In Romanian folklore, the Strigoi are restless beings associated with the dead returning to trouble the living. Unlike the elegant vampire of later Gothic fiction, the fear is intimate: the revenant may be someone once known to the family or village.
Traditions vary by region and period. Strigoi could be imagined as restless dead, dangerous spirits or beings capable of draining vitality. Protective and anti-vampire customs recorded in southeastern Europe could include exhumation and ritual treatment of a suspected corpse.
A widely reported case in southern Romania in the early 2000s involved relatives exhuming a deceased man after believing he was harming a living family member, showing how old revenant traditions could survive into modern times.
The Strigoi endure in the space between folklore, family memory and fear: not a foreign aristocrat arriving at the castle door, but the disturbing possibility that the dead might come home.