Haunted Romania – the Land of Moroi

“I had seen with my eyes when it was exhumed one man from our village who was supposed to be moroi. And I saw his body twisted in the coffin, and when they stabbed his heart, a strange cry was heard. I rapidly went to church to pray as I was so afraid! But after that, all things came to normal, and the moroi found its peace!”

For hundreds or even thousands of years, the Romanians daily life is marked by this kind of weird and otherworldly events. People are talking about ghosts and werewolves as if all these creatures are indeed real and part of everyday life. The way people believe in them, fear them and avoid them by all means known makes us all ask the question if maybe, there is any slight chance that all these stories are true. From Bucovina to Oltenia, stories about lost souls possessed people and exorcism rites are so common and so well preserved across generations that it is almost impossible to argue over this subject.

The country of Dracula has for sure something unique in the way people are understanding life and the media also know how to liberally speculate this. Therefore, from time to time, one can read in the newspapers or hear on TV some extra-sensational stories about recent men transformed into moroi, haunting the villages and the communities, causing a lot of damage. The frightening fact is that, despite media appetite for headlines, people’s testimonials are staggering. The moroi, souls of unbaptized children or adults, souls of babies born dead, killed or buried alive, souls of bad persons with no faith in God, are disturbing the normal way of living, being accused of damaging the crops, killing the domestic animals, injuring or even killing people. The only solution to solve these problems or to cure those touched by moroi is to exhume the supposed person to have transformed and to stab his heart with something sharp or even to burn the heart and eat its ash. In order to discover exactly who transformed in moroi, a black stud or a black gander is brought to the cemetery and put to walk over graves. If they stop and refuse to step over a certain grave it means that there is undoubtedly a moroi person so, it is time to exhume it.

This ancient way of dealing with more evil spirits is the only method that seems to work, as garlic, holy basil, or the cross functions only for vampires or werewolves but never for more, which are considered the most dangerous creatures. Though the official authorities don’t approve these practices, in some Romanian villages, there are still persons known to deal with such things, and they are, indeed, living proof that, real or not, the moroi have an important role in the daily life of rural communities.