Literature, movie theaters, television shows, and anime are infected with vampires today and have turned the field of vampire themes into a popular cultural phenomenon. Most of the world’s population has heard, and many of us have even been fans of TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)and movies like Interview with the vampire (1994), Dracula 2000 (2000), Underworld (2003) and lately the Twilight Serie. Most of these hot TV and movie characters were born in books and later made it onto the movie screens. But who stole vampires from dark and mysterious legends and brought them to light in modern literature?
The first classical vampire ever mentioned in documented records was Jure Grando (?-1656). In his native Istria, which is part of today’s Croatia, he was called strigon – the native word for vampire.
According to native legend, Jure Grando was a peasant who lived in Kringa, a small town in the heart of the Istrian peninsula. He died in 1656 but apparently returned as a vampire to terrorize the people of him. He had a successful vampire career for sixteen long years after his death. His job description was to walk around town at night and knock on people’s doors. Regardless of which door they knocked on, a member of that family would die soon after. When he was in the mood to work overtime, he would visit her widow and sexually assault her. She described that she looked like she was smiling and out of breath.
Although these stories sounded surreal, the village priest, Father Giorgo, eventually confronted the vampire himself. On that special occasion he held up a cross in front of Jure and said, “Look at Jesus Christ, vampire! Stop tormenting us!” and, according to his testimony, tears began to fall from the vampire’s eyes. Shortly after that event, the village prefect, Miho Radetic, gathered the bravest of the villagers, then pursued and attempted to kill the vampire by impaling him through the heart with a thorn stick. Due to the fact that the stick bounced off Grando’s chest, the mission failed. The next night, nine people from Kringa went to the cemetery with a thorn stick and crosses in their hands. Digging up Jure’s coffin revealed her perfectly preserved corpse smiling at them. Father Giorgio said: “Look strigon, there is Jesus Christ who saved us from hell and died for us. And you strigonyou can’t have peace!” They tried to pierce his heart again, but the stick could not penetrate his flesh once more, so one of the villagers, Stipan Milasic, took the saw and cut off the vampire’s head. Saw tore his skin, the vampire began to scream, and blood began to flow from the open cut. Shortly after the beheading, the entire tomb was flooded with blood. According to this legend, peace finally returned to the region after the beheading of Big Jure.
The first document mentioning Jure Grando, dating from the 17th century, was written by his contemporary Janez Vajkard Valvasor, a Slovenian writer and travel historian. In his 15-volume work Tea Glory of the Duchy Carniolawhich was first published in 1689 in Germany, Valvasor told the story he had heard while visiting Kringa.
In modern times, the Croatian writer Boris Peric has been researching the subject for many years and wrote a book The Vampire which was inspired by the story that Valvasor had written.
During his research, Peric discovered that Herman Hesse, a German-born Swiss novelist and painter, took the legend about Jure Grando in 1924 from the Antiquarius of the Rhine. That is the exact same publication that George Gordon Byron, his physician John Polidori, and Mary and Percy Shelley were reading during their 1816 summer vacation at Lake Geneva. Inspired by these stories, one stormy afternoon they decide to start a contest among themselves to see who among them can write the most horrifying story. While Mary Shelley drew hers, later her world-known bestseller, Frankenstein That night, Lord Byron began to write a story about vampires, but he wasn’t happy with it and threw it away. In doing so, he gave a chance to the much less talented Polidori, who took the script, finished it, and published it under his own name as a short story called The Vampire. That same Polidori story had a tremendous effect on the later achievements of vampire literature: the vampire novels. Camila written by Joseph Sheridan and Bram Stoker dracula.
Although we will never be able to say with certainty whether or not the Jure Grando legend formed part of the applied literature on that fruitful stormy night on Lake Geneva, because much of Antiquarius of the Rhine editions ended up being destroyed or lost, nothing prevents us from assuming that because at the time the case of Jure Grando had already drawn the attention of German journalists and historians. And on top of that, science today agrees that vampire literature, in the modern sense, has appeared with none other than George Gordon Byron.
Having said that and while awaiting the final results of further investigations, Grando native Kringa has embraced the story about his strigon and they have opened a vampire-themed bar aimed at attracting tourists to the city. The library made up of vampire-inspired books is also part of the bar, so while you enjoy getting lost in one of the many stories that can be found there, you can also try vampire cocktails created especially for the promotion of the legend about Jure Grando. or get yourself handmade souvenirs that will protect you from a possible attack by the Croatian vampire. That same bar is also the scene of literary happenings such as “Vampire nights” where numerous authors who use vampire characters in their works had already performed before the public. So, even if Jure Grando is just a figment of the human imagination, fun is guaranteed for anyone who decides to put Kringa on their travel map.
