The Kozlak: Dalmatia's Forgotten Vampire and the Labyrinth of Slavic Undead

In the opening pages of his 1908 ethnography Slavische Volksforschungen, Friedrich S. Krauss makes a claim that still startles modern readers. One of his informants from Bosnia wrote to him: “Belief in the reality of vampires is held by Christians and Muslims alike, as firmly — or at least no less firmly — than belief in God in heaven” (vjeruju — ko da ima Bog na nebu).

This was not exaggeration. For the South Slavs of the early twentieth century — and for centuries before — the vampire was not a creature of Gothic novels or penny dreadfuls. It was as real as the neighbor who had died last winter, as present as the scratching at the shutters after midnight, as certain as the cattle found drained of blood at dawn.

But within this world of universal vampire belief, each region maintained its own traditions, its own names, its own rituals. And in the coastal city of Split and the villages scattered through the Dalmatian hinterland, people spoke of a creature that was not quite like the others: the Kozlak.

A Labyrinth of Names

Before we enter the world of the Kozlak, we must first navigate the bewildering landscape of Slavic vampire terminology — for the vampire wore many names, and each name carried subtle differences in meaning.

Krauss documents this diversity meticulously. The Bulgarians said vampir, but more commonly vapir, vepir, or vupir. The Serbs used vampir, lampir, lapir, upir, and upirina — the last two terms, Krauss notes, he heard most often from the mouths of Orthodox priests. The Slovenes and Croats preferred vampir, while the older term vukodlak (literally “wolf-hair,” originally meaning werewolf) had been transferred to the vampire without, as Krauss insists, any confusion of concepts in the folk mind.

In Montenegro and southern Herzegovina, entirely different words held sway: tenac or tenjac (probably derived from the Greek thénar via tenar, meaning “vault” or “crypt”). To curse someone there, you might say: “Da Bog da, potenčio se, kao što i hoćeš ako Bog da!” — “May God grant that you become a tenac, as indeed you shall if God wills it!”

On some of the Dalmatian islands, where Slavicized Italian populations dwelt, the vampire was called Orko — a name descending from the Roman underworld god Orcus, whose name had long since become synonymous with death, demons, and monsters throughout the Romance-speaking world.

And then there was the Kozlak.

The Kozlak: More Than a Vampire

In and around Spalato (the Italian name for Split) in Dalmatia, Krauss found that the mysterious name Kozlak was more common than either Vukodlak or Vampir. The meaning of the name itself remained obscure to him — and remains so today — but what the Kozlak represented was unmistakably clear.

The Kozlak was not merely a revenant, not simply a corpse animated by evil spirits. The Kozlak was marked from birth, and its condition was hereditary (nasljedno, as the locals said, using the Italian-influenced term ereditario). If the father was a Kozlak, the son would become one too. This hereditary curse placed the supernatural squarely within the family line, making it not just a matter of individual sin or improper burial, but of blood itself.

What made the Kozlak truly distinctive, however, was what it could do while still alive.

The Living Powers of the Kozlak

Unlike the standard vampire — a corpse possessed by an infernal spirit, rising to plague the living — the Kozlak displayed supernatural abilities before death. According to the traditions Krauss collected:

Weather Prophecy: The Kozlak could predict future weather with uncanny accuracy. In farming and fishing communities along the Dalmatian coast, where livelihoods depended on knowing when storms would come, this was a valuable and unsettling gift.

Supernatural Speed: The Kozlak could walk faster and more easily than ordinary people. They moved with an unnatural swiftness that set them apart from their neighbors.

The Secret Books: Most mysterious of all, people believed that Kozlaks possessed special books that only they could read, from which they learned the art of performing miracles. What these books contained, how they obtained them, what miracles they worked — the folk tradition preserved only hints and whispers.

This aura of hidden knowledge made the Kozlak both feared and avoided. Krauss notes that ordinary villagers took care never to challenge or insult anyone they suspected of being a Kozlak. To argue with such a person — zu streiten wagt er es schon lange nicht mit ihm — that, a man would never dare.

When Death Came

The Kozlak’s strange gifts did not end with death. Like other vampires, the Kozlak rose to plague the living, but its hauntings took particular forms.

The Kozlak disturbed households at night. It rattled plates, knocked against walls, even pulled carts through the yard. These were the manifestations of a poltergeist as much as a vampire — a restless, angry presence that could not stay in its grave, echoing the broader Balkan tradition of returning souls and night visits.

When such hauntings occurred, families knew they needed help that ordinary means could not provide.

The Franciscans and the Thorn from the Hills

In Dalmatia, the Franciscan Order had been central to village life for centuries. The brown-robed friars served not only as priests but as healers, teachers, and — when necessary — specialists in dealing with the supernatural.

When a Kozlak plagued a household, the family sought out a Franciscan friar. The monks were known for their zapisi — protective amulets containing written prayers and blessings that could ward off evil. But when amulets were not enough, more direct action was required.

The counter-ritual was precise and specific:

1. The Franciscan would travel to the grave of the suspected Kozlak
2. Through prayer and invocation, the friar would summon the Kozlak — compel it to manifest or acknowledge its presence
3. Most crucially, the friar would pierce the corpse with a thorn from the drača bush (spina in Latin, hawthorn in English)

But not just any thorn would suffice. The folklore insisted on a particular requirement: the thorn had to come from a drača bush growing high in the hills, beyond the view of the sea.

This geographical stipulation is fascinating. Why should it matter whether the hawthorn could “see” the Adriatic? The answer likely lies in the ancient symbolic geography of the Dalmatian coast, where the sea represented one world — the world of trade, foreign influences, the broader Mediterranean — while the mountains represented another: the old, the indigenous, the powers that predated Christianity and Rome alike. The thorn that could subdue the Kozlak had to come from the mountain world, untouched by the sight of the sea.

