“An unbaptized soul that shrieks in the night, and its scream alone can foretell a death.”
The drekavac is heard long before it is seen, and most who meet it never see it at all. Its name means 'the screamer', from drečati, to screech, and the scream is the whole terror: a wail out of the dark in rural Serbia and Bosnia, rising from graveyards, ponds and lonely roads, that villagers read as an omen. Tradition says the voice belongs to a soul that never received a name — a child dead unbaptised, shut out of heaven and left in the night to cry about it.
No two districts describe the body alike, which folklorists take as the mark of a creature built from sound. Eastern Serbia gives it a dog's shape walking on hind legs; around Arilje it is long-necked and cat-headed; in Gruža it is spindle-thin with a disproportionately large head; elsewhere it is a dappled foal, a bird, a one-legged thing with glowing eyes. Unusually for a folk demon, it is still being reported — the slopes of Zlatibor have produced sightings within living memory.
The Legend
The core tale is a small tragedy. A child dies before baptism, and its soul, having no name to answer to, cannot cross over. It rises from its grave at night to haunt its parents, or waits near the churchyard entreating passers-by to baptise it and end its misery. Denied, it screams — and the scream itself became the omen: heard from a child-shaped thing it foretells a death in the house, while from an animal shape it foretells disease among the cattle.
It keeps a calendar. The drekavac walks chiefly at night during the twelve days of Christmas — called the 'unbaptised days' in Serbo-Croatian — and again in early spring, the seasons when the unquiet dead were loose in general. It shuns dogs and bright light, and its shadow falling across a person was believed to bring sickness and death. The lasting cure is the one the creature begs for: a name and a blessing releases the soul, and the screaming stops for good.
Documented Sightings
The reports run into the present day. On the mountain of Zlatibor, numerous villagers have claimed to see the creature and many more to have heard it, according to a guide who led a reporter from Duga magazine through the district. In 1992, villagers at Krvavica found the remains of an animal unlike anything known in the area and declared them a drekavac; examination identified a rotten fox carcass, which settled nothing for those who had heard the screaming.
In 2003 a spate of night attacks on sheep at Tometino Polje was blamed by some villagers on a drekavac, and modern accounts have settled on a canine or bird-like silhouette; one claimed find was described as dog- or fox-like, with hind legs resembling a kangaroo's. The evidence never survives scrutiny, but the shape of the reports has held for a century: a cry no one can place, in the dark, followed by the oldest explanation available.
The Lore
Regional variants map the creature's range of duties. Around Maglaj it was the ghosts of soldiers wandering at night; in Kozarska Dubica, a vampire-like risen man; in Sredačka župa, a one-legged humanoid with glowing eyes. The alternate names — drekalo, krekavac, zdrekavac, zrikavac — all circle the same verb, to screech. Folklorists read it as the acoustic member of the unquiet dead: where the vampire is a body out of place, the drekavac is a voice out of place.
Literature domesticated it without killing it. Branko Ćopić's story 'Brave Mita and the drekavac from the pond' famously unmasks the monster as a great bittern — a rare marsh bird with a booming voice — and the creature stalks the margins of his novel Eagles Fly Early. The joke did not end the belief: on Zlatibor and in the villages, the drekavac remains the standing answer to the question of what, exactly, screamed outside in the night.
Field Notes
- ✦ Identified almost entirely by its piercing nocturnal scream.
- ✦ Said to vanish at first light or when its name is spoken correctly.
- ✦ Still reported anecdotally in rural Serbia and Bosnia.
- ✦ In child form its cry foretells a death; in animal form, disease among the livestock.
- ✦ Remains found at Krvavica in 1992 were hailed as a drekavac until identified as a rotten fox carcass.
Case File
- Classification
- Screaming revenant
- Category
- Spectral/Undead
- Territory
- Rural Serbia and the western Balkans
- First Sighted
- Serbian folk tradition
- Habitat
- Forests, graveyards, and lonely roads at night
- Reported Size
- Small and gangly, animal-like
- Also Known As
- Drekavci · Krekavac · The Screamer