Supernatural

by Colin Wilson

  Even after the heart had been burned on the seashore, the ghost continued to cause havoc, until the villagers finally burnt the corpse on a pyre.

  De Tornefort takes a highly superior attitude about all this, convinced that it is simply mass hysteria. ‘I have never viewed anything so pitiable as the state of this island. Everyone’s head was turned; the wisest people were stricken like the others.’ Although the year is only 1701, de Tornefort’s attitude is that of a typical French rationalist of the 18th century.

  Attitudes began to change after 1718, as the highly circumstantial accounts of vampires began to reach western Europe—just how precise and circumstantial is illustrated by the following report, known as Visum et Repertum (Seen and Discovered), which dates from 1732, and was witnessed by no less than five Austrian officers:

  ‘After it had been reported in the village of Medvegia (near Belgrade) that so-called vampires had killed some people by sucking their blood, I was, by high decree of a local Honorable Supreme Command, sent there to investigate the matter thoroughly, along with officers detailed for that purpose and two subordinate medical officers, and therefore carried out and heard the present enquiry in the company of the Captain of the Stallath company of haiduks, Hadnack Gorschiz, the standard-bearer and the oldest haiduk of the village. (They reported), unanimously, as follows. About five years ago, a local haiduk called Arnod Paole broke his neck in a fall from a hay wagon. This man had, during his lifetime, often described how, near Gossova in Turkish Serbia, he had been troubled by a vampire, wherefore he had eaten from the earth of the vampire’s grave and had smeared himself with the vampire’s blood, in order to be free of the vexation he had suffered. In twenty or thirty days after his death, some people complained that they were being bothered by this same Arnod Paole; and in fact, four people were killed by him. In order to end this evil, they dug up Arnod Paole forty days after his death—this on the advice of their Hadnack, who had been present at such events before; and they found that he was quite complete and undecayed, and that fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears; that the shirt, the covering and the coffin were completely blood; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen off, and that new ones had grown. And since they saw from this that he was a true vampire, they drove a stake through his heart—according to their custom—whereupon he gave an audible groan and bled copiously. Thereupon they burned the body to ashes the same day and threw these into the grave. These same people also say that all those who have been tormented and killed by vampires must themselves become vampires. Therefore they disinterred the above-mentioned four people in the same way. Then they also add that this same Arnod Paole attacked not only people but cattle, and sucked out their blood. And since some people ate the flesh of such cattle, it would appear that (this is the reason that) some vampires are again present here, inasmuch as in a period of three months, seventeen young and old people died, among them some who, with no previous illness, died in two or at most three days. In addition, the haiduk Jovitsa reports that his stepdaughter, by name Stanacka, lay down to sleep fifteen days ago, fresh and healthy, but that at midnight she started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, fearful and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a haiduk by the name of Milloe (who had died nine weeks earlier), whereupon she had experienced a great pain in the chest, and become worse hour by hour, until finally she died on the third day.

  ‘At this, we went the same afternoon to the graveyard, along with the aforementioned oldest haiduks of the village, in order to cause the suspicious graves to be opened, and to examine the bodies in them. Whereby, after all of them had been (exhumed and) dissected, the following was found:

  ‘1. A woman by the name of Stana, 20 years old, who had died in childbirth two months ago, after a three days illness, and who had herself said before her death that she had painted herself with the blood of a vampire—wherefore both she and the child, which had died soon after birth and through careless burial had been half eaten by dogs—must also become vampires. She was quite complete and undecayed. After the opening of the body there was found in the cavitate pectoris a quantity of fresh extravascular blood. The vessels of the arteriae, like the ventriculis cordis, were not, as is usual, filled with coagulated blood; and the whole viscera—that is, the lung, liver, stomach, spleen and intestines—were quite fresh, as they would be in a healthy person. The uterus was however quite enlarged and very inflamed externally, for the placenta and lochia had remained in place, wherefore the same was in complete putrefaction. The skin on her hands and feet, along with the old nails, fell away on their own, but on the other hand completely new nails were evident, along with a fresh and vivid skin.

