At this hour, we repeat, these are the facts as we know them. There is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins.
—Newscaster, Night of the Living Dead,
written by George Romero and John Russo
2
Night of the
Living Dead
In 1968, when George Romero released his independent, black-and-white zombie film Night of the Living Dead, audiences were shocked by the darkly lit images of dead bodies rising from the grave to tear at the flesh of the living. The film, which was produced on a $114,000 budget, featured a group of survivors holed up in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse fighting off wave after wave of mysteriously reanimated corpses. In the end, all of the main characters died, but the movie went on to gain a life of its own, grossing millions over the years with cinematic re-releases and sequels that continue to this day. Despite the fact that it was initially criticized for its graphic content and terrifying storyline, this low-budget tale of the walking dead opened an entire zombie apocalypse sub-genre that forever changed the way audiences viewed horror films.
In today’s world, of course, we have the luxury of turning off the television when things get a little scary, but for the small, isolated towns and villages that sprawled across Eastern Europe during the era of the vampire, the fear of corpses wandering about at night knocking on farmhouse doors in search of fresh victims was all too real. These revenants, or reawakened corpses, cast horrifying images in the minds of not only the superstitious peasantry, but also the learned thinkers and writers of the time as well. In the Harleian Miscellany of 1810, John Heinrich Zopfius is said to have commented that “the vampyres, which come out of the graves in the night-time, rush upon people sleeping in their beds, suck out all their blood, and destroy them. They attack men, wo’men, and children, sparing neither age nor sex. The people attacked by them complain of suffocation, and a great interception of spirits; after which, they soon expire. Some of them, being asked, at the point of death, what is the matter with them, say they suffer in the manner just related from people lately dead …” (Malham and Oldys 1808, 233).
Other serious minds, such as the famous French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, gave a similar definition of the revenant. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote that revenants were “… corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpse grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite” (1856, 371).
Yet of all the great writers to take a stab at defining the habits and nature of the vampire, it is perhaps John Scoffern who said it best when he said it the simplest: “The best definition I can give of a vampire is a living mischievous and murderous dead body” (1870, 350).
Naming the Damned
References in English literature to vampiric revenants, however, appear long before these writers put pen to paper; the first mention of the creatures was in a little-known text on English churches in 1679. Although the term vampire still hadn’t come into print yet, it did begin to surface in popular language sometime after 1688. It wouldn’t emerge on the printed page until almost fifty years later, when it finally materialized in a work entitled Travels of Three Gentlemen from Venice to Hamburg, Being the Grand Tour of Germany in the Year 1734, by an anonymous author.
The word vampire is thought to have been borrowed from the German word vampir, which found its genesis in the Eastern Slavic word upir, first written in a 1047 translation of the Book of Psalms. In it, the priest transcribing the work from Glagolitic, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, to the Cyrillic of the First Bulgarian Empire in the ninth century writes his name Upir Likhyi, meaning “Wicked or Foul Vampire.” Although a distasteful moniker such as this seems strange to us today, it is the remnant of an older pagan practice of replacing personal names with nicknames.
Etymologists tracing the roots of the word have branched into four schools of thought over the years, leading to a great deal of lively debate among scholars and folklorists alike. The first was proposed by German scholars in the 1700s who believed the word vampire came from the Greek verb pivnw, meaning “to drink.” Later, in the 1800s, a linguist named Franz Miklosich suggested that the Slavic word upir and its synonyms upior, uper, and upyr came from the Northern Turkish word uber, which meant “witch.” In direct opposition to Miklosich, other linguists such as André Vaillant claimed that the Turkish word uber was in fact derived from the Slavic word upir.
As if all that weren’t confusing enough, the final and most recent theory is that the word vampire existed no further back than the German-Hungarian word vampir, and its origin is relatively new in the scheme of things.
There were, of course, many other names for these creatures, spoken in many other tongues not directly tied to the English vampire. For instance, the words wukodalak, vurkulaka, and vrykolaka were found among the Russians, Albanians, and Greeks, all of which translated roughly to mean “wolf-fairy,” demonstrating an early comingling of the archetypes for the vampire and the werewolf. Beyond this, the further one digs back through the pages of history, the more obscure and clouded the names become—until they are lost entirely.
