The folklore of Europe has given us many creatures of the night. The Strigoi date back to Romanian tales about troubled spirits that rise from their graves. The word ‘strigi” means “to scream”, which these phantoms certainly did. Like vampires they can assume animal form, become mist-like or invisible, and feed on the blood of the living. In other countries similar names arise. In Greece, it is called a Strix. In Venice, it is Striga, which also means “witch”. In French, it is Stryge. These bloodsuckers have inspired numerous other monsters in novels and games.
Classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons featured the Stirge, a winged monster that sucked blood, not like a bat but like a mosquito. This creature was introduced in the first Greyhawk supplement in 1975. These seem pretty funny unless you live in Canada and really hate mosquitos.
It is on television that we have been getting our fair share of strigoi lately. Though vampires have been on the boob tube since Dark Shadows and Kolchak the Night Stalker. The big difference here is that vampires on TV tend to take after Dracula. As silly as it seems, a white-skinned guy with slicked back hair and an opera cape is laughable but somehow never changes. TV producers in the 1960s and 1970s were stuck in a Bela Lugosi vein (intentional pun!) and used it as a lowest common denominator for “vampire”.
Things have become more sophisticated since Carl Kolchak chased his Night Stalker around Las Vegas. In film, we have had Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt do An Interview With a Vampire, for the teens the Twilight saga and Robert Pattinson as a sparkly vampire. On TV, sexy superhero vampires were everywhere in Buffy, Angel and True Blood. More teeny junk with Vampire Diaries. Most recently, the disappointing V-Wars. And no doubt, next year or the year after, there will be another…
The stirgoi variation of the vampire is a more nuanced deal. You can’t just have an older European in a cape or a hunky young guy who sparkles show up. You have to do something else. Supernatural (before it descended into supernatural soap opera) offered us a shtriga in “Something Wicked” (April 6, 2006). This vampire-witch feeds on the life force of children who are put into comas. When Dean Winchester kills her, all the life force returns to the children and they wake up.
Many horror novelists have used the strigoi including Joseph Delaney, James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, Dan Simmons and Graham Masterton. Perhaps the most prominent in recent years was The Strain (2009) by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The television show based on the trilogy featured these triple-flap jawed vampires and their long proboscis tongues. The feel here is Lovecraftian at times, not Universal’s Classics Monsters. We have a nice mix of European lore (with a central master and a van Helsing type older guy who wants to kill him, played by David Bradley) as well as more modern science fiction. The contamination of humans is done by silver worms that the stirgoi pass on when they eat. The hierarchy of the stirgoi community was interesting as well, with the master at the top, his lieutenants like the former nazi, Eichorst, and the lesser masses of soldiers below.
Most recently on television’s The Witcher we got to encounter the Striga, a cursed female who is buried with her mother to return as an entity that hates all living things. The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski have been sleeper hits in Fantasy circles, and were turned into video games in 2007. The books have since become bestsellers with the popularity of the TV show.
In the show, Henry Cavil plays Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, a mutant monster-hunter who resembles a very buff Elric of Melnibone. In “Betrayer Moon” (based on “The Witcher” from The Last Wish) the Striga was created when the unborn baby was cursed out of jealousy, the child being the product of a secret tryst between Foltest, King of Temeria and Adda.
Velerad describes her in Sapkowski’s story: “The princess looks like a striga!” he yelled. “Like the most strigish striga I have heard of! Her Royal Highness, the cursed royal bastard, is four cubits high, shaped like a barrel of beer, has a maw which stretches from ear to ear and is full of dagger-like teeth, has red eyes and a red mop of hair! Her paws, with claws like a wild cat’s, hang down to the ground!” (“The Witcher” by Andrzej Sapkowski)
Geralt battles with her, not killing her, but keeping her occupied until sunrise when the curse is lifted.
You can argue a vampire is a vampire is vampire… But I disagree. The devil is in the details. Anyone who writes Fantasy or Horror can tell you (as most Gamemasters who run RPGs), there is very little difference between being bitten by a shark or being bitten by a dragon. A fight with goblins isn’t all that different from being attacked by hobgoblins. A hug from a bear or an owlbear… You get my drift here. Monsters attack. Heroes defend. And it is the details, the back story, call it what you like, that the flavor of the thing happens. Predictable is dull. So those Lugosi vampires are parodied on The Munsters or on cereal boxes. But vampiric creatures are far from boring. A good writer brings something new to the job. I think all the examples here show that.
So until the stirgoi rise again…