  ‘2. There was a woman by the name of Militsa, 60 years old, who had died after a three month sickness and had been buried ninety or so days earlier. In the chest much liquid blood was found, and the other viscera were—like those mentioned above—in good condition. During her dissection, all the haiduks who were standing around marvelled greatly at her plumpness and perfect body, uniformly stating that they had known the woman well from her youth, and that she had throughout her life been very lean and dried up; they emphasised that she had come to such surprising plumpness in the grave. They also said that it was she who had started the vampires this time, because she had been eating of the flesh of those sheep who had been killed by previous vampires.

  ‘3. There was an eight-day old child which had lain in the grave for ninety days, and which was also in a condition of vampirism.

  ‘4. The son of a haiduk, 16 years old, named Milloe, was dug up, having lain in the earth for nine weeks, after he had died from a three day illness, and was found to be like the other vampires. [This is obviously the vampire who had attacked the stepdaughter of the haiduk Jovitsa.]

  ‘Joachim, also the son of a haiduk, 17 years old, had died after a three day illness. He had been buried eight weeks and four days and, on being dissected, was found in similar condition.

  ‘6. A woman by the name of Ruscha who had died after a ten day illness and been buried six weeks earlier, in whom there was much fresh blood, not only in the chest but also in fundo ventriculi. The same showed itself in her child, which was eighteen days old, and had died five weeks earlier.

  ‘7. No less did a girl of 10 years of age, who had died two months previously, find herself in the above-mentioned condition, quite complete and undecayed, and had much fresh blood in her chest . . .

  ‘8. They caused the wife of the Hadnack to be dug up, along with her child. She had died seven weeks earlier, her child—who was eight weeks old—twenty one days previously, and it was found that mother and child were completely decomposed, although earth and grave were like those of the vampires lying nearby.

  ‘9. A servant of the local corporal of the haiduks, by the name of Rhade, 23 years old, died after a three month illness, and after being buried five weeks, was found completely decomposed.

  ‘10. The wife of the local standard bearer, along with her child, were also completely decomposed.

  ‘11. With Stanche, a haiduk, 60 years old, who had died six weeks previously, I noticed a profuse liquid blood, like the others, in the chest and stomach. The entire body was in the above mentioned condition of vampirism.

  ‘12. Milloe, a haiduk, 25 years old, who had lain for six weeks in the earth, was also found in a condition of vampirism.

  ‘13. Stanoicka, (earlier called Stanacka), the wife of a haiduk, 23 years old, died after a three day illness, and had been buried eighteen days earlier. In the dissection I found that her countenance was quite red and of a vivid colour; as was mentioned above, she had been throttled at midnight, by Milloe, the son of a haiduk, and there was also to be seen, on the right side under the ear, a bloodshot blue mark (i.e. a bruise) the length of a finger (demonstrating that she had been throttled). As she was being taken out of the grave, a quantity of fresh blood flowed from her nose. With the dissection I foun
d—as so often mentioned already—a regular fragrant fresh bleeding, not only in the chest cavity, but also in the heart ventricle. All the viscera were found in a completely good and healthy condition. The skin of the entire body, along with the nails on the hands and feet, were as though completely fresh.

  ‘After the examination had taken place, the heads of the vampires were cut off by the local gypsies, and then burned along with the bodies, after which the ashes were thrown into the river Morava. The decomposed bodies, however, were laid back in their own graves. Which I attest along with those assistant medical officers provided for me. Actum ut supra:

  ‘L.S. (Signed) Johannes Fluchinger, Regimental Medical Officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honorable B. Furstenbusch.

  ‘L.S. J.H. Sigel, Medical Officer of the Honorable Morall Regiment.

  ‘L.S. Johann Friedrich Baumgarten, Medical Officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honorable B. Furstenbusch.

  ‘The undersigned attest herewith that all which the Regiment Medical officer of the Honorable Furstenbusch had observed in the matter of vampires—along with both medical officers who signed with him—is in every way truthful, and has been undertaken, observed and examined in our own presence. In confirmation thereof is our signature in our own hand, of our own making, Belgrade, January 26, 1732.