Categories of Vampirism
Just as the names for vampires changed to suit the tongue they were spoken in, so too did the nature and habits of the creatures change to fit the cultures that believed in them. Despite the many variations on the theme, for the purposes of our investigation vampires can be broken down into three distinct categories. The first and most common form of vampire was as feared as it was dreadful to behold. These ghastly night stalkers, which we will call revenants, were traditionally the corpses of the living dead, who roamed the night in search of tasty victims, much as George Romero’s zombies did in Night of the Living Dead. In some cultures the dead bodies were controlled by the spirit of the deceased, who after death could find no rest and so was cursed to rise again, while in others the corpse was merely a rotting vessel inhabited and spurred on by a demon or other evil spirit. In most cases, revenants were pictured as if they had just clawed their way out of the grave still wearing the death shrouds they were buried in. Reports describe them as shambling monsters with bloated bodies and ruddy or blackened colored flesh, long scraggly hair, and ragged claws with fresh blood seeping from their mouths and nostrils.
In some areas, the revenant took on other physical traits that departed somewhat from the usual corpse-like appearance—but were equally horrifying. For instance, in the Saronic Isles of the Mediterranean, revenants had hunchbacks and attacked with viscous dagger-like claws. In Bulgaria they had only one nostril, while high on Mount Pelion in central Greece they glowed in the dark. Among some of the Slavic and Germanic Gypsies it was even thought that revenants had no bones, a belief based on the observation that vampires often left their bones in the grave when they went hunting. What may surprise many is that the tradition of vampires sporting sharpened canine fangs was a literary invention that surfaced much later.
In most cases, what seemed to motivate the revenant was an insatiable hunger for blood, which it was believed allowed the creature to continue in its undead state. Upon first awaking in its coffin, the revenant began to devour its own body, including the funeral shroud it was buried in. The more of itself the revenant consumed, the more its living family members mysteriously began to grow ill and waste away, causing their deaths. At some point in the meal, the revenant either rises from the grave as an invisible spirit through holes in the ground or physically claws its way through the dirt. Once free from its tomb, it wanders through the night in search of family members and relatives to continue its feeding frenzy. After those closest to it have succumbed to its appetites, it turns its attention to former neighbors or even livestock such as sheep or cattle.
Male vampires in particular were said to have strong sexual cravings and often forced their advances on former wives, girlfriends, and other women. Finally, when it can find no more victims within its vicinity, it slowly climbs its way atop the church belfry at midnight and rings the bells so that all who hear the mournful peal will sicken and die. In this manner, revenants such as the Slovakian nelapsi were said to have decimated entire villages.
Although when we think of the revenant draining the blood of its victims the common misconception is to envision those telltale puncture marks on the neck, the truth is that most were believed to drain their victim’s blood from the heart, stomach, nose, or from between the eyes. Revenants were also blamed for other mischief, including suffocating their victims, damaging their property, causing crops to wither and fail, or bringing bad luck to a household. Among the German and Polish Kashubians, the nachzehrer, or “afterwards devourer,” could cause a person’s death if its shadow simply fell upon them, while the mwere, the vampiric spirits of children who died before being baptized, were thought to cause nightmares. One of the most powerful weapons in the revenant’s arsenal was known as the evil eye. Belief held that the mere glance of a revenant could cause people to become ill, cursed, or waste away and die. Even inanimate objects were affected by their gaze, causing bread to turn stale, wine to sour, and tools to grow dull and rusty.
Unlike the night demons that swept up from the east and preyed mostly on pregnant women and newborns, the European revenant seemed fixated on those who were closest to them in life; these usually meant immediate family members or others with similar ties. Although being a relation was often enough to become a victim of the undead, other reasons included not observing the proper burial customs of the deceased or somehow causing their death. In Gypsy folklore, being singled out by a mullo, meaning “one who is dead,” usually meant the victim kept the deceased’s possessions after burial rather than destroying them as was the Gypsy custom.
