The importance of the earliest Greek references to vampiric creatures is often understated, but the Greeks gave us much of the first written reports of such unholy beings, with accounts dating back as far as the first century.

As with the vrykolakas, the Slavic influence is crucial to the development of Greek vampire legends, and although the early Slavs weren't known for creating a rich written history, they would certainly become the bearers of lore that would eventually creep into western Europe, and eventually into our worst nightmares. The Slavic people were instrumental in the development of the Slavic countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia, and from there, vampiric legends would multiply.

The Upir and Nelapsi

The mainstays of rural Slovakian and Czech vampire folklore are known as upir or the parallel nelapsi, both of which are the revived and rotting corpses of the recently deceased. The upir is believed to be particularly troublesome because it's thought to have two hearts and two souls, and will suck the blood from its victims, often suffocating them with a crushing embrace.

What's worse, the upir not only spreads deadly disease, but it can kill with a glance from its evil eye. According to one report in the early 1700s, the people in a Bohemian village of what is now the Czech Republic drove a stake into the corpse of a suspected upir. The hideous creature merely laughed and thanked them for giving him a stick to fight off pesky dogs. The startled villagers quickly solved their vampiric dilemma by burning the corpse.

The Bulgarian Vampir

Among the most common legends of Bulgarian folklore are tales of the vampir, a deceased human who returns to life from the grave, maintaining every physical evidence of its former existence as a perfectly healthy human. So convincing is this rejuvenation that vampirs can safely move to areas where they aren't known and live a seemingly anonymous but normal existence by day, and create havoc with the living by night.

An unusual aspect of the Bulgarian myth is the orthodox religious perspective that the dead are believed to spend 40 days after their passing with their guardian angel traveling to the places they'd known in life before moving on to the spiritual world. If proper burial procedures burial weren't followed to the letter, the dead would be unable to find their way to the next life and would remain on earth as vampires. Other reasons for a probable vampiric rebirth are a life of sinful behavior or drunkenness, or even a sudden and violent death.

The Bosnian Lampir

The incarnation of the vampire in Bosnia is the lampir, which is thought primarily to be the harbinger of epidemics. With no scientific understanding of the reasons or cures for deadly contagious diseases, the first to fall ill and perish is assumed to be at fault. The lampir crawls from its grave as a hideously rotting and disease-ridden corpse for the sole purpose of infecting and bringing grief to those who subsequently succumb and die of disease.

It was reported that after the Austrians gained control of Bosnia from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 that the practice of exhuming and burning the corpses of suspected lampirs was widespread in the region — a practice the new regime took a decidedly dim view of.

The Russian Uppyr

As with many demonic legends throughout Europe, the Russian vampire, known as the uppyr, is closely linked to behavior that runs counter to religious piousness, and anyone branded a heretic or who strays outside the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church is viewed as a prime candidate for vampirism.

As with virtually all of the vampires of European lore, the uppyr is the decaying, reanimated remains of a corpse who refused to stay buried. The first written report of vampiric behavior was directed toward a wayward priest in 1078, about a century after Russia adopted Christianity, and became the documented genesis of religious connotations that remained entrenched in vampire lore for centuries.

It's interesting to note that practitioners of witchcraft or sorcery — in themselves highly suspect activities — could also become vampires. The implications were clear in the documentations that any activity outside the auspices of the Church would set one up for a ghastly vampiric fate.