Vampire Sorcerers and Witches

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

c. Visionary Living, Inc.

When you think of vampires, do you conjure up images of undead corpses who sleep by day in coffins and roam at night sucking the blood of hapless victims? There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence in folklore that the restless undead do exist – but they are not the only vampires around. Some of the most interesting and dangerous vampires are very much alive.

These living vampires, found around the world, are sorcerers, witches and wizards who are born vampires, live as vampires, and – if they are unlucky enough – die as vampires and join the ranks of the undead bloodsuckers. They possess a host of supernatural powers, which they are likely to use to wreak havoc, destruction and death among the living.

According to widespread folklore, certain people are just fated to be born as vampires. Some are readily identified at birth by such physical oddities such as teeth already showing; a spine deformity that resembles a tail; or the presence of the caul, the inner fetal membrane of amniotic fluid, which at birth sometimes still covers the body, or especially the head. If a child is the seventh child of seven children who are all the same sex, he or she is fated to be a living vampire. In Romanian lore, if a pregnant woman does not eat salt – a protector against all things evil – her child will be born a living vampire.

In other folklore traditions, vampire sorcerers and witches are living persons who learn their evil trade from others, and then pass their vampiric skills on to initiates.

Like other kinds of sorcerers and witches in folklore, vampire sorcerers and witches are said to cast the evil eye: merely by looking at others in a certain way, they bring misfortune and calamity. They bewitch people and animals with malevolent spells, even bewitching them to death. They can shapeshift into dogs, cats, horses and other animals in order to frighten people. In Romanian lore, female living vampires are dry in the body and red in the face before and after death. When they go out to work their evil, they leaves their homes through their chimneys and return exhausted and in rags. Male vampires are bald, and after death they grow a tail and hooves.

In Russian lore, living vampire sorcerers have the power to take over the body of a person who is dying or who has died, preferably a villainous or insane person. The invaded body becomes a type of vampire called an erestsun. The erestun maintains the outward appearance of a good peasant, but carries on his vampiric activity among the people in secret. He stalks the family of the dead person and then others, and devours them like a cannibal. The erestun is destroyed by whipping him to death with a whip used for heavily loaded horses. To prevent him from reanimating in the grave, a traditional method of vampire-killing is employed: a stake made of aspen is driven through his back between the shoulders.

In the lore of the Karachay, the obur is a shape-shifting vampire witch or wizard. Oburs recognize each other. They possess the knowledge to make magical salves. They take off all their clothing and smear their bodies with salve, and then wallow in the ashes on the edge of their fires. They mount brooms with whips in hand, run around the room in circles, and fly up the chimney in the forms of cat. They enter the houses of victims via the chimneys after all members of the household have gone to sleep. They drink their blood, especially of the children, and leave a black bruise at the wound. At dawn they return to their own homes, going back down the chimneys. They resume their normal human appearance. Oburs shapeshift into wolves and dogs in order to attack livestock out in pasture and drink their blood.

In lore found in Europe, vampire sorcerers and witches are not limited to the night hours for their evil activities, but can come out in the daytime all year round. Their power is greatest during the times of the full moon and are weakest at the new moon. They meet with dead (or undead) vampires and teach them magical incantations and spells, and decide on their programs of evil.

Living vampire sorcerers and witches walk about the boundaries of villages, taking “power” from things, such as certain animals, bread and bees – whatever is locally important to the sustaining of life and prosperity. “Taking power” zaps the life force. When the power is taken, the animals do not perform their natural functions: hens do not lay eggs, cows do not give milk, bees do not make honey. A female vampire who has power over bread steals the taste from the bread of other women and puts it into her own bread. Some living vampires have power over rain, and can prevent it from falling and nourishing crops.

Besides taking power for themselves, living vampire sorcerers and witches can take power from people and give it to others who pay them. They can take beauty away from women and give it to another, and they can take love away. They can take milk away from a nursing mother.

A Russian tale

A Russian folk tale describes how one vampire sorcerer operated, and how he was bested by a soldier. The story goes that a soldier set off on leave to go home. En route he stopped to visit a miller who was a friend. They had a good visit, and as night descended, the miller urged the soldier to stay with him because a dreadful sorcerer had died recently and was rising from his grave at night to attack the soldier’s village. The soldier declined because he wanted to get home as soon as possible.

The road led past the cemetery. There the soldier found the sorcerer sitting beside a campfire stitching his boots. The sorcerer invited the soldier to accompany him to a wedding. when they arrived at the wedding, they were given food and drink.

