescents who die prematurely, unnamed or unbaptized, were believed to be especially dangerous to the household in which they were meant to grow up and to the family members who, by fate, never became their parents.
They are said to come at night beneath the window of the mother and the household. People often claim they can hear them crying and calling for their mother from the dark courtyard. For this reason, even today, after the burial of a young person, a glass of milk and something to eat is sometimes left on the windowsill.
The tragic destiny of these children has often transformed into fear. They do not come to harm or deliberately frighten their would be parents, but rather in sorrow, longing for warmth and a home. Having never known sunlight, laughter, or affection, they have found themselves in a cold and dark place. The nature of the soul is to seek what belongs to it. Yet their cries and wails, heard by the household in the silence of night, freeze the blood in the veins.
Women from eastern Serbia, healers and folk practitioners, possess numerous incantations intended to calm a Muroi. It is advised that upon its appearance the mother pour out a glass of freshly milked milk through the window and say, “Go to the sea, to the thorns, to the wilderness, bring us water.” After this ritual the Muroi does not return. What becomes of it afterward remains unknown.
The father of the household, on the morning of Saint Elijah’s day, may slaughter a rooster, lift it so that it is touched by the first rays of the sun, and give a name to the deceased child. The rooster is then buried in the same grave as the child, in the belief that this act severs the bond between the world of the living and the restless soul.
If we free ourselves from the stereotypes of modern popular culture, we may perceive and experience a primordial fear intertwined not only with horror but also with a moment of empathy. Perhaps they are merely seeking a place where they may dwell. Forced out of the world of the living and denied entry into the realm of the ancestors, they wander, attempting in every possible way to feel alive once more.