According to most traditions, revenants could only travel about during the night and had to return to their earthly graves before the cock crowed and the sun rose above the horizon—or else they would risk a sort of forced catatonia and the vengeance of angry peasants. The rare exception to this rule is found among the Russians and Poles, who concluded that revenants could attack victims anytime from noon to midnight. It was also held that the creatures were allowed to work their evil any day of the week barring Saturday, which the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. On this holy day, even witches dared not hold their depraved Sabbaths and all the devil’s minions were excluded from conducting their dark business.
Revenants were also thought to be more active during the months right before the feasts of St. George and St. Andrew, when the darkness of the nights lasted their longest and winter blanketed the land like a sort of death itself. Once set free from their tombs, besides general bloodsucking and other foul deeds, revenants were said to haunt deserted crossroads or churchyards, where they perched atop tombstones, rocking back and forth, shrieking in the night. At other times they congregated in remote forests and ruined castles plotting evil deeds together.
The second type of vampire is distinct to the annals of the blood drinkers in that it is a living vampire. In some societies a person could be born a vampire or become one while they were still alive. Those who willingly chose to become a vampire rather than being born one were usually sorcerers or witches engaged in the dark arts. In Romania one of the more feared living vampires was known as strigoi vii, which was a type of hag that had two hearts or souls. While they slept, one of their souls left the body and ranged the countryside, drinking the blood of the humans and livestock they came across or reanimating corpses at crossroads to waylay passersby.
Similar to the strigoi vii is an entity of Slavic origin known as the mora, which issued forth from the body of a sleeping girl not properly baptized to cause nightmares, suffocation, and a type of wasting illness that sucked the life force from its victim. If the mora then happened to fall in love with her victim, she drank his blood as well.
In addition, living vampires were said to have the unique power to take the “essence” from an object, which interfered with its normal ability to function properly. Therefore hens ceased to lay eggs or cows to give milk; they could even steal the “taste” from bread or the milk from a nursing mother’s breast. Living vampires were also blamed for spreading infectious diseases, such as the cholera epidemics that swept through Ukraine in the 1800s, where people were burned to death by their neighbors after being accused of being living vampires responsible for contagion. Another of the usual suspects to mark the list of living vampires were those who suffered from unexplained trances or sleepwalking. In Greece it was believed that those prone to somnambulist wanderings would be seized by an uncontrollable bloodlust and go forth biting and tearing at every man or beast they came across.
In most cases, the powers or traits of the living vampire were considered hereditary and could be passed from one generation to the next. In certain southern Slavic folklore, this first began with the vampire starting off as an invisible shadow that gained strength as it sucked the lifeblood of the living. It then formed into a jelly-like mass that grew more defined, until at the end of forty days it had shaped itself into a human-like body identical to the one it had while it was alive. These vampires then, usually male, but in some rare stories female as well, traveled to another village where they were unknown to the inhabitants and married, producing offspring. The children in turn became living vampires who not only had the power to see invisible vampires but also to destroy them. Legend states that when these vampires finally died, they returned again to haunt the living as revenants.
The final category of vampire is a catch-all, really, for some of the most obscure and unusual blood-drinking creatures to grace the early folklore of Europe. One of the more colorful such vampires was a murderous dwarf with a Scottish accent found in the border tales that circulated between Scotland and England. Known by the name redcap, this red-eyed, long-toothed, bloodthirsty fairy inhabited ruined castles and ambushed unsuspecting travelers. After lopping off their heads with heavy iron pikes, the redcaps dyed their hats in the blood of their victims—hence the name they were known by.
This vile practice was more than a bad fashion statement, however, because if the blood were ever allowed to dry, the redcap would die. Despite wearing iron-shod boots, they were also renowned for their speed, and it was said to be impossible to outrun one. The only defense, therefore, was to recite biblical scripture aloud and make the sign of the cross, which was guaranteed to drive them away. In one popular legend, Lord William de Soulis, a Scottish border noble during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was rumored to have kept such a creature named Robin Redcap as a familiar. Unfortunately for Lord William, this particular redcap could not be contained very long even through the most powerful of dark arts, and it was soon wreaking havoc in the lands surrounding its master’s dwelling at Hermitage Castle. Eventually, Lord William was able to wrap the redcap in lead and boil it to death in an ancient circle of stones known as the Nine Stane Rigg. Historically, though, Lord William fared little better and was imprisoned in Dumbarton Castle for conspiring against Robert the Bruce, dying there under cloudy circumstances in 1321.
