The paranormal creatures which haunt Greek folklore
Just as the genre of futuristic or “science” fiction may present us with the hopes and fears of an age and a people, so in the folk beliefs of our ancestors we may be able to gain some insight into their innermost aspirations, dreams, and nightmares; and so be enabled, in a limited fashion, to glimpse their world as they saw it. The folk heritage of the Greek people is a remarkably rich one, providing at the same time links to a justly celebrated past, and evidence of the continued fertility and inventiveness of the human imagination under very adverse conditions.
Among the most common of the Greek xotika, found almost nationwide, are the following:
aerika - a general term for spirits of the air. arapides - 'Moors' - large black men who frequently guard buried treasure. Charos - the personification of Death, who comes to the dying to take them to the Underworld.
Daoutis - a demon in the form of a goat which attacks flocks and brings sickness and death to them.
drakoi - ogres, sometimes in human shape, sometimes serpentine, who live in caves of the mountains.
gelloudes - female demons who suck the blood of new-born babies or strangle them.
gorgones - women with double fish-tails, the sisters of Alexander the Great, who threaten seafarers.
kallikantzaroi - goblins who emerge from under the ground from Christmas until Twelfth Night.
lamies - female ogres, sometimes beautiful, who often lure men to their death by drowning in wells.
moires - the three Fates, who visit a newly born baby on the third night to decide its fate.
nereids - beautiful nymphs, usually female and of the age at which girls marry.
panoukles - old women who personify and bring with them various epidemic diseases.
phantasmata - a general term for ghosts of the dead or other shape-shifting spirits.
smerdaki - small demons which attack the flocks.
stoicheia - spirits which inhabit a particular place: in homes, these appear frequently as snakes, in churches as oxen.
stringles - witch women who can transform themselves into birds, and attack newborn babies.
teloneia - St. Elmo's fire.
vrakhnas - small child who sits on sleepers' chests and causes nightmares.
vrykolakes - vampires. Greek vampires are not the bat-like vampires of Hollywood.
In addition to these, there are many other xotika, whose notoriety is confined to a particular region or village.
