Slovakia sits at the heart of the Slavic world, and its folklore is full of night creatures. Some became world famous, like the vampire and the werewolf. Others are still mostly known at home, in fairy tales, ballads and village customs. Here is a short field guide.
Upír, the vampire
The restless dead of Slavic folklore: a corpse believed to rise from the grave and harm its own family. Most Slavic languages have a related word, and the English word vampire comes from the Serbian vampir, which reached Western Europe with the reports of the 1720s. Read where the vampire legend comes from and how villagers stopped one.
Vlkolak, the werewolf
A person who turns into a wolf. The old Slavic word means wolf-haired. In Serbia the werewolf and the vampire came to share the name vukodlak, so the two creatures were close cousins. See Werewolf Legends.
Bosorka and striga, the witches
The bosorka is the village witch of Slovak folklore, blamed for stolen milk and spoiled crops. The striga is her darker, night-flying cousin, whose name goes back to the Latin strix, the screech owl. Read Types of Witches.
Mora, the nightmare
A spirit that comes at night and sits on the chest of a sleeper, pressing out the breath. South Slavs call her mora, Poles zmora or mara. The same old idea survives in English: the second half of nightmare is the Old English mære, a spirit that crushes sleepers, and most scholars trace both words to a root meaning to crush or press.
Vodník, the water goblin
The keeper of ponds and mill-races in Slovak and Czech folklore, a green man whose coat is always dripping wet on the left side. In many tales he keeps the souls of the drowned under the lids of little pots at the bottom of his pond. Karel Jaromír Erben made him the subject of a famous poem in his collection Kytice, and Antonín Dvořák turned it into the symphonic poem The Water Goblin in 1896.
Rusalka, the water maiden
A water spirit, often the soul of a young woman, who lures travellers into rivers and lakes. Dvořák made her the heroine of his opera Rusalka, first performed in Prague in 1901, about a water nymph who longs for a human soul.
Ježibaba, the forest witch
The Slovak and Czech cousin of Baba Yaga, the old woman of the forest who appears in countless fairy tales, sometimes helping the hero and sometimes trying to cook him. Many Slovak tales about her were collected by Pavol Dobšinský in the 19th century.
Polednica, the noon witch
A spirit of the fields who appears at midday in summer and punishes anyone still working in the heat, or a child who will not stop crying. Erben wrote a famous ballad about her, and Dvořák set it to music as The Noon Witch.
Morena, the figure of winter
Not a creature to meet in the dark, but a straw figure of winter and death carried out of the village each spring and burned or drowned. Read about her, and about the witch fires of 30 April, in Walpurgis Night.
Three of these creatures have a quiz of their own: the vampire quiz, the werewolf quiz and the witch and wizard quiz. Not sure which one you are? Find your creature.