If one were to weigh up\u00a0the greatest Slavic contribution\u00a0to global culture, vampires would certainly be a contender.<\/p>\n
However, the bulk of the ethnographic accounts, press reports, and even court records concerning them is not to be found somewhere in Transylvania (where pop culture would place it because of Bram Stoker\u2019s\u00a0Dracula), Greece (where Byron first heard of them), or Southern Slavdom (which gave us the word \u201cvampire\u201d in reports from Habsburg officials) but in sources from Poland.<\/p>\n
Everyone has heard of vampires, but few know about\u00a0upi\u00f3rs<\/i>,\u00a0strzygas<\/i>,\u00a0strzygon\u0301s<\/i><\/b>, and\u00a0wieszczys<\/i><\/b>. Yet sources from Poland and the former\u00a0Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth offer a wealth of fascinating material to discover Slavic beliefs in the living dead, which later became a\u00a0universal\u00a0myth known the world over. This book contains a small but representative\u00a0selection of 80 texts spanning almost 500 years<\/b>, ranging\u00a0from scholarly works and religious treatises to official documents, ethnographic\u00a0essays, and press reports on true events.<\/p>\n
It is commonly believed that upi\u00f3rs are bodies of the dead that have\u00a0been in some way revived, so to speak. Without awaiting the general\u00a0resurrection, they rise prematurely from their coffins and leave their\u00a0graves to raid houses, strangling whomsoever they can, and, if unable\u00a0to\u00a0defeat someone, will wrestle with them, murder them, suck their\u00a0blood, or climb onto altars, bleed on them, break candles, and commit\u00a0numerous other indecencies and murders.
\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Jan Bohomolec,\u00a0The Devil in His True Form, 1772.<\/p>\n
On 18 March this year, at the parish cemetery\u00a0in Bodzentyn, the head watchman noticed that the grave of a peasant\u00a0woman, Szafran\u0301cowa\u00a0from Sieradowice, who had died suddenly on 22\u00a0February last year, had been dug up. The local mayor conducted an investigation and\u00a0concluded that Szafran\u0301cowa had apparently visited the\u00a0house of her husband, Jan Szafraniec, after her death, terrorising him,\u00a0their children,\u00a0and even the neighbours. Wishing to rid himself of these unpleasant visitations, Szafraniec went to the cemetery and, assisted by\u00a0gravedigger Walenty Czekaj, dug up the coffin, turned her corpse\u00a0face\u00a0downward inside it, and tied her hands. Despite these precautions, the\u00a0visitations continued. Furious, Szafraniec went back to the\u00a0cemetery,\u00a0opened the coffin again, chopped off his late wife\u2019s head, and buried it\u00a0elsewhere. Both men who dug up the grave were put on\u00a0trial.
\n<\/i><\/p>\n
Press report from\u00a01869.<\/p>\n
\u0141ukasz Kozak<\/b>\u00a0is mediaevalist, technology and media expert. He has worked with the National\u00a0Library of Poland, the University of Warsaw and other cultural and research institutes on the\u00a0fields of innovation and new media. He is also the co-curator of the New Epiphanies early music festival and the author of\u00a0numerous articles devoted to mediaeval and early modern culture.<\/p>\n
Translated by\u00a0Mark Bence<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Cover design, illustrations and art direction by\u00a0Julia Mirny<\/b><\/span><\/a>. This original young illustrator used the analogue collage technique, best for including the archive photos of polish countryside, its inhabitants and folk culture.<\/p>\n Layout design by studio\u00a0Full Metal Jacket\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n This publication is part of the\u00a0Upi\u00f3r Project<\/b>, launched by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in 2018. If one were to weigh up\u00a0the greatest Slavic contribution\u00a0to global culture, vampires would certainly be a contender.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[],"product_tag":[518,517,29],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3410","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_tag-adam-mickiewicz-institute","7":"product_tag-iam","8":"product_tag-polish","10":"first","11":"instock","12":"sale","13":"shipping-taxable","14":"purchasable","15":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/3410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centrala.org.uk\/centrala_test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe project aims to popularise historical sources on Polish folk beliefs, demonstrating their research value and potential to inspire contemporary creators.
\nThe project has resulted in numerous illustrations, a WikiProject, and two short animations<\/strong><\/a> directed by Kajetan Obarski:\u00a0The Strzygo\u0144 and How to Deal with Him<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0Dead Liver<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"