the early 18th century from the Serbian (). The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian (), Bosnian: (), Croatian , Czech and Slovak , Polish , and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) , Ukrainian (), Russian (), Belarusian (), from Old East Slavic () (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). The exact etymology is unclear. Among the proposed Proto-Slavic forms are and . In Albanian the words and are used; the latter seems to be derived from the Gheg Albanian words 'tooth' and 'to drink'. Another less widespread theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for witch (e.g., Tatar , although the first folk legends about it were recorded only at the end of the 18th century). Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb 'stick to, thrust into', or its hypothetical anagram (in Czech, the archaic verb means 'to thrust violently') as an etymological background, and thus translates as 'someone who thrusts, bites'. An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian ), dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of is reported. The word vampire (as vampyre) first appeared in English in 1732, in news reports about vampire "epidemics" in eastern Europe. After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity. Folk beliefs The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, Manipuri and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions