A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.
A vampire is a creature from folklore that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.
A jiangshi, also known as a Chinese hopping vampire, is a type of reanimated corpse in Chinese legends and folklore. The characters for "jiangshi" are read geung-si in Cantonese, cương thi in Vietnamese, kyonshi in Japanese, and gangsi in Korean. It is also known as phi dip chin in Thai, hantu pocong in Malay, and vampir cina in Indonesia. It is typically depicted as a stiff corpse dressed in Chinese shroud which is sometimes mistaken as official garments from the Qing Dynasty, and it moves around by hopping with its arms outstretched. It kills living creatures to absorb their qi, or "life force", usually at night, while during the day, it rests in a coffin or hides in dark places such as caves. Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia.
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition. Humans have been burying their dead since shortly after the origin of the species. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life.
Crataegus monogyna, known as common hawthorn, one-seed hawthorn, or single-seeded hawthorn, is a species of flowering plant in the rose family Rosaceae. It is native to Europe, northwestern Africa, and West Asia, but has been introduced in many other parts of the world.
Aswang is an umbrella term for various shape-shifting evil creatures in Filipino folklore, such as vampires, ghouls, witches, viscera suckers, and werebeasts. The aswang is the subject of a wide variety of myths, stories, arts, and films, as it is well known throughout the Philippines. Spanish colonists noted that the aswang was the most feared among the mythical creatures of the Philippines, even in the 16th century. Although with no specific motive other than harming others, their behavior can be interpreted as an inversion of the traditional Filipino's values. The aswang is especially popular in southern parts of Luzon, and some parts of Mindanao and Visayas, especially the Visayan province of Capiz.
In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have revived from death to haunt the living. The word revenant is derived from the Old French word, revenant, the "returning".
Disposal of human corpses, also called final disposition, is the practice and process of dealing with the remains of a deceased human being. Disposal methods may need to account for the fact that soft tissue will decompose relatively rapidly, while the skeleton will remain intact for thousands of years under certain conditions.
Vrykolakas, also called vorvolakas or vourdoulakas, is a harmful, undead creature in Greek folklore. It shares similarities with numerous other legendary creatures, but is generally equated with the vampire of the folklore of the neighbouring Slavic countries. While the two are very similar, a vrykolakas eats flesh, particularly livers, rather than drinking blood, which combined with other factors such as its appearance bring it more in line with the modern concept of a zombie.
The cat-sìth, in Irish cat sí is a fairy creature from Celtic mythology, said to resemble a large black cat with a white spot on its chest. Legend has it that the spectral cat haunts the Scottish Highlands. The legends surrounding this creature are more common in Scottish folklore, but a few occur in Irish. Some common folklore suggested that the cat-sìth was not a fairy, but a witch that could transform into a cat nine times.
There are many Malay ghost myths, remnants of old animist beliefs that have been shaped by Hindu-Buddhist cosmology and later Muslim influences, in the modern states of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and among the Malay diaspora in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. The general word for ghost is hantu, of which there exist a wide variety. Some ghost concepts such as the female vampires pontianak and penanggal are shared throughout the region. While traditional belief doesn't consider all ghosts as necessarily evil, Malaysian popular culture tends to categorise them all as types of evil djinn.
Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1579–1656) was a villager from the region of Istria who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a strigoi, štrigon, or štrigun, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock, although strigon in Venetian, which is commonly spoken in Istria, is properly a sorcerer; cf. Italian stregone.
Legends of vampires have existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic entities and blood-drinking spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century Southeastern Europe, particularly Transylvania as verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or a living person being bitten by a vampire themselves. Belief in such legends became so rife that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.
During the Pre-Hispanic period the early Filipinos believed in a concept of life after death. This belief, which stemmed from indigenous ancestral veneration and was strengthened by strong family and community relations within tribes, prompted the Filipinos to create burial customs to honor the dead through prayers and rituals. Due to different cultures from various regions of the Philippines, many different burial practices have emerged. For example, the Manobos buried their dead in trees, the Ifugaos seated the corpse on a chari before it was brought to a cave and buried elsewhere. The most common forms of traditional burials are supine pits, earthenware jars, and log coffins, and have been a topic of interest among Philippine archaeologists since the early 20th century.
In mythology and folklore, a vengeful ghost or vengeful spirit is said to be the spirit of a dead person who returns from the afterlife to seek revenge for a cruel, unnatural or unjust death. In certain cultures where funeral and burial or cremation ceremonies are important, such vengeful spirits may also be considered as unhappy ghosts of individuals who have not been given a proper funeral.
Ubir is a mythological or folkloric being in Turkic mythology who subsists by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether it is an undead person or being.
Mummification was practiced in the Philippines only on those able to prove the loss of baby teeth. The baby teeth represented youth, losing them illustrated wisdom gained in their mouth. It also portrayed the journey of maturity. Dying without losing baby teeth was a sign of someone who never reached their full potential. Once you lose and grow your first grill, the second time you lose the teeth, it's time to go. That's because they were given a chance of proper dental hygiene. The caves containing the mummies were untouched until the 19th century.
Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c. is one of the many works by an Abbot monk named Antoine Augustin Calmet, an exegete and an 18th century Lorraine scholar of the Benedictine Order; also known as Dom Calmet. The work was published in 2 volumes that dealt with the extensive investigation into occult matters regarding the apparitions of angels, demons and other spirits.
Upir – a demonic being from Slavic folklore, prototype of the vampire.
