Didn't do much today except read by the pool.
I am ploughing through Montague Summers The Vampire in Lore and Legend (research material for something I am writing), which is a dreadfully written book although it has some fascinating case studies. Summers was a very odd man, he claimed to have been ordained as a Catholic Priest although no record exists of this and he dressed as an 18th century clergyman even down to how he wore his hair. Bit of a nutter he wrote several books on witchcraft and the supernatural.
Anyway this case study was by a Jesuit priest on the Greek Island of Santorini and concerned a man who had converted to te Jesuit Church before he died. In his will he asked that his wife distribute alms to various people, but she decided against it. So his animated corpse returned and haunted the village getting the orthodox priests up early to take matins and pulling the bedclothes of slumbering people in the morning to get them to church. Eventually the priests disinterred him and burnt his heart. Deserved it if you ask me.
Can you imagine anything worse than a reanimated religious nutter corpse.
According to the French Jesuit who recorded this the reason the Greeks are plagued with vampires and the like is because their orthodox faith is not strong enough to dispel the beings. Unlike good old Catholic France where they are just haunted by the spirits of those unable to leave purgatory.
Oh what a comfort religion is.
