Strzyga

According to Aleksander Brückner, the word is derived from Strix, Latin for owl and a bird-like creature which fed on human flesh and blood in Roman and Greek mythology.

[6][2] The strzyga remained a popular element in the folklore of rural Poland well into the late 19th and early 20th century, as shown by Władysław Reymont in his Nobel Prize-winning novel Chłopi (The Peasants).

Its story takes place during the 1880s in Congress Poland and follows the everyday life of the peasantry in a typical Polish village.

In the tenth chapter of book two, some of the characters gather together to exchange stories and legends, in one of which the striga is described as having a bat's wings (strzygi z nietoperzowymi skrzydłami przelatują).

During epidemics, people were getting buried alive, and those who managed to get out of their graves, often weak, ill and with mutilated hands, were said to be strzygi by others.