Agnes Murgoci

Dr. Agnes Murgoci (, 1875 – 7 May 1929), was an Australian-born, English zoologist, folklorist and teacher. She is most known for her work on Romanian folklore, especially early studies on vampirism.

Biography Agnes Kelly was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1875. Her mother returned to Britain with Agnes, when she was three years old. Her father moved to Auckland, New Zealand.

Kelly moved to Germany to undertake a PhD at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She graduated alongside Maria Gordon, as the first women to obtain a PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1900. and a book titled Rumania and the Rumanians (1918). Her works also appeared in the journal of the Folklore Society.

In 1926, Murgoci recorded that Romanian vampire lore claimed that vampires can take on sizes which allow them to enter a house through a keyhole and also held that vampires could take milk from nursing mothers and cows. She also noted that in the Romanian language the words strigoi and moroii were the most commonly used for vampires in folklore and made translations into English of legends. She noted that the Ruthenian word for a dead vampire was oper. Her papers are held in the Royal Holloway, University of London archives.