HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES ABOUT VAMPIRES

 

In this chapter I am going to collect the historical stories about vampirism that I am finding, and although it is very difficult to know how much is true and how much is fiction, it is still worth knowing them to have a better idea of what was said about this subject in the past.

 

 

Case 1

 

« A shoemaker living in the Silesian town of Breslau cut his own throat in 1591. After his death several people reported seeing his ghost at their bedside, so the authorities decided to disinter the seven-month-old corpse. It was found to be entire and not at all putrid, with supple joints and no foul smell; the wound in the throat had not festered. On the big toe of the right foot there was said to be a magical mark – an excrescence in the shape of a rose.

 

The body was kept above ground for six days and the apparitions continued to appear. It was then buried beneath the gallows but the apparition still pinched and suffocated people at night, leaving finger marks on their flesh. A fortnight later the corpse was dug up again and observed to have increased in size. Its head, arms and legs were cut off, and its fresh-looking heart was removed. The body was then burnt and the ashes thrown into the river. The apparition was never seen again.

 

One of the dead man’s servants was said to have acted in a similar way after her death. Her remains were dug up and burned, after which she ceased to trouble the inhabitants. »

(Wright, p.