More fantastic than the redcaps of Scotland were the shapeshifting alps of Germany. Said to take the shape of any animal or insect it wished, including butterflies, cats, pigs, birds, or dogs, the alp always wore a magical hat that granted it supernatural powers such as invisibility or the dreaded evil eye. Feared for their ability to cause nightmares, alps were also known to sexually molest both men and women in their sleep and entered their bodies through the mouth in the form of a mist or snake. In some cases, alps also drank the blood of their victims through the nipples and could cause the milk of both nursing mothers and cows to dry up. As frightening as the alp was to the German peasantry, the remedy to combat it was as simple as it was strange: all a person needed to do was to sleep with his or her shoes next to the bed, pointing towards the door.
Often classed with these types of vampires was a breed of European eclipse demon known in Serbia as the varcolac, whose demanding appetite was blamed for devouring the sun and moon during an eclipse as well as bringing storms and ruining crops. Recognized by their pale faces and dry skin, they were famous for their capacity to drink boiled milk, wine, and vodka as if it were mere water. Although they could be mistaken for normal humans during daylight hours, at night their spirit left their body while it slept and, taking the form of various animals, hunted the moon and the sun. During an eclipse, nervous villagers often banged pots and pans together or beat loud drums to chase away the varcolac.
In one popular tale a Serbian peasant lost his fortune after one of these fiends destroyed his vineyards with a terrible storm. Determined to seek his revenge, the man vowed to wait under a pear tree with a shotgun loaded with gold, silver, lead, and steel shot for the varcolac to return. Then one day the sky suddenly grew dark and tumultuous, and a varcolac appeared in the shape of an eagle. The peasant took aim, and with a single blast of his shotgun felled the creature, which died as it hit the ground, causing the sky to immediately clear.
Far more astonishing than any of these bloodsucking monstrosities was a belief among some groups that even everyday objects such tools or fruit could become vampires. For instance, in the Balkans if a tool were left outside under a full moon, it could become a vampire and cause its owner much mischief. Wooden knots for a yoke or the rods for binding sheaves of wheat could, if left undone for more than three years, conceivably turn into vampires. According to some Gypsy traditions, watermelons and especially pumpkins if kept for more than ten days after Christmas would start to bleed and roll around on the ground, making alarming noises. Vampire fruit seemed cause for little concern though, as even then everyone knew that fruit had no teeth.
The Art of Becoming a Vampire
Just as there existed a number of variations on the vampire theme in folklore of the period, there were also many ways by which one could be created. One method of explaining their existence rested more on ill fate and bad genes than anything else, and a belief that some people were naturally born to be vampires. The Slavic people of Hannover, Germany (who were also known as Wends), for example, thought that if a child returned to its mother’s breast after being weaned, it was a Doppelsauger, or “double sucker.” From then on the child was destined to seek nourishment it could never satisfy, even rising from the grave after death to feed on the living. As with many revenants, its consuming hunger was so great it not only drained the vitality of its living relatives but also devoured its own corpse and burial clothes. Also rumored to become vampires were those born under inauspicious circumstances, such as the seventh son of a seventh son or the illegitimate child of illegitimate parents. Even being born on the wrong day was enough to do the trick in some regions. Christmas Day for one was said to be a bad time to be born, as it meant a person would become a vampire after death as divine punishment for the presumptuousness of his mother in daring to give birth on the same day as the holy Virgin Mary.
Birth defects and other physical oddities that set one apart from the rest of the village also played a part in marking those fated to become such creatures. Early men often viewed physical defects as an expression of some deeper spiritual deficiency or curse. Probably the most common was the presence of the caul at the birth of an infant. The caul is a thin membranous sac that covers the baby’s face and body during birth, and if it remained intact it was thought to be an omen that the child would grow to acquire supernatural powers for good or evil. If, unfortunately, the thin, filmy membrane burst and the infant swallowed part of it, he was doomed to become a vampire.
