Talamaur

The talamaur is a vampire legend of the Banks Islands, Vanuatu, located in the South Pacific. A talamaur was a type of vampire who controlled the ghost of a dead person, and could use it to drain the vitality from the living and the recently deceased.[1] Some people actually aspired to become talamaurs.[2] The power of a talamaur could purportedly be gained by eating part of a corpse, thus gaining kinship with the soul of the deceased.[3]

A talamaur could be identified by exposure to the smoke of certain burning leaves, which would cause it to shout the names of the deceased person whose ghost it controlled and of the person whom it was afflicting.[4] Injuries inflicted on the talamaur's ghostly form would appear on its living body; such bruising was used to identify a talamaur.[5]

References
  1. Daniels, Cora Linn; Stevans, C.M. (2003). Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World. Minerva. pp. 1364–1365. ISBN 9781410209160.
  2. Melton, J. Gordon (2010). The Vampire Book. Visible Ink Press. pp. 664–665. ISBN 9781578592814.
  3. Róheim, Géza (1972). Animism, Magic, and the Divine King. Taylor & Francis. p. 109. ISBN 9780710073020.
  4. Summers, Montague (1928). The Vampire, his Kith and Kin. Forgotten Books. p. 227. ISBN 9781605065663.
  5. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 10. 1881. p. 285.
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