The Hindu : International : `Restless spirit holds sway'

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Monday, Jun 20, 2005

International

International

`Restless spirit holds sway'

Daniel McLaughlin© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

A remote village in south-west Romania placates `strigoi' "Villagers took out Petre Toma's heart, burnt it and drank the ashes in a glass of water."

MAROTINU DE SUS (ROMANIA): The fate of Petre Toma's corpse seemed to belie his reputation as an ordinary labourer in the fields that encircle the remote village of Marotinu de Sus in south-west Romania.

"They took out his heart, burnt it and drank the ashes in a glass of water," says Elisabeta Marinescu, who was a neighbour of Mr. Toma's. After a life of sporadic illness, immoderate drinking and a final, decisive accident in the fields, Mr. Toma died in December 2003. But, so many here say, his spirit would not lie quiet.

"His own sister complained that her daughter-in-law had fallen ill and that Petre was to blame — she said he had become a `strigoi' and something must be done," says Ms. Marinescu.

What six local men did was enact an ancient Romanian ritual for dealing with a `strigoi' — a restless spirit that returns to suck the lifeblood from his relatives. Just before midnight, they crept into the cemetery on the edge of the village and gathered around Mr. Toma's grave.

Then they dug him up, split his ribcage with a pitchfork, removed his heart, put stakes through the rest of his body and sprinkled it with garlic. Then they burnt the heart, put the embers in water and shared the grim cocktail with the sick woman. More than a year later, the effect of the macabre ritual still reverberates through the village. "Well, the sick woman got better again, so they must have done something right," says Anisoara Constantin, on what constitutes the village's main street.

Time moves slowly here and ritual and superstition shape the lives of peasants who gained little under Communism and even less from the aristocracy that came before and the free market that followed it. They fear curses and the evil eye and, though some claimed not to fear the undead, none would condemn the six men for doing what they believed was right to lay a restless `strigoi.'

Local police appeared to be less understanding. After Mr. Toma's daughter complained, they arrested the men and charged them with illegally exhuming his corpse. They were sentenced to six months in jail, but did not serve it. "No one is bothered who did it, it's their own business," declared 80-year-old Tudor Stoica. "This ritual often takes place, but in secret, within the family. The problem comes when the police get involved." He said the `strigoi' had haunted Romanian nightmares for centuries, describing it as "a fiendish thing, ungodly, that wants to do evil."

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