Among the Kashubians of Poland, the caul was saved until the child’s seventh birthday, when it was reduced to ashes and fed to the child as an antidote against vampirism. Numerous other traits existed that branded one as a future vampire, including physical deformities such as a hunchback or an unusual birthmark. In Greece, merely having eyebrows that grew too closely together meant you were singled out for the fate.
The second method of becoming a vampire was reserved for those who lived what the early Christian church deemed an evil or unholy life. The offense was applied to anyone, from church heretics and priests who took mass in a “state of sin” to murderers and other criminals. In some regions, simple acts such as stealing the ropes used to lower a coffin into the grave or eating the meat of animals killed by wolves was enough to receive this punishment. The worst offenders, of course, were those who sold their soul to the devil or engaged in the practice of witchcraft. This included living vampires, werewolves, or the offspring of evil unions between witches and devils, all of whom continued on as undead revenants after death. In addition to the curse being a sort of divine retribution for living a life of wickedness, it also meant that the person would not be buried in consecrated ground. Instead of internment in a churchyard, such people suffered the ignoble fate of being buried in secret at lonely crossroads or in unmarked gravesites so that their spirits could not find their way back home. In such a state the corpse became more than just food for the worms, but a corrupted vessel that all manner of evil spirits and demons could possess to meet their own bloodthirsty needs.
The third method revolved around one of early man’s misconceptions of sudden or unexplained death. Although the average life expectancy of the Eastern European peasant was much shorter than ours today, unexpected deaths were still a bit of a shock back then. In the thought process of our ancestors, death was an unnatural event that if transpired before its time could leave a spirit wandering aimlessly throughout the land looking for revenge. Being killed by wild animals in the forest, dying alone, drowning, murder, and suicide were all examples of an untimely death. Even passing away on the wrong day could be an accursed event, as in some Southern Slavic countries, where dying between Christmas and the celebration of the Epiphany meant one might return as a vampire. The Wallachians often equated the sudden occurrence of death to an attack by a vampire and took great precautions when burying those who had died mysteriously.
Besides unexplained deaths, another obviously effective way was to die at the hands of a vampire. In most of the literature, including modern fiction, vampirism is a contagion spread by contact between the vampire and its prey. In some reports, even those who survived a vampire attack still ran the risk of becoming one after they died. Coming into contact with the blood of a vampire in some folklore worked as an antidote, while in others it spread the condition like a disease. The Serbs and Croats of Herzegovina believed that when piercing the suspected corpse of a vampire with a stake (which we’ll read about in later chapters), it should be done through the dried hide of a young bull to keep the blood from splattering and infecting the vampire killer.
The final method of becoming a vampire was often associated with digressions from local burial customs that marked a lack of respect for the body of the deceased. For example, in the folklore of the Balkans, if a cat or dog jumped over the body while it awaited burial the corpse could come back from the dead as a revenant. Tradition held in many cases that the body should be guarded by a family member whose job was to ensure nothing went wrong with the complex burial customs of the time. An animal being allowed in the room, much less desecrating the body, was a major breach of protocol. Other prohibitions warned against shaking hands over a corpse, letting the shadow of a person fall upon it, or passing an object such as a candle across it. Each of these admonitions carried with it the threat that if proper respect was not shown for the dead, dire consequences awaited the living. A botched burial, after all, meant a glitch in the process by which the spirit successfully left the body for good. Disrupting this ensured the spirit would return and crave the sustenance of human blood.
The Case of Peter Plogojowitz
Although we have examined the nature and habits of the vampiric creatures that stalked Eastern Europe in the years leading up to the 1800s, it’s difficult to grasp the impact of their bloodthirsty activities on local populations without examining actual reports of vampire attacks from the period. By the mid-1700s, a vampire scare was sweeping across the continent from the shores of the Black Sea in the east to the monarchies of Western Europe. Printing presses streamed with pamphlets, and each day newspapers competed with one another over cataloging the grisly details of fresh vampire assaults in the small villages and lonely mountain passes of the far-off Balkans. One of the first well-documented cases of vampirism to still exist was published in a Viennese newspaper, Wienerisches Diarium, and concerned a Serbian peasant named Peter Plogojowitz.