  ‘L.S. Buttener, Lieutenant Colonel of the Honorable Alexandrian Regiment.

  ‘L.S. J.H. von Lindenfels, Officer of the Honorable Alexandrian Regiment.’

  The first thing we note in this account is that the ‘vampires’ were obviously not able to get up and walk out of their graves, since they were sealed in their coffins. It was clearly their spirits that caused the trouble. And the girl Stanacka was not attacked in the manner we associate with Dracula—by the vampire’s fangs—but was apparently throttled. Moreover, we note in the case of the vrykolakas reported by the French botanist Tornefort that the vampire wandered around the town ‘playing a thousand roguish tricks’. This sounds more like a poltergeist than the traditional vampire. Another vampire described in a lengthy official report of 1725, Peter Plogojowitz, also seems to have come to his victims ‘in their sleep, laid himself upon them, and throttled them’. But someone who is throttled dies immediately. In vampire reports we have people who lived on—like Stanacka—for days. It sounds as if the vampire is draining their vitality, not their blood. This would, of course, produce a feeling of suffocation, or throttling. In other words, the vampire seems to be a demonic entity that possesses the victim, as in so many of the cases we encountered in Chapter 11, causing them to die of exhaustion, like Father Tranquille in the Loudun case.

  The details of the blood in the chest of the exhumed vampire seems puzzling, until we note that the blood is found in the breast cavity (cavitate pectoris) of the woman called Stana, while the lungs are mentioned separately in the same sentence. If she had been drinking blood, it would be in the stomach, not the breast cavity. The blood found in the chest is presumably the vampire’s own, and is merely a proof that the creature is ‘undead’.

  Now, in fact, reports of ‘lamias’, or predatory ghosts, date back to ancient Greece—Keats’s poem Lamia tells a traditional story about one, which he borrows from a biography of the magician Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.

  There are even earlier accounts of the walking dead. The French expert on vampires, Jean Marigny, remarks:

  ‘Well, before the 18th century, the epoch when the word “vampire” first appeared, people believed in Europe that the dead were able to rise from their graves to suck the blood of the living. The oldest chronicles in Latin mention manifestations of this type, and their authors, instead of employing the word “vampire” (which did not yet exist) utilised a term just as explicit, the word “sanguisugae” (Latin for leech, bloodsucker). The oldest of these chronicles date from the 12th and 13th centuries, and, contrary to what one might expect, are not set in remote parts of Europe, but in England and Scotland.’1

  He goes on to cite four cases described by the 12th century chronicler William of Newburgh, author of Historia Rerum Anglicarum. These are too long to cite here (although they can be found in full in Montague Summers’ The Vampire in Europe). The first, ‘Of the extraordinary happening when a dead man wandered abroad out of his grave’, describes a case in Buckinghamshire, recounted to the chronicler by the local archdeacon. It describes how a man returned from the grave the night after his burial, and attacked his wife. When this happened again the following night, the wife asked various neighbours to spend the night with her, and their shouts drove the ghost away. Then the ghost began to create a general disturbance in the town, attacking animals and alarming people. That he was a ghost, and not a physical body, is proved by the comment that some people could see him while others could not (although they ‘perceptibly felt his horrible presence’). The archdeacon consulted the bishop, Hugh of Lincoln, who—on the advice of various learned men—suggested that the body should be dug up and burnt to ashes. Then he decided this would be ‘undesirable’, and instead wrote out a charter of absolution. When the tomb was opened, the body proved to be ‘uncorrupt’, just as on the day it was buried. The absolution was placed on his chest and the grave closed again; after that, the ghost ceased to wander abroad.

  One of William of Newburgh’s other accounts sounds slightly more like the traditional vampire in that the ghost—of a wealthy man who had died at Berwick on Tweed—had an odour of decomposition which affected the air and caused plague. The body was exhumed (it is not recorded whether it was undecayed) and burned.

