Translated from French
November 8, 1750
I have read your Dissertations, which have brought you no small amount of fame. It seems you have taken literally and without question a nonsensical assumption: that without modern Christian rites of burial, the dead may rail against the very laws of nature and stubbornly refuse to decompose. Not only this, you assert they may rise from their graves and seek out their living kin, whom they adored in life but now inexplicably choose to terrorize in death.
Sir, I have witnessed the deaths of countless men on the battlefield, serving the glory of God but never receiving a proper Christian burial, and not a one of them has risen as a vampire. If we look to antiquity, before Christ, or in heathen lands, do we see a proliferation of vampirism? Do we see that this is the “natural” state of man? That natural man in death is a vampire?
You will undoubtedly retort that it is not your duty to speculate and philosophize but to apply the tools of objective experimentation to any and all evidence, and only through these methods will we prove certainties and falsehoods. You would call yourself objective, a servant of medicine and Christ both.
Then let me give you evidence. My own son returned to my wife and me in a burial shroud, a brave soldier who perished in the way of brave soldiers. He was buried in the churchyard of my town. I was overwhelmed by rage at the injustice, that he should be cold and dead while other, more cowardly, stupid boys should be running and laughing, heedless, secure in the notion that their future would unfurl like the petals of the rose in the gardens of their lives. My wife, a Hebrew, performed the traditional rites of the Hebrews at death—the rending of clothes, the seven-day cloistering for mourning—and it is the nature of small-minded townspeople that they whispered she had put a foreign spell on our son. As that rumor spread, reports emerged of my son himself, rising from his grave to terrorize farmers and drink the sweet blood of their wives and daughters. Dom Calmet, if there were ever a man who deeply wished this horror to be true, it was myself. I haunted the churchyard day and night, desperate to see my son alive once more.
I am ashamed to say that I, too, sought evidence. I spoke to every townsperson willing to speak to me, and in so doing, I fanned the flames of this fantasy, which ultimately led to my poor son being exhumed, baptized, and given a second Christian burial by a well-respected priest. My wife was so distraught that she lost the power of speech, and for what? An old man’s grief and stubbornness. Not science, not magic. Certainly not a miracle. You, Dom Calmet, would have considered the testimony I feverishly collected to be scientific proof of vampirism, when it was only the babbling hope of a father devastated.
Voltaire has said “to believe in miracles is to dishonor God,” and I believe you dishonor God with this so-called medicine. I believe you dishonor man by feigning objectivity. I believe you have given the Devil an advocate and led to suffering—suffering not wrought by God but by man. By you. I say this as one who has truly been to Hell and back.
As a man who is a practitioner of medicine, and as a grieving father, permit me to settle this. Everything living dies. All bodies decay. They may decay in different ways and at different rates depending on the circumstances of death—whether they lie in water or dry earth, cold weather or warm, and the humors present within them at the time of death. Variation is natural. But do not forget, death is final. Bodies do not rise, with vengeance in their bile or with longing in their hearts. The only evil resides in the living who would not let the dead rest, who would ascribe to them supernatural powers, or who would encourage the parochial superstitions of the living, while letting foul hope fester.
When everything is a war, Dom Calmet, everywhere is a grave. Wishing my son were alive does not make it so. Believe me, I have tried.