Nachzehrer

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A Nachzehrer is a sort of German vampire. Nachzehrer translates "afterwards (nach) devourer (zehrer)". The Nachzehrer was prominent in the northern region of Germany, including Silesia and Bavaria, and also with the Kashubes of Northern Europe. Though officially a vampire, they are also similar to zombies, and in many ways different from either undead. The nachzehrer is not a blood-sucker. Instead, they live off of the consumption of already dead bodies.

A nachzehrer is created most commonly after suicide, and sometimes from an accidental death. According to German lore, you don't become one from being bitten, or scratched. It is just something that happens. Nachzehrers are also related to sickness and disease. If a large group of people died of the plague, the first person to have died is believed to be a nachzehrer.

Typically a Nachzehrer devours its family members upon waking. Its also been said that they devour themselves, including their funeral shroud, and the more of themselves they eat, the more of their family they physically drain. It is not unlikely that the idea of the dead eating themselves might have risen from bodies in open graves who had been partly eaten by scavengers like rats.

Some Kashubes believed that the Nachzehrer would leave it’s grave, shapeshifting into the form of a pig, and pay a visit to their family members to feast on their blood. In addition, the Nachzehrer was able to ascend to a church belfry to ring the bells, bringing death to anyone who hears them. Another lesser known ability of the Nachzehrer is the power it had to bring death by causing it’s shadow to fall upon someone. Those hunting the Nachzehrer in the graveyard would listen for grunting sounds that it would make while it munched on it’s grave clothes.^[1]

In addition to the ability to shapeshift into a pig, and drain away its family's life force much the way a vampire drains away blood (only from a distance), a Nachzehrer can ascend to the bell tower of a church, and ring the bells. All who hear the bells are murdered.

The Nachzehrer was similar to the Slavic vampire in that it was known to be a recently deceased person who returned from the grave to attack family and village acquaintances. It usually originated from an unusual death such as a person who died by suicide or accident. They were also associated with epidemic sickness, such as whenever a group of people died from the same disease, the person who died first was labeled to be the cause of the group's death. Another belief was that if a person's name was not removed from his burial clothing, that person would be a candidate for becoming a Nachzehrer.
To protect themselves from the Nachzehrer, villagers would place clumps of earth under the vampire's chin, place a coin or stone in its mouth, or tie a handkerchief tightly around its neck. In other cases, the corpse would be beheaded, a spike would be driven through head to pin the corpse to the ground, or the tongue would be fixed into place.^[2]

The official killing myth says you can kill a Nachzehrer by placing a coin in its mouth, and then axing off its head. It can be discerned from this that a mere coin in the mouth may result in paralysis as some myths say that a stake through a vampires heart does.

It is characteristic of a Nachzehrer to lie in its grave with its thumb in its opposite hand, and its left eye open.