The Vampire’s Definition: Two Peasants Speak

Krauss preserves a remarkable exchange between two Serbian peasants attempting to define what a vukodlak ili vampir actually was. Their disagreement illuminates the complexity of folk belief:

The first peasant said: “We call them deceased people into whom, 40 days after death, a hellish spirit enters and animates them. The vampire leaves its grave nightly, strangles people in their houses, and drinks their blood.”

But the second peasant corrected him: “No, you have it wrong. The cursed soul finds entry neither to heaven nor to hell. The vampire is far more dangerous to animals — to livestock — than to baptized souls” (meaning humans).

This disagreement reveals something profound. Was the vampire a corpse possessed by a demon, or was it the original soul, trapped between worlds? Did it primarily threaten humans or their animals? Different villages, different families, different individuals held different views — yet all agreed that the vampire was real and dangerous.

The Curse and the Blessing

The South Slavs surrounded vampire belief with a rich vocabulary of curses and protective formulas. Krauss records that whenever vampires were discussed, people would add the ritual curse:

“Na putu mu broč i glogovo trnje!” “May madder-root and hawthorn thorns lie in his path!”

The reference to broč (madder, a plant with blood-red roots used for dyeing) and glogovo trnje (hawthorn thorns) was not arbitrary. Hawthorn was believed to grow best on reddish, blood-colored stone. The curse thus invoked both the color of blood and the plant that could pierce and immobilize the vampire.

Some speakers were reluctant to use the word “vampire” at all. Krauss heard the euphemism “mrtva nesreća” — “the dead misfortune” or “the dead calamity” — used instead. To speak the creature’s true name was dangerous; better to speak around it, to avoid drawing its attention.

The Wider Context: Croatia’s Vampire Country

The Kozlak was not Dalmatia’s only contribution to vampire lore. In Istria, to the north, the case of Jure Grando Alilović (1578-1656) became the first documented vampire case in European history. Johann Weikhard von Valvasor recorded in 1689 how Grando terrorized his village of Kringa for sixteen years after his death, until a group of villagers led by the prefect Miho Radetić opened his grave in 1672, found the body intact and smiling, and finally decapitated him — after a hawthorn stake had bounced off his chest.

The 1737-1738 vampire trial in Dubrovnik preserved yet another vocabulary: kosak, pricosak, tenjac, and vukodlak all appear in the testimony as names for the undead.

Each region, each valley, each island developed its own variant of the tradition—from the Kozlak of Split to Sava Savanovic in the Serbian highlands. The Kozlak was Split’s particular contribution — and without Krauss’s careful ethnography, it might have vanished entirely from human memory.

What Made the Kozlak Different

Looking back at the Kozlak tradition, several features distinguish it from other Slavic vampires:

Hereditary Nature: While many vampire traditions held that certain deaths (suicide, excommunication, improper burial) created vampires, the Kozlak was born into its condition. The curse ran in families, making it impossible to escape through piety or proper burial.

Living Powers: Most vampire traditions focus on what the creature does after death. The Kozlak tradition paid equal attention to the strange abilities of the living person — powers that marked them as something other than fully human even before they died.

The Secret Knowledge: The mysterious books that only Kozlaks could read suggest a connection to learned magic, to grimoires and forbidden knowledge, that is unusual in peasant vampire traditions.

The Franciscan Response: The specific role of Franciscan friars and their zapisi shows how folk belief and institutional Christianity negotiated with each other. The Church did not deny the vampire’s existence; it provided the ritual technology to combat it.

The Silence of the Kozlak

Today, the Kozlak is almost forgotten. The tourist who visits Split will find Roman ruins, Venetian architecture, Croatian cuisine — but no monuments to the creature that once terrified the hinterland. The word itself has largely vanished from use.

Yet the Kozlak deserves remembrance, not as a curiosity but as evidence of how richly textured folk belief once was. In the Kozlak we see:

• The fusion of vampire and cunning-person traditions
• The hereditary curse that made the supernatural inescapable
• The precise ritual geography that distinguished mountain from sea
• The negotiation between folk belief and institutional religion
• The power of names — the many names for vampire, the euphemisms used to avoid speaking them

Krauss wrote in 1908 that vampire belief was as strong as belief in God. A century later, both have weakened, and the Kozlak has faded with them. But in the archives, in the pages of Slavische Volksforschungen, the Kozlak still walks — faster than ordinary men, reading books that only it can understand, waiting for the Franciscan who will bring the thorn from the hills beyond the sea.

The primary source for this article is Friedrich S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen (Leipzig: Wilhelm Heims, 1908), available through Project Gutenberg. Krauss’s work remains an invaluable record of South Slavic folk beliefs that might otherwise have been lost.

By the Author

For fiction set against these traditions: The Vampire: Novel from Bulgaria by Hans Wachenhusen, trans. Rade Kolbas

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

• Friedrich S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen (Leipzig: Wilhelm Heims, 1908)
• Friedrich S. Krauss, Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven (Münster: Aschendorff, 1890)
• Friedrich S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1885)
• Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, Die Ehre dess Hertzogthums Crain (Laibach/Nuremberg, 1689), Book XI on Jure Grando of Kringa
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• Maja Bošković-Stulli, Usmene pripovijetke i predaje (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1997)
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• Vid Vuletić-Vukasović, contributions on Dalmatian folk belief in Zbornik za narodni život i običaje Južnih Slavena (Zagreb: JAZU, from 1896)
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• Bartol Kašić, Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (Rome, 1604)
• Dubrovnik vampire trial records of 1737-1738, Državni arhiv u Dubrovniku, preserving the terms kosak, pricosak, tenjac, and vukodlak
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