The sorcerer drank until he became angry. He chased away all the wedding guests and but the bride and groom to sleep. He took out a pin and pricked their arms, and collected their blood in two vials. He and the soldier left.

On the way back to the cemetery, the sorcerer said that he took the blood so that the couple would die. Tomorrow no one would be able to awaken them. Only he knew how to revive them. Questioned by the soldier, the sorcerer explained that the remedy was slitting the heels of the couple and pouring their blood back into the wounds. He had the blood of the groom in his right pocket and the blood of the bride in his left.

The sorcerer kept boasting that he could do whatever he wanted. the soldier asked if there was any way he could be stopped. Yes, said the sorcerer: he could be stopped if he were cremated in a bonfire of a hundred cartloads of aspen wood. However, his belly would split open in the fire and vipers, worms, maggots, and vermin would crawl out, and magpies and crows would fly out. All would have to be captured and thrown back into the fire. If so much as a single maggot escaped, the sorcerer would escape, too.

After confessing his secrets, the sorcerer declared that he would have to kill the soldier. They engaged in a fierce battle that went on a long time, and the soldier thought all was lost. Then dawn came and the cock crowed, and the sorcerer fell lifeless. The soldier took their vials and blood and returned to the wedding cottage.

There he found everyone in sorrow and anguish over the deaths of the bride and groom. He restored them to life and was handsomely rewarded. Then he instructed the peasants to gather one hundred cartloads of aspen wood and make a bonfire. They dug the sorcerer from his grave and burned him in the fire, taking care to catch and burn all the creatures and vermin that escaped from his belly. The soldier scattered the ashes to the wind.

From then on, peace and happiness reigned in the village. The soldier returned to his duty with his fortune, served out his term, and then retired and lived happily ever after.

Native American vampire witches

Although Native American lore does not include European-style vampires, there are legends that parallel European vampires and vampire sorcerers and witches. For example, in Cherokee lore there are old witches and wizards who live off the livers of the dead. When a person falls ill, the witches and wizards shape-shift into invisible forms and gather around the bedside, tormenting the person until he is dead. After the person is buried, they dig up his body and feast on the liver. In this manner, they gain strength and lengthen their own lives as many days as they stole from the dead person.

An Abenaki folk tale tells of an old male witch who is comparable to an undead vampire. The witch died and was buried in a tree in a grove used as a burial place. Later in the winter, an Indian man and his wife decided to camp in the grove for a night, and built their camp fire. After supper, the wife looked up and saw dark things hanging in the trees. Her husband said they were the dead of long ago. The wife felt uneasy, and said they should stay awake all night. The husband ignored her and went to sleep.

Soon the fire went out. The wife heard a gnawing sound, like an animal chewing on a bone. She was too frightened to move, but stayed awake all night. In the morning she tried to wake her husband, but found he was dead. His left side had been gnawed away, and his heart was gone. Terrified, she ran away. She came upon a lodge and spilled out her story, but the people suspected her of murdering her husband. They all went to the scene, where they found the husband’s body, and the dead witch hanging overhead in the tree. They took the witch down and wrapped it from its burial shroud. Its mouth and face were covered with blood.

The tlahuelpuchi of Mexico

In the lore of rural Tlaxcala, Mexico, one of the most feared vampire witches is the tlahuelpuchi, a shapeshifting human who can assume animal form, and who sucks the blood of infants, causing them to die. The tlahuelpuchi epitomizes everything that is horrible, evil and hateful. It can be either male or female, but usually is female, who considered to be the more bloodthirsty and evil of the two. At least 100 legends exist about the tlahuelpuchi.

Tlahuelpuchis are born into their fate; they cannot transmit or teach their powers to others. They are independent agents of evil, but will do the bidding of higher evil forces, such as the devil. For example, they will act as intermediaries (in animal form) in transactions involving selling of the soul to the devil and making pacts with the devil. Tlahuelpuchis are more powerful than nahuales, a trickster type of supernatural agent.

When a tlahuelpuchi is born, it cannot be distinguished from an ordinary infant. Differences do not emerge until puberty, at which point their supernatural powers such as shape-shifting suddenly manifest. For females, this often occurs with the onset of the menses. When the powers manifest, the tlahuelpuchis of both sexes begin to have a life-long, uncontrollable urge to drink human blood, especially that of infants. This causes a great deal of unhappiness and shame to their families, who go to great lengths to cover up their secret in order to avoid being stigmatized and ostracized by the community.