  Stories like these have the touches of absurdity that might be expected from an eccesiastical chronicler of that period; yet their similarity to the other chronicles cited suggests that they have some common basis. The same applies to another work. De Nugis Curialium by Walter Map (1193), also cited at length by Summers.

  All these cases took place long before Western Europe heard tales of vampires from former Turkish dominions, and in only one of them is there is any suggestion of blood-drinking. But in most ways, the revenants behave very much like Peter Plogojowitz and the vampires of Medvegia. They haunt the living, climb into bed with people when they are asleep, and then throttle them, leaving them drained of energy. And when the bodies are disinterred, they are found to be undecayed. It seems very clear that there is no basic difference between the vampires of 1732 and the revenants of the 12th century. And when we look more closely into the accounts of the vampires, we discover that they are energy-suckers rather than blood suckers. Peter Plogojowitz has fresh blood on his mouth, but it is merely a matter of hearsay that he sucked the blood of his victims—the account mentions only throttling. Otherwise, these earlier revenants behave very much like the paranormal phenomenon known as the poltergeist.

  Two 16th century cases also bear a close resemblance to the later vampire legends. One is known as known as the Shoemaker of Breslau, and is to be found in Henry’s More’s Antidote Against Atheism of 1653. This describes how, on September 21, 1591, a well-to-do shoemaker of Breslau, in Silesia—one account gives his name as Weinrichius—cut his throat with a knife, and soon after died from the wound. Since suicide was regarded as a mortal sin, his wife tried to conceal it, and announced that her husband had died of a stroke. An old woman was taken into the secret, and she washed the body and bound up the throat so skilfully that the wound was invisible. A priest who came to comfort the widow was taken to view the corpse, and noticed nothing suspicious. The shoemaker was buried on the following day, September 22, 1591.

  Perhaps because of this unseemly haste, and the refusal of the wife to allow neighbours to view the body, a rumour sprang up that the shoemaker had committed suicide. After this, his ghost began to be seen in the town. Soon it was climbing into bed with people and squeezing them so hard that it left the marks of its fingers on their flesh. This finally became such a nuisance that in the year following the burial, on April 18, 1592, the council ordered the grave to be opened. The body was complete and unda
maged by decay, but ‘blown up like a drum’. On his feet the skin had peeled away, and another had grown, ‘much purer and stronger than the first.’ He had a ‘mole like a rose’ on his big toe—which was interpreted as a witch’s mark—and there was no smell of decay, except in the shroud itself. Even the wound in the throat was undecayed. The corpse was laid under a gallows, but the ghost continued to appear. By May 7, it had grown ‘much fuller of flesh’. Finally, the council ordered that the corpse should be beheaded and dismembered. When the body was opened up, the heart was found to be ‘as good as that of a freshly slaughtered calf. Finally, the body was burnt on a huge bonfire of wood and pitch, and the ashes thrown into the river. After this, the ghost ceased to appear.

  Paul Barber, citing the case in Vampires, Burial and Death, agrees that ‘much in this story is implausible’, but points out that so many details—notably the description of the body—are so precise as to leave no doubt ‘that we are dealing with real events’.

  But what are these ‘real events’? Before we comment further, let us consider another well known case from the same year, 1592, (which is, of course, more than a century earlier than the famous vampire outbreak in eastern Europe). This is also to be found in More, and concerns an alderman of Pentsch (or Pentach) in Silesia named Johannes Cuntze (whose name More latinises to Cuntius). On his way to dinner with the mayor, Cuntze tried to examine a loose shoe of a mettlesome horse, and received a kick, presumably on the head. The blow seems to have unsettled his reason; he complained that he was a great sinner, and that his body was burning. He also refused to see a priest. This gave rise to all kinds of rumours about him, including that he had made a pact with the devil.

  As Cuntze was dying, with his son beside the bed, the casement opened and a black cat jumped into the room and leapt on to Cuntze’s face, scratching him badly; he died soon after. At his funeral on February 8, 1592, ‘a great tempest arose’, which continued to rage as he was buried beside the altar of the local church.