Case file · Folklore / legend
Father Richard's vrykolakas reports from Santorini
The Jesuit François Richard, who lived on Santorini, published in 1657 an account of the island's vrykolakas cases, helping make Santorini notorious as the 'vampire island' of the Aegean.
1657 CE · 36.42, 25.43 · status: account
The account
Richard reported the exhumation and burning of suspected revenants and treated the phenomenon as real, though he attributed it to the Devil animating the bodies. Later Greek sayings held that sending a vampire to Santorini was like 'sending owls to Athens', because the island already had so many.
The sceptical view
Richard was writing as a missionary keen to show diabolical activity; no physical evidence beyond the beliefs and exhumations is recorded.