Blood Suckers

Residents of Ratanakkiri province’s Korng Nork village fear that vampire-like spirits are responsible for the recent deaths of two men, a local official said Monday. Tan Suong, the deputy chief of Voeun Sai district’s Kok Lak commune, which borders Korng Nork village, said the men were found dead on their farms last month with wounds on their necks that looked like bite marks. “Villagers are now very scared because they believe that the deaths were caused by spirits who got angry with the men and sucked their blood,” Tan Suong said. Local residents, he added, had made offerings of meat and rice spirit in the hope of pacifying the angry spirits. Huoy Vannara, head of the communicable diseases office at the Ratanakkiri provincial health department, said the men died of natural causes. “I have already sent officials to educate the villagers and explain that the men were not killed by vampires,” he said.