In Romanian folklore, a strigoi is a malevolent spirit of a dead person that can shape-shift. These troubled dead are said to rise from the grave, transform into animals, become invisible, and drain vitality or blood from the living.
Romanian traditions distinguish between the strigoi viu, a living person believed to possess harmful supernatural powers, and the strigoi mort, the dangerous undead form. Folklore attributed many misfortunes to strigoi, including illness, livestock deaths, failed crops, drought, hail, and the loss of milk or human strength.
The creature is closely connected with Romania’s wider vampire traditions, but “strigoi” is not simply a translation of the modern fictional vampire. Regional terminology overlaps: Moroi, vârcolac, and other names could refer to related beings or local variants. That overlap is why the terms are sometimes treated as interchangeable in popular accounts.
Protective customs included exhuming a suspected strigoi, piercing or burning the body, and using garlic or other ritual measures. The association with Dracula is also modern and indirect: Bram Stoker’s novel helped popularize Romanian vampire imagery, but the strigoi comes from older local beliefs about restless or corrupted dead.