Most movies include in the now famous ritual scene of the killing in the coffin, the hammer and the wooden stake as mandatory means of destruction.

Perkowski includes brambles and other thorn-bushes, i.e., black thorn and hawthorn, in his descriptions of the beliefs of the Slavic people. 

"[In Macedonia]," he writes (p.79), "(t)he visits of a vampire are further guarded against by scattering mustard seed over the tiles of the roof, or by barricading the doorwith brambles and thorn-bushes... In Serbia, they impale the corpse with a hawthorn stake.  In Croatia, they may lay a thorn stake over the grave to prevent the vampire from emerging, or a blackthorn stake (along with other pointed objects such as stilettos, daggers, swords, axes, pruning knives) may  be used to impale the corpse.  In Slovenia, they use a hawthorn stake, usually in the belly, while in Eastern Slovakia they stab him in the head or heart with an iron wedge, a hat-pin, or a hawthorn, blackthorn, or oak stake."

According to Perkowski, these woods were preferred because of their association with Christ's cross and crown of thorns.  All this stabbing and staking is done for three reasons: 

1) to help separate the spirit from the body,

2) to fix the body in its place,

3) to kill by stabbing.

 In another article written by Perkowski some 7 years earlier, he quotes from a 1937 interview with a Romanian from the village of Rosia who gave the following advice

  "You put a candle, coin, and towel into the hand of a dead person, so that he won't turn into a strigoi. It is also a good idea to pierce the dead man's skin with a needle.  If a corpse has a small hole in its skin, it cannot become a strigoi." 

 

Other sharp objects

Vampires do not like sharp objects, in order to keep them away, it was advisable to keep a sharp object under one's pillow or under the threshold of a house. (Barber, 1988, 64). This belief is common to the celtic fairies as well.

Sickles have a very simple and effective use in stopping vampires. When the corpse is buried with the sickle over its neck, should the corpse become a vampire and try to rise from its grave, it will cut its own head off. Another way of using the sickle involved piercing the corpses heart with it, a custom probably inspired from the use of the stake. Thorns and other spiny objects were used in a similar way. They can also be inserted under a corpse's tongue to prevent it from sucking blood.