Case file · Folklore / legend
The Arefu strigoi burning
Historian Radu Florescu recorded that at Căpățâneni (now part of Arefu), below Vlad III's Poenari fortress, villagers in 1969 exhumed an old man after several of his relatives died, found him undecayed and burned the body.
1969 CE · 45.33, 24.63 · status: account
The account
Florescu and Raymond McNally, who researched the historical Dracula in the area, cited the case as evidence that strigoi beliefs were alive in Communist Romania.
The sceptical view
Known from a single writer's account; 'undecayed' bodies are common in some soils.