Vampire
the subject of one of the most gruesome superstitions in the world; that of the dead leaving their graves to destroy and prey on the living.
It is characteristically Slavonic, though by no means exclusively so, and it is strongest of all in White Russia and the Ukraine. It still dominates the popular imagination nation in Russia, Poland, Servia, among the Czechs of Bohemia, and the Slovaks of Hungary, and also in a less degree in Albania and Greece. The modern term for a vampire is identified by Bernhard Schmidt with the Slavonic name of the werewolf (Bohemian, vlkodlak; in Bulgarian and Slovak, vrkolak), the regular name for a vampire in Serbia being vukodlak. The Russian vampir (South Russian, upuir, anciently upir; Polish upior) in his earthly life was a wizard, a witch, a werewolf, a suicide, or one cursed by his parents or the Church. Even an innocent man may werewo VAMPIRE BAT VAN BUREN involuntarily become a vampire by him- resigned the presidency of Columbia self falling a victim to one, or merely University on being nominated mayor by a cat or a bird accidentally crossing his corpse before its burial.