A Critical Examination of an Announcement on Halloween by Orthodox Christians in Greece

The Metropolis of Kifissia, Amaroussion and Oropos and the Metropolis of Piraeus are metropolises under the jurisdiction of the Church of Greece located in the vicinity of Athens. In these Metropolises, like some of the Metropolises in Greece, it has what is called an "Office on Heresies", in which a priest or theologian is designated to make official statements on behalf of the Metropolis regarding various heresies that it sees as posing a threat to its Christian flock. Among these is what they call "An Announcement on Halloween", and this announcement has been making the rounds on Greek websites.
 

Since what is presented below is often misunderstood by Orthodox Christians and they are mislead by the common misrepresentations presented in this article and others like it, I will make some corrections below the announcement (which I translated into English).

Chapel of Saint Theokletos the Sorcerer in Messolonghi

 

Messolonghi is the capital of Aitolia-Acarnania in western Greece, and is the location of the Metropolis of Aitolia and Acarnania. In the courtyard of the Metropolis is the Chapel of Saint Theokletos the Sorcerer, the only known shrine to this Saint in the world. It was built by the late Metropolitan Theokletos of Aitolia and Acarnania (1922-2007) to honor his patron saint, and it celebrates every year on February 26th.

The Exorcism That Led to the Building of a Chapel in Honor of Saint Seraphim of Sarov

 

On 2 January 2021, Elder Gabriel, abbot of the Monastery of Venerable David in Evia, together with the fathers of the Monastery, celebrated the feast of Saint Seraphim of Sarov at the Chapel of Saint Seraphim of Sarov built on a mountain near the Monastery by the former abbot, the Holy Elder Kyrillos together with the fathers of his time. During the sermon after the Divine Liturgy, Elder Gabriel explained the history of this chapel as follows:

The Case of a Greek Orthodox Nun Who Experienced A Terrifying Poltergeist in 1933

 

 

One of the strangest mental phenomenas is the mysterious stoning of houses and the unexplained movement of objects, which usually are investigated by the Police, without being able to discover anything at all.

In the past decades, in Athens in particular, similar mysterious incidents had occurred many times, which had given rise to the President of the Society for Psychical Research, Angelos Tanagras, to intervene, for example in Kallithea, Piraeus and elsewhere.

However, despite all the simple explanations given by psychophysiologists, these phenomena, whenever they occurred, always worried people to the greatest extent, as was the case in 1933, with the strange phenomena that took place in a nun's house in Agia Barbara.

"On Those Who Burn Vampires" (A Greek Orthodox Christian Manual from 1867)

 

 

In 1867 a popular 82 page manual for Greek Orthodox Priests was published to aid them in the administration of Holy Confession. This book was called Nomocanon: Various Prayers and Discourses (Νομοκανονικό. Εὐχὲς καὶ λόγοι διάφοροι), and it can be found in many old libraries of Greek monasteries and seminaries. On pages 67-69 there is advice on how a Priest ought to deal with those who burn vampires, with the section titled "On Those Who Burn Vampires" ("Περί των καιόντων τους Βουρκολάκους"). In Greek, a vampire is known as a "vrykolakas", though there are various spellings and pronunciations in Greek, and a Greek vampire may have certain characteristics not familiar to other vampires of folklore from other countries. For the author of this text, vampires were real. The issue was not that people believed in vampires; vampires obviously existed. The issue for spiritual fathers was how to deal with those who burned their undead bodies. Here is an excerpt from this chapter:

The 1933 Appearance of the Ghost of an Orthodox Priest Dressed in White in Thessaloniki

 

 

In the summer of 1933, the Depot district of Thessaloniki was in turmoil. After more than 35 years of rest and invisibility, the ghost of a Saint appeared, as some said, or a priest, as others claimed.

This strange story took place in the Depot district and specifically on Thermopylae Street, where a small hill was located. At the beginning of June, on Friday, at the time when the bells were ringing for Vespers, a ten-year-old boy, Takis Anagnostopoulos, was reading his lessons in front of the window of his house, which was directly opposite the hill, less than fifty meters away.

On the Belief in Vampires in Greece During the Ottoman Occupation (An Essay From 1844)

The Vroucalaca

(Published in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction 

on Saturday, February 24, 1844)

The Vampire, of which so much has been written, is the descendant of the Vroucalaca of Modern Greece. It is astonishing to what a height of absurdity ignorance, aided by superstition, has arrived. Tournefort relates, that in all the Archipelago the people firmly believed that it was only in the Greek church that excommunication preserved the body entire and unputrified. Some ascribed it to the force of the bishop's sentence — others thought that the devil entered into the body of the excommunicate, and reanimated him, so that he became an evil spirit incarnate. There was a prevalent superstition that the dead ate and drank in their graves, that they devoured their own flesh and burial-clothes for want of better food, and that all the viands and wine placed on the bier, and in fact consumed by the priests, were really the nourishment of the dead. From this point an easy transition would lead the excited dupes to believe in the demoniacal and hungry corpse sallying forth from the tomb, and satisfying at once its malignity and its appetite by preying on the flesh and blood of the living. Tournefort was present at the exhumation, impalement, and burning of a Vroucolaca in the island of Mycone, who was reported to have broken the windows and the bones, and drained the bottles and the veins of half the inhabitants of the island. For many days the people were in continual consternation, and numbers left their abodes and the island — masses were said – holy water showered about in torrents — the nine days were passed, and still the Vroucolaca was every night at fresh mischief — the tenth day mass was said in the chapel where the unfortunate corpse lay — but without avail, owing, as the priests afterwards pretended to discover, to the negligence of not extracting the heart before the expulsory mass was said. Had the heart been first extracted and a mass instantly said, before the devil could have returned into possession, the people were convinced his Infernal Majesty's entry would have been barred, and the nuisance put an end to. The corpse was then exhumed, the town butcher took out the heart, and declared that the entrails were still warm. The putrid stench of the corpse obliged them to burn frankincense, which produced an amalgamation of fumes that laid hold of the people's senses, and helped to inflame their imaginations. "Vroucolaca! Vroucolaca!" echoed through the cloisters and aisles. The corpse was assailed with swords in all directions, till a learned Albanian appeared and told the people they were all fools for using Christian swords, since the cross of the hilt had the effect of pinning the demon more firmly in the body, instead of expelling him, and that the only sword for the purpose was the straight Turkish scymetar. The people would not wait for the experiment, but, with one accord, determined on burning the body entire. This was accordingly done on the point of the island of St George; and the people then defied the devil to find a niche in which to quarter himself, and made songs in celebration of their triumph.

The Exhumation of a Vampire on the Island of Mykonos in 1700: An Eye-Witness Account

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1708) was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. Between 1700 and 1702 he traveled through the islands of Greece and visited Constantinople, the borders of the Black Sea, Armenia, and Georgia, collecting plants and undertaking other types of observations. He was accompanied by the German botanist Andreas Gundelsheimer (1668–1715) and the artist Claude Aubriet (1651–1742). His description of this journey was published posthumously in 1718 as Relation d'un voyage du Levant (A Voyage Into The Levant), he himself having been killed by a carriage in Paris; the road on which he died now bears his name (Rue de Tournefort in the 5ème arrondissement). It was during this journey that he became an eye-witness to what locals on the island of Mykonos believed to be the exhumation of a vampire, or a Vroucolacas as it was called there. Below is how he described it, and his attempt to stop this superstitious practice.

Relics of Ancient Superstitions in Modern Greece (An Essay from 1856)

By Prof. Henry Martyn Baird (1832–1906)

Author of Modern Greece, A Narrative of a Residence and Travels in that Country (1856)

It is not my intention, in the present paper, to investigate the nature of superstition; nor shall I attempt to account for its origin and prevalence. In some form or other, it has existed in every country with which we are acquainted, and, at the present day, it can boast of as many slaves as in the most remote antiquity. This is a fact which Mr. De Quincey, in his admirable essay on Modern Superstition, has exhibited in a clear light. The European as well as the Asiatic, the inhabitant of Christian England, equally with the pagan, are firm believers in the reality of a vague and mysterious influence exercised over man, and the natural objects with which he is connected, by a superior order of beings.