Since 2002 I have been carrying out fieldwork in the village of Gyimesközéplok in Romania, on the border between Hungarian speaking Székelyföld and Moldova (mainly inhabited by Orthodox Romanians). Gyimesközéplok (Lunca de Jos in Romanian), one of the three villages of the Gyimes region, is located in Harghita county, Romania, among the mountains of the Eastern Carpathians. It has around 4,000 Roman Catholic inhabitants who live by animal husbandry and dairy farming.

The research project I have been carrying out in Gyimesközéplok has, as one of its aims, an examination of the role of the deities and saints of Christian mythology, the devil, and the figures of the demon world in the local religion and belief system. I am also interested in finding out what kind of role religion and beliefs (in this case in saints and demons) play in the life of contemporary society. In this chapter I approach the question from the angle of narratives, exploring which aspects of local religion and belief are reflected in different types of narratives, and in what ways. I also look at the ways in which we can draw inferences about religion and belief systems from these manifestations.

My investigations seem to show that in recent times the most persistent elements of this narrative tradition have been the figures of Christian mythology (the Virgin Mary, the devil), as well as a few demon figures from traditional folk belief that have been legitimized by ‘official’ religion (ghosts, revenants, witches and the lidérc).