It is believed that drekavac is a spirit of disease and contagion. While most drekavacs carry bubonic plague, drekavacs who died from other afflictions may carry those diseases instead. Any illness caused by a drekavac must be potentially fatal. Drekavacs are the undead remains of children who perished from disease, particularly in plague-ridden areas where many such deaths occurred in a short period of time. Able to become as insubstantial as the mist rising from a graveyard on a cold, dark night, drekavacs are carriers of disease, seeking to infect the living with the afflictions that slew them. 

According to some stories, drekavacs only result from young plague victims who remain unburied or died bereft of the proper funeral rites; drekavac come from the souls of children who have died unbaptised. Performing those rites may allow their spirits to rest and no longer haunt the world of the living. Drekavac could be seen at night, especially during the twelve days of Christmas and in early spring, in time where other demons are said to appear most often. In the form of the child it predicts someone's death, but in the form of the animal, it predicts cattle disease. Drekavac rarely bothers its parents, as it is afraid of dogs.

Drekavac is often used as a child scare, in a similar way a banshee is in the West. It is probably more useful than banshees in rural areas, as children surely sometimes hear a sound of some animal and attribute it to drekavac, thus convinced it really exists; which would then probably prevent them from wandering far from home. In the cities, however, belief in it has faded, and "Baba Roga" , which more closely resembles western bogeyman, is much more used. And although this creature has been used to scare children, there are many grown ups which believe it exists. Numerous villagers on the mountain of Zlatibor report seeing it, and almost everyone reports hearing it. A More recent encounter is from 2003, in the village of Tometino Polje near Divčibare. A series of attacks on sheep took place, and some villagers concluded that they must have been perpetrated by a drekavac. 

So, what do you say? Scared yet?