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Sphakia – The Vampires
have always had a reputation for divination by the marks on a sheep’s
shoulderblade. (The abbot of Arkadi told W. R. Halliday early in
this century that the 1866 rebellion was foretold by these means. He
had been told by a travelling German about planchette, and succeeded
in proving to Halliday that it was only impure spirits, and not the souls
of the dead, who wrote messages thus. The abbot was of the opinion
–like all folklorists at all times–that things were not what they had been;
the art of divination was dying. If so it has taken an unconscionable
time to do so.)
Demons, evil spirits and vampires haunt these mountains. There is
an old story, how two men sat up one moonlit night waiting for agrimia
near the gorge of Samaria. Their vigil was disturbed by a great noise,
caused they imagined by overzealous workmen come to hump snow
down to Canea for use in refrigeration. But on going closer they could
distinguish lyres, viols, and other stranger noises such as they had never
heard. Then they knew that these were no men, but members of a
Demons’ Council. At last they saw them –phantoms, male and female,
some mounted, some on foot: the men white as doves, the women fair as
the rays of the sun; winding their ghostly way across the slope.
They were supporting something, as one supports a bier – a girl, it
seems, for they were singing, ‘Where are we to take her, the bride, the
lonely bride ?’
When two hunters interrupted them by firing into the company,
those in front cried ‘Who is it?’ and those behind cried ‘They have
killed our bridegroom, they have killed our bridegroom.’ And they
wept and fled.
The superstitions survive, even if battered and eroded by scepticism.
George Psychoundakis claims to have heard a similar ghostly army,
but admits that it can never be seen. When its members are evil spirits,
they come to carry off a soul, when good (but this is rare) there is a
smell of incense in the air around them. George, returning to Asi Gonia
from a neighbouring village, heard the footfalls of a great company
approach. He waited until they passed in front of him, and then,
dismayed because he could see no man, ran back to Asi Gonia and
fetched his relations out to listen. But although he himself could still
hear the drumming of feet, for the others there was only silence.
Two days later an old man died in the neighbourhood.
Ghosts in large numbers are hard to cope with. When they appear
singly there is more opportunity for the Cretan to show ingenuity in
dealing with them; and often the best method is indecent.
There was for instance the vampire in Anopolis, the little village
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