Tlahuelpuchis cannot attack members of their own families, unless they reveal their secret. Although tlahuelpuchis cannot transmit their powers to others of their own volition, if they are killed, their powers go into the killer. Hence, family members are reluctant accomplices of sorts.

The tlahuelpuchis can shape-shift to numerous animal forms, among them turkey, donkey, dog, cat, duck, buzzard, crow, ant and flea. Their preferred forms are fowls, with turkey being the most favored of all. When shape-shifted, they are limited to the abilities of that particular creature, and cannot make it perform in magical ways — with one exception: they can make turkeys fly. When in animal form, they give off a luminescence or phosphorescence that is a tell-tale sign of their identity.

They prowl about at night — especially between the hours of midnight and four a.m. – but will operate during the day if their blood craving is extreme. Tlahuelpuchis are not out every night, but only when they experience their uncontrollable blood cravings, which ranges from one to four times a month. They are more active during rainy and cold weather.

Though they will drink the blood of any human, they overwhelmingly prefer the blood of infants between the ages of three and ten months, because it is tastier and more invigorating. The blood of younger infants is not as palatable to them. The tlahuepulchis have a keen sense of smell and can detect the presence of infants inside a home; thus they identify their best targets.

They steal into a home as a mist, sometimes luminous, that seeps under doors and windowsills, or through keyholes, or they crawl in as an insect. Once inside, they shape-shift into a turkey or buzzard, and hypnotize the occupants into a deep sleep so that they can carry out their attacks.

Tlahuelpuchis can recognize each other in both their human and their shape-shifted forms. However, they do not bond together in any social structure, but remain mostly solitary. They are jealous and aggressive towards their own kind, and protect their territories. Poaching on another’s territory may result in a fight (in human form) to the death. They do share a common pact not to harm each other’s primary family. They also share news of outside danger with each other.

Blood-sucking attacks and remedies

Most tlahuelpuchi attacks are on sleeping infants at night, followed by sleeping or resting infants during the day. The victims are not removed from the home. Occasionally, tlahuelpuchis will attack children and adults during the day, hypnotizing them to lure them away from their homes. The bodies are left in ravines and wooded areas.

The tlahuelpuchi prefers to suck the blood from the back of an infant’s neck, but may take it from the sides of the neck or the cheeks. However, it cannot take blood from the chest or the lower body. Children may be attacked as well. The tlahuelpuchi rarely attacks firstborn infants, and even more rarely will attack two infants in a row in the same family.

The relatives of a victim may experience malaise — nausea or headaches — or disturbed sleep on the night of the attack. Sometimes family and neighbors say after the fact that they saw the witch flying through the air in the form of a luminosity or ball of fire, or sitting outside a window, or coming into a house. Almost anything unusual, such as the odd behavior of pets or animals, is considered evidence of the presence of a tlahuelpuchi.

The dead infants are discovered either in their cribs or on the floor or even out in the courtyard; doors usually are found ajar or open – a telltale sign that a tlahuelpuchi has struck. The bodies have bruises and purple and yellow spots; the faces and necks are purple, and sometimes the bodies have scratch marks. Occasionally there may be dried blood around the mouth. The tlahuelpuchi also sometimes leaves marks upon the victim’s mother in the form of bruises on one breast, but never both breasts.

Neighbors must be notified immediately so that they can take steps to ward off more attacks on their own children. A victim’s corpse must be cleaned immediately and placed in a simple wooden coffin on top of a table in the main room, with lighted candles at the head and feet. Underneath the table, an oblique cross of pine wood ashes is made; pine wood is believed to be especially powerful for warding off evil and for cleansing the environment tainted by a tlahuelpuchi. Neighbors handle these activities, for families cannot handle their own dead.

A tezitlazc, a helpful sorcerer and healer, is called in to perform ritual cleansings of the corpse, mother and space where the death took place. A representative cleansing, witnesses by family and friends, is done in the following manner:

The coffin is removed from the table and the table is taken away from the pine cross. The body of the infant is placed on top of the cross, with the head resting on the intersection of the arms. An incense burner is placed at the foot of the cross. The tezitlazc takes the incense burner and walks around the cross three times clockwise and three times counterclockwise, reciting litanies in Nahuatl and invoking the protection of local saints. He places the incense burner back at the foot of the cross. He takes a bundle of herbs and roots, including capulin branches, ocoxoxhiti leaves and century roots, and brushes the body of the infant from feet to head and hand to hand three times, invoking for the infant the protection of Our Lord, the Holy Virgin and a local patron saint. The corpse is then returned to the coffin, and the table is placed back over the cross.