In 1718, after a bitter and bloody contest, a treaty known as the Peace of Passarowitz was signed between the Habsburg monarchy of Austria and the ailing Ottoman Empire. Under the agreement, Austria and her allies, the Republic of Venice, were handed parts of Serbia and Wallachia, which had long lay under the Turkish yoke. Suddenly, lands normally isolated from the rest of Europe were swarming with imperial soldiers and bureaucrats sending back dispatches about their new subjects to the recently installed monarchy.
On July 31, 1725, an official report was issued by an Imperial Provisor named Frombald, claiming to have witnessed the disinterment and staking of a corpse suspected of being a vampire. Sometime during the year 1725 a man named Peter Plogojowitz died in the Serbian village of Kisolova, which today can be found just east of Belgrade on a small island on the Danube River and has been renamed Kisiljevo. Ten weeks following his burial, villagers began whispering in frightened tones that his corpse was seen walking through the narrow streets at night. Within the space of eight days, nine people died mysteriously, all of whom claimed upon their deathbed that the figure of Plogojowitz had visited them in their sleep and attacked them. As the stories grew louder, Plogojowitz’s former wife spoke out and admitted that he had returned to her one night as well demanding his opanci, or shoes. Terrified by the encounter and the growing death toll, she soon packed her belongings and moved to another village.
By now panic gripped the tiny hamlet, and the inhabitants turned to the imperial representative of the district, Provisor Frombald, for permission to exhume the body of Peter Plogojowitz and examine it for signs of vampirism. Initially the Provisor tried to stall, claiming that he first needed to inform the Austrian authorities in Belgrade, but the villagers would not be swayed and threatened to abandon the village if their demands were not met. After all, this was not the first time the village had been exterminated by vampires, which they claimed occurred once before while under Ottoman rule and they were not about to let it happen again. Fearing their growing anger, the stubborn Frombald was forced to consent and with the Gradisk parish priest accompanied the growing crowd of villagers to the town cemetery. To their surprise, once the body was brought to the surface and the burial wrappings torn away, the corpse appeared undecayed with new skin and nails growing under the old and with what resembled fresh blood around the mouth. In his report Frombald also mentions what he delicately termed “wild signs,” which out of respect for the reader he refused to elaborate on. Later commentators explained that it alluded to the corpse having an erection, a recurring element that may have later helped associate the vampire with its erotic elements.
Given these and other curious signs, the people grew greatly distressed and drove a stake through the heart of the corpse—immediately sending a fountain of blood spraying upwards, which welled out of the mouth and ears as well. The body was then dragged from the grave and set on fire with torches. The Provisor finishes his story, as any good bureaucrat looking to keep his job would, by stating that although he was opposed to the actions of the villagers, they could not be stopped from the hysteria that swept them and that he should not be blamed.
The Case of Arnod Paole
A second account to find its way into the headlines of the day occurred in the year 1727 in yet another small Serbian village, this one named Medvegia. According to the story, a man named Arnod Paole settled in the village after many years of military service fighting the Turks. In 1725 he died from a fall off a hay wagon, breaking his neck, and was buried in the local cemetery in the provincial manner. Thirty days after his burial, residents of the village began to report that they were being haunted by his spirit at night. Soon after four of these witnesses died, the village began to clamor that Arnod Paole had returned from the dead as a vampire. Helping to fuel the growing suspicion, it was widely gossiped that while he was alive, Paole related to his wife that he was once attacked by a vampire while serving in the Turkish controlled town of Gossowa (perhaps Kosova). To avoid becoming one of the creatures himself, he exhumed the corpse of the vampire that attacked him and disposed of it in the accustomed manner for dealing with such things. Following the traditional remedy, he also smeared the blood of the corpse on his body and consumed some the grave dirt.
