Episode 54 - Revenants

Stories the world over are full of the dead returning to life. Some come back blood hungry. Others come back with nothing but a ceaseless hunger for flesh. Some come back driven for vengeance.

Some of the risen dead however, revel in their cursed new life. These who behave in strange ways and with ill-intent, are the revenants.

Revenants dot the stories of the Middle Ages all across Europe in a few different forms.

Although it’s used interchangeably with vampire or ghost in some cases, it began to take on its own form.

Throughout the Middle Ages, between 1000 and 1200AD, a number of reports were recorded by various historians and priests of people returning from death and performing all manner of wicked deed.

Revenants appear in stories for centuries across Europe. And in their earliest form have parallels with all manner of other undead creatures. Revenant has been a synonym of vampire and of ghost. It has been a corpse that walked, a spirit that could fade through walls, and everything in between. Revenants have tormented the living, terrified them, and made their way around the world.

People across the globe came up with rituals and rites that could return such a haunt to eternal rest. Ways to prevent the body from rising again, and they are as variable as the stories that feature these creatures which have pulled themselves back from beyond the grave.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I am excited to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil, and we visit the Odd Accounts of Historical Revenants.

For a long time, the word revenant was a synonym to vampire or ghost. It was used generically to mean any undead creature.

Some folklorists claim that vampire has its origin in Eastern Europe whereas revenant is derived from the stories of Western Europe, however, the stories are muddled enough to make defining the term somewhat difficult.

Certainly the origins of the revenant legend go back as far as the 12th century, where we see the largest body of stories related to the returned dead. Greek and Egyptian documents citing belief in magic that could call forth a soul of a long-deceased individual were cited as perhaps the origin of the stories by the 18th century scholar Augustin Calmet. He claims that stories of blood-drinking sorcerers could be partially responsible for the revenant tales that would eventually become very popular.

But in the stories of the Middle Ages, revenants were strange creatures with a myriad of abilities that struck fear in the common people.

The accounts and Historia of William of Newburgh include several stories of revenants. Published in the 1100s, William of Newburgh’s Historia tells various rumors and stories of common people. He includes in it that he could not possibly include all instances of stories involving the dead returning to wretched life to haunt the living because there were far too many of them. Instead, he included a curated few which he believed were the most compelling and interesting.

The first story speaks about a man of very ill-repute, who when he began to have some trouble with the law, fled to York. There, he decided to settle down and get married. However, he became jealous and suspicious of his wife so he hid in the rafters and caught her cheating with a young local man. However, in his anger, he fell from his hiding place and wounded himself badly. He died a few days later.

However, after the burial, and for each night thereafter, the man would rise from the dead to terrorize the town. People claimed they would hear him wandering through the streets, pursued by a pack of baying hounds. Those that ventured out after dark claimed they were attacked by the monster. Some were beaten incredibly badly, some even died at the hands of the creature.

So, after a while, as the attacks continued, a group of the townspeople brought shovels to the graveyard during the day and dug up the corpse of the man. They found it bloated and horrible to behold. It was claimed that to destroy such a creature, its heart must be removed and then the body must be burned. A pyre was constructed and they destroyed the body of the evil man.

William of Newburgh also includes another story about a man who after he died, began to torment his family by awakening them in the dead of night with a horrible visage. Eventually, a bishop came and performed several rites upon his grave, as well as interred a letter of absolution with the man. After the rituals, the man did not return.

Many myths are associated with the revenant. In its earliest forms, it is related to the vampire myths of eastern Europe, and to ghost stories all across Europe. In spite of its long history and many stories, or perhaps because of its prevalence, the real origins of revenant stories are difficult to identify.

One theory that has been proposed is that revenants have their origin in old Norse myths involving the draugr. Draugr, literally translated to Again-walker, are a kind of undead that has returned to life to punish those which disturb their tombs.

In draugr stories, the creatures are usually immune to normal weapons, and often require magic or trickery to destroy.

When they appear in stories, they are almost always a force that stands between a hero and something they need or want, and thus are generally demonstrated as powerful, angry creatures that cannot be reasoned with.

Other regions also have early revenant-style stories. Finland has stories of dead-child beings that are described as corpses animated by restless spirits. The Caribbean has stories of the soucouyant or loup-garou which in some versions are very similar to revenant stories.

In 1090, the Abbot of Burton recorded a strange event that had plagued a village nearby.

He speaks of two young men. Peasants who had fled into the woods but returned just before dying of unknown causes. The townspeople buried the two men and that should have been the end of it. Instead, that night when the sun set, the two men were seen in the town, their wooden coffins held across their shoulders. They walked through the paths and fields, some villagers reported seeing them shapeshift into bears and dogs as well. They called out to the other peasants, banging on their doors and the walls of their homes, calling out to them to come and join them.

After that evening, many within the village began to fall ill. It was decided the two men were revenants and that they were responsible for the spread of the disease. To prevent the plague from growing worse, the townspeople exhumed the bodies, cut their heads off, removed their hearts, and burned them.

According to the Abbot’s report, the sickness did indeed stop spreading after that.

Walter Map was a chronicler of the 12th century from Wales. One story from his collections that has survived the test of time is his story about the town of Hereford.

A wicked man, described as a villain and of ill character, died in the town of Hereford and was buried. However, after he died, he began to return and prowl the streets of the village at night. He would be seen wandering and shouting the names of those who would die of sickness within three days.

At first, the townspeople did nothing, but after the first few fell sick and started dying, the bishop Gilbert Foliot ordered the townspeople to dig up the body, cut the head off, sprinkle it with holy water and re-inter it.

After this ritual was performed, the revenant was never seen again, and the sickness that had begun to make its way through the town ceased.

Revenants are a strange creature, with some near constants and some incredible variables. They are unique across the regions of Europe, and under the classical definition, include all the stories of vampires, ghosts, and the many varieties of undead between.

They appear in dozens of cultures, and taking forms that range from the grotesque to the strange to the humorous.

Most often, at least in western Europe, situations involving revenants required religious ritual intervention to finally stop them. Often the bodies would be destroyed in some specific way, or re-interred with blessings placed upon them to prevent them from rising again.

But in spite of all the ways we developed to stop revenants and the other undead, we just can’t seem to stop stories featuring them from coming back to haunt us.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

Music this week was: Foggy Night by Greg Ralls

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.