#vampire pumpkins

VAMPIRE PUMPKINS!! If you’re not familiar with the Romani folklore around vampire pumpkins, it’s - it’s just delightful, I adore these incredibly ineffective vampires. According to the Wikipedia page,

"[T]hey consider this transformation occurs if these ground fruit have been kept for more than ten days: then the gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl, brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the [Romani] then say it has become a vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of vampire."

Here's the link to the full Wikipedia page for those who are interested. It is worth noting that they do use the term G*psy, which is considered a slur, instead of Romani to refer to this people group.

WEEK 25: VAMPIRE FRUIT

I'm still here, chugging away at the Crypt-A-Long! I wanted to make a Geek-A-Long, like they do every year at Lattes and Llamas, but I wanted to put my own spin on it, so I chose cryptids. Every week I'll post a new chart that you can slot into the standard Geek-A-Long pattern from the website to make yourself the most mysterious afghan of all.

One of my very favourite pieces of folklore from anywhere on earth is the belief among the Romani people of the Balkans that pumpkins can become vampires. This may happen if they're left outside on the night of a full moon, and you can tell which fruits are affected because drops of blood will appear on the rind. A vampire pumpkin in a drawing just looks like a jack-o-lantern, so I tried to make mine look like one of those green and yellow squashes people decorate with in the fall. They're closely related to pumpkins so I figure they're probably susceptible to the same kind of vampirism.

* Nosferatu is the most accurate term for people turned unto blood-sucking creatures of the night. This is generally because vampires are undead and nosferatu are not. Other forms of blood-sucking monsters have their own specific names like adze or impundulu and should not be confused for each other b/c they do NOT have the same weaknesses, abilities, and habits. Misinformation KILLS!

The beginning of the nosferatu cycle starts with a vampire melon/gourd.

Large hard rind fruits, typically melons and pumpkins, can metamorphize into monstrous mobile fruit with tastes for blood if left out in the fields either a fortnight past harvest or under the first full moon past harvest depending on which happens first.

This vampire fruit is mostly harmless as they possess no means to actually consume blood and cannot do much more than weakly jump or roll after prey. They are however gross given that they sweat blood and smell like rot.

If left undestroyed for another 40 days after becoming animate, vampire fruit with further metamorphize into swallowing gourds/melons. 

Swallowing fruit can grow to be larger than a one or two-story house and have grown mouthes through which to consume prey. And consume they do! Swallowing fruit can consume entire towns and herds of cattle. After devouring more than ten times its weight in meat a swallowing fruit will rest inside large bodies of water to digest.

--Farmers and gardeners are legally required to properly tend their melon and squash patches as the vampire/swallowing gourd phenomenon only occurs on active farmland. Any vampire fruit found will incur a hefty fine. No wild or feral vegetable patch has been shown to go bad.

To become a nosferatu one must eat a vampire fruit. As vampire fruit are rancid and animate this is not terribly common for this to happen. 

If one does not die from food poisoning from eating rotten fruit, the fruit eater transforms into a nosferatu after 40 days. Generally growing fangs and claws and developing nocturnal habits. A nosferatu when cut does not bleed red, their blood has been replaced with clear a sugary sap.

---Do not drink nosferatu sap. This is how secondary nosferatu are made and/of how people die of the fifty bajillion diseases that blood-drinking monsters can accumulate.