As the nightly attacks by Paole continued, the villagers grew more frightened, not knowing who among them would become his next target. Finally, a Hadnack, a type of military administrator, who was well acquainted with the lore of the vampire, suggested to the village elders that the only way to combat the menace threatening their homes was to disinter the body of Arnod Paole and drive a stake through it. Fearing that if they did not act swiftly the entire village would be lost, a group of men nervously raised the body of Paole from the grave. Upon examining the corpse, they were shocked to find it undecayed and that “fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; that the shirt, the covering, and the coffin were completely bloody; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen off, and that new ones had grown” (Barber 1988, 160).
Convinced that these strange signs marked Paole as the vampire plaguing their village, the men drove a stake through his heart, immediately causing the corpse to let out a terrible groan and sending a massive amount of blood flying from the wound. The body was then dragged from its coffin, the head cut off, and the remains burned, before being returned to the grave. In like manner the bodies of the victims were also exhumed and treated to prevent the vampirism from spreading.
After this, things seemed to quiet down for a time until the winter of 1731, when as many as ten villagers died in the space of a few weeks from an unknown illness that caused pain in the sides and chest, prolonged fever, jerking limbs, and finally death. Panic consumed the village once more, and there was talk that vampires were yet again at Medvegia’s doorstep. The village elders in turn appealed to Oberstleutnant Schnezzer, the Austrian military commander of the region, for help. He, however, feared an outbreak of disease rather than of vampires and sent an infectious-disease specialist, one Doctor Glaser, to investigate the reports. Glaser, after examining the villagers and their homes, was nevertheless at a loss to explain the cause of the inexplicable deaths. By now the situation had reached such a pitch that terrified villagers were banding together at night in groups for protection. Glaser’s only recourse was to suggest to his superiors that they allow the village to exhume and “kill” the supposed vampires in order to appease the growing delirium.
Taking the good doctor’s advice, the Supreme Commander of Belgrade, Botta d’Adorno, elected to send a commission of military officers and surgeons under the direction of Doctor Johann Flückinger to investigate the matter. On January 7th, under the watchful eye of the commission, the elders of Medvegia hired a group of passing Gypsies to open the graves of suspected vampires in the village cemetery and search them for signs of the curse. In all, thirteen of the seventeen corpses exhumed appeared undecayed, with fresh blood around the mouth and what looked to be new skin and nails growing under the old. One corpse, belonging to a sixty-year-old woman who was known for her thinness in life, was found bloated and full of blood. Some of those bearing the marks of the vampire belonged to the same men who helped destroy the corpse of Arnod Paole, and in doing so had smeared their bodies with his blood for protection.
After the surgeons performed their medical examinations of the corpses and agreed that the bodies bore the traditional signs of the vampire, the hired Gypsies cut off the heads, burned the remains, and scattered the ashes into a river. Doctor Flückinger submitted the details of the incident in a report entitled Visum et Repertum, or “Seen and Discovered,” which he sent to the Imperial Council of War at Vienna. Following this second round of purging, the villagers seemed content in the belief that they were now finally free of the vampire scourge.
Part of the reason these two cases caught the public imagination so powerfully was that they were so well documented and involved official government investigations, lending them an air of credibility. Picked up by a hungry press, they were told and retold across Europe with a speed faster than ever before. Theologians and philosophers debated their existence, and writers cashed in on the stories. The problem worsened even more when credulous peasants, caught up in the fervor, began digging up and desecrating bodies at an alarming rate. Dismayed by the increasing trend, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria ordered her personal physician, Gerhard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampires infecting her territories to the east.
In the end, van Swieten concluded that the creatures did not in fact exist outside the superstitious minds of the peasantry, and the empress enacted strict laws prohibiting the further desecration of bodies. Although the belief persisted among local populations (even today there are occasional reports of this occurring in remote eastern areas), this crackdown effectively sounded the end of the vampire panic. Yet despite the new laws and official government denials, the image of the vampire did not diminish, but found new life as its legend continued to grow and change through the centuries, becoming stronger and more feared than ever before.