Almost universal, except among the most sophisticated groups, is the fear of the dead. This fact is shown by scores of world-wide practices designed to keep the dead from coming forth from their graves and molesting the living. [24] Traditions of experiences with such wanderers are common to all countries, but they are usually so connected with definite places that they are considered as local legends. Several widely distributed folktales, however, are based upon this belief. In some the dead is considered definitely as a vampire, who comes forth from the grave and lives on the blood of the living. In others it is a less malevolent ghost.

The tale of The Princess in the Shroud (Type 307) is very popular in eastern Europe, particularly Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, and the Balkans. This is not surprising since the vampire belief is so strong among just these peoples. It is known but not popular in western Europe and has not been reported farther than Armenia. African versions sometimes cited show so little real resemblance as to indicate that they certainly belong to a different tradition.

Parents who are childless make a solemn wish for a child even though it may be a devil. The daughter born in response to this wish proves to be [p. 41] diabolical, and at her death she wanders as a vampire. All the soldiers who watch her grave in the church at night are killed. The hero of the story receives the advice of an old man and succeeds in bringing her back to life and overcoming her enchantment by following the old man's directions. For three nights he prays, once kneeling before the altar, once prone before the altar, and once in her grave. All this time he endures her severe punishments. At the end all the watchers are restored to life and the hero and the girl are happily married.

In a story almost entirely confined to the shores of the Baltic and to Norway (Type 363), the vampire is a man. A strange man appears and marries a girl without her knowing much about him. As they are driving at night in a wagon toward his home, he stops before a church and tells her to wait for him. She becomes impatient and slips in to see what he is doing. He has a burning lamp and a dead body before him and is eating the corpse. She returns to the wagon without being discovered. The same thing happens at the second and the third church, except that there are two and then three corpses. They eventually, reach his home, where she lives in fair content. One day he tells her that members of her family will visit her but that she is not to tell them what she knows about him. This happens and she refuses to talk freely to her brother and her mother, but eventually tells her sister the secret. The husband has merely taken on the form of the members of the family to test her. He now assumes his own form and devours her.

Much better known to the tradition of western Europe, largely because the theme has been used so much in ballads, is the Lenore story (Type 365). No comparative study of the relation of the folktale to the ballad has been made which would indicate whether verse or prose would seem to be the original form. In verse it achieved an enormous popularity at the end of the 18th century after it had been used by Bürger in his "Lenore." The tradition is usually given in prose form in the Baltic states, where in Lithuania not fewer than 42 versions have been reported and in Finland, 174. But the prose versions hardly appear in other parts of Europe. A few Hungarian and Roumanian variants form the only exception. The story itself is very simple in structure. A girl's lover appears to her at night and invites her to ride with him on his horse. He has been away and she has had no news of him. As they ride she realizes that he has returned from the dead and becomes frightened. He takes her to his grave and disappears as the cock crows. Sometimes she is pulled into the grave and sometimes she is found dead outside.

The three stories which we have just given are the only ones of dead lovers which have acquired great popularity in Europe. There are many local stories, particularly in eastern Europe, with these basic situations but with the details considerably changed. [25] [p. 42]

Ghost stories have a tendency to be localized and to vary a great deal from place to place. A whole series of such local legends has to do with a person who returns from the dead to claim some object which has been stolen from him. One such tale is so widely known that it has lost any definite attachment to place and is told as an ordinary folktale. This story of The Man from the Gallows (Type 366) is well known in western Europe. Its greatest popularity seems to be in Denmark, though it is told in England and as far south as Spain. There are frequent German variants, but it fades out as soon as one moves east of the German border. Versions have been carried by travelers to the Malay peninsula and to the Hausa in Africa. A poor man, desperately in need of meat for his family, finds a thief hanging from the gallows. He cuts meat from the legs of the thief, takes it home, and has it served at a feast. The dead man comes and demands the return of his flesh. In most versions the man who stole the flesh is carried off. Some variation is made in the story from place to place. Sometimes it is the heart, or even a piece of clothing of the hanged man which is stolen.