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 or ghoul.
[2] The Greeks traditionally believed that a person could become a vrykolakas after death due to a sacrilegious way of life, an excommunication, a burial in unconsecrated ground, or eating the meat of a sheep which had been wounded by a wolf or a werewolf.
Some believed that a werewolf itself could become a powerful vampire after being killed, and would retain the wolf-like fangs, hairy palms, and glowing eyes it formerly possessed.
People with red hair and gray eyes at this time in history were thought to be vampires according to accounts near the region of modern Serbia.
Buried with her was a small jar containing a single coin from the reign of Emperor Constantine and a portion of the dismembered left leg of an adult male.
[9] At Lesbos, a Turkish cemetery from the Ottoman period contained an isolated tomb of an adult who was pinned at the neck, pelvis and both feet with 20 cm nails.
Both were middle-aged men buried in special crypts with 20 cm spikes through the neck, groin and ankles, a typical Balkan method of dealing with a suspected revenant.
The British vice-consul, Charles Thomas Newton, in his Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (1865), mentions an island off the coast of Lesbos on which the Greeks of his time (1850s) buried their vrykolakadhes.
Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles,[11] near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin.
This method resembles the Ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld; it has been argued that instead, the coin was intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore.
This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the vrykolakas, in which a wax cross and a piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" might be placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire.
The 1718 account of French traveller Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who witnessed the exhumation and "slaying" of a suspected vrykolakas on the Greek island of Mykonos in 1701, became better known.
[18] Henry Fanshawe Tozer in 1869 wrote: "The principal causes which change persons into vrykolakas after death are excommunication, heinous sins, the curse of parents, and tampering with magic arts.