Revenant

What are Revenants?
Revenants are dead people that have come back from the grave to haunt the living. Accounts of these reanimated corpses were relatively common in pre-industrial Europe, and were widely believed. It was also a common belief among European Christians that the dead could interact directly in the world of the living, although after the Reformation, the new Protestant churches denied this belief.

Naturally, such stories had deep connections with the church, and many revenant records were written down by monks. Most of the revenant stories are spun in a way to support church doctrine and strengthen its power and influence.

Revenants would spread disease, attack the living, and posed a threat to the very cohesion of society. Oftentimes, the diseases and physical degradation that revenants brought with them were directly associated with sin and moral degradation. The revenants’ stench and pestilence would especially attack those who were already morally compromised.

Notable medieval writers who recorded revenants include William of Newburgh and Walter Map.

Causes
Revenants could be created when the dead person was sinful during their lifetime, or weren’t true believers in Christianity. It served as a religious warning that sinners would be denied an opportunity for salvation and instead be bound to the Earth. It was also a scaring towards converted pagans that may have secretly kept their heretic beliefs and to ensure that everyone was truly Christian.

Another was if a person had a “bad death,” when they were unable to receive proper Christian last rites before they died, or weren’t buried on the sacred grounds of a church. Deaths on the battlefield and being lost at sea were common examples of a “bad death.”

Satanic or demonic influence could also form revenants, and oftentimes the reasons stated above made it possible for demonic forces to exploit the dead to become revenants.

Preventative Measures and getting Rid of Revenants
In deviant burials, the corpse was laid prone and/or the head was cut off and placed in between the legs. This was to confuse the revenant when they awoke.

Dead people who were suspected of having become revenants could have their graves dug out and their bodies reburied in a deviant burial *Blackened Hearts of Stapenhill. In other cases, their heart, or their entire body was burned.

Religious authorities often were involved in eliminating Revenants as well. One notable instance is recorded by William of Newburgh, where the local deacon is unable to solve a revenant hunting on his own. He asks the higher-ranking Bishop of Lincoln for a letter of absolution to successfully stop the hauntings. This suggests that higher members of the clergy have more spiritual powers and endorses the bureaucratic structure of the Catholic church.

Scandinavian Revenants
Scandinavia took longer to be Christianized than Western Europe, which resulted in a different culture of revenants in the north. These northern revenants have their own set of beliefs and are featured in Scandinavian sagas. In general, the undead from Scandianavian folklore are physical revenants, and spectral ghosts aren’t as common. In addition, ghosts coming to appeal to the living don’t appear in Scandinavian stories, as the concept of Purgatory isn’t of much concern. Instead, Scandinavians believed that the undead came from the hinterlands, which were the uninhabitable Arctic regions of Scandinavia. Unlike Purgatory, which was treated as an “other world,” the hinterlands were geographically there and physically reachable places.

Examples include draugr and draug of Iceland and Norway, respectively, Gjenganger and Hagbui from Denmark, and gast from Sweden.

Scandinavian revenant folklore has similarities to some stories from England and Scotland as well, presumably as a result of cultural overlap through Viking invasions. A similarity that has been pointed out in some English revenants and the Icelandic draugr is the seeming lack of demonic possession; instead, the corpses come back to life and cause harm because they want to.

Eastern Europe
Stories of the undead vampyr in Eastern Europe are related to revenant stories of Central and Western Europe.

China
There is a long history of revenant tales and art in China as well.

In Art and Media
Revenants are a staple in medieval memento mori art and literature. Some revenants in modern popular culture portray revenants in a positive light, aiding the protagonist in their adventure. In Pixar’s Coco, revenants appear combined with the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition of Mexico. In the movie, the main character, Miguel, gets taken to the world of the dead and receives help from his ancestors to return to the land of the living and fulfil his dreams of becoming a musician. The concept of the dead being in another, reachable world of their own is similar to Medieval and Renaissance beliefs in Europe. Movie trailer

The 1919 silent film J’accuse is set during the First World War, and depicts its destructive effects in a sequence where dead soldiers arise from battlefield graves and march to their homes. This fits with the idea of dead soldiers appearing as revenants, and also forces the living society to confront the losses inflicted by war. Movie Scene

In J.R.R Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a barrow-wight traps Frodo and his fellow hobbits in a tomb, places them under a spell, and nearly kills him before he gets rescued. The description of this barrow-wight resembles the hagbui from the Grettis Saga, and “barrow-wight” has been used as an English translation of hagbui as well. The White Walkers from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series also resemble the revenants from Scandinavian folklore. Like many of the undead of Scandinavia, the White Walkers come from the uninhabitable far north, and can create undead wights by reanimating human corpses.

Draugr appear in the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as a class of undead monsters that appear in crypts and catacombs. In the lore, they are said to have been Nordic warriors in the past.