The mother is made to stand against a wall with her arms spread in the form of a cross. The tezitlazc brushes her with the same cleansing brush three times from feet to head and from hand to hand, but in complete silence. The mother bares her breasts, which the tezitlazc brushes with zoapatl leaves. She kisses the foot of the oblique cross. The tezitlazc cleanses the entire room where the infant died by brushing the floor, walls, ceilings, doors and windows. He recites litanies and prayers in Nahuatl while he does so. He buries the cleansing brush in a hole that he previously dug outside the house while praying in Nahuatl and facing north.

The tezitlazc may also instruct the mother to rub her breasts on something touched by the tlahuelpuchi, such as the floor.

The tezitlazc is likely to be needed later as well, to help alleviate the ensuing symptoms of grieving and psychological stress, such as seizures, headaches, nausea and vomiting, depression and excessive weeping. These also are blamed on the tlahuelpuchi as the secondary results of the attack.

Funeral rites for victims of tlahuelpuchis are conducted in complete silence, save for a commendation of the soul of the infant when a cross is planted at the foot of the tomb. The pine wood ashes of the oblique cross are buried. The dead infant is to be completely forgotten, as though he never existed. His tomb is not visited, nor are flowers placed upon it, nor is he remembered at the family altar on All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

Preventative measures against the tlahuelpuchi include the use of garlic, onions, metals and even pieces of tortilla.. Infants can be protected with silver medals, pins, an open pair of scissors near the crib, metal crosses, and mirrors.

Cases of tlahuelpuchi attacks have been recorded in modern times, with some being identified, tried and executed. While almost every extended Tlaxacalan family suffers multiple bloodsuckings over the course of generations, the accusations of bloodsucking witchcraft that result in trial and execution historically have not been not common, and have declined considerably since the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The last known execution of a tlahuelpuchi, a woman, occurred in 1973.

Other forms of attacks

In addition to sucking the blood of infants, tlahuelpuchis can exercise evil powers over adults who are their enemies or who have offended them in some way. They can hypnotize sleeping victims and make them go to high places and jump to their deaths. They can injure and kill domestic and farm animals, and can ruin crops. There are no ways to protect against the destruction of one’s animals and crops.

Adults can prevent tlahuelpuchis from taking control of them by several ways: wearing raw garlic in one’s scapular or rubbing the scapular periodically with garlic; pinning undergarments with safety pins in the form of a cross; wearing a blessed cross or St. Christopher’s medal; attaching a pin or needle to the inside of one’s hat.

Killing tlahuelpuchis

Tlahuelpuchis almost always are killed in their animal forms, for that is when they are most likely to be detected. Confrontation with one on its human form is rare. There are three principal ways to immobilize one:

– Take one’s pants off, turn one leg inside out and throw the pants at the vampire;

– Knot three corners of a white handkerchief, wrap it around a stone and throw it to the tlahuelphuchi;

– Take off one’s hat, throw it on the ground and drive a knife or machete through it.

If any of these touch the tlahuelpuchi or fall within 10 meters, it will be immediately immobilized, and can be clubbed or stoned to death. Directly touching a tlahuelpuchi is considered unclean. The body is retrieved by other tlahuelpuchis and returned to its home, where family members bury it in secret.

The vampire killers must be ritually cleansed with a brushing of capulin branches. Some people are particularly adept at killing tlahuelpuchis and acquire a good reputation for it.

If a tlahuelpuchi is killed in human form – by immobilization and clubbing or stoning – the corpse is symbolically killed again by the destruction of the sense organs: the eyes are torn out of their sockets, all the fingers are cut off, and the ears, nose, tongue and lips are severed.

An explanation for evil and misfortune

Sorcery and evil witchcraft serve a social function, in that they help to explain why bad things happen to people. Living vampire sorcerers and witches serve this function as well. Their acts can explain illness, natural disasters, crop and animal disasters and other misfortunes of life. The Mexican tlalhuelpuchi may provide a supernatural explanation for sudden infant death syndrome, or crib death, and helps to alleviate guilt over the death.But even these functions do not entirely explain the existence and activities of vampires, living or undead. The presence of evil exists as does the presence of good, in both humans and supernatural agencies. Both evil and good assume many guises. Perhaps the traditions of vampire sorcerers and witches show us to beware the living as much as the dead.

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First published in FATE magazine, 2004.  Adapted from The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, published by Facts On File, 2004. For information on FATE, visit http:\\www.fatemag.com.