Between Collective and Personal Mythology: Oral Narratives about Moroi with the Vlachs of North-Eastern Serbia

Abstract

The belief in vampires is still alive today among the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia: vampires are both textual and extratextual creatures. The transcripts of the narratives this article is based on reveal that the vampire is part of the collective mythology of the informants, but they also belong to the personal mythological systems of each and every participant. Even if most of them are not collective creations, they relate similar experiences, follow the same textual pattern, and thus they have the potential to become, at one moment, a collective asset, and to penetrate into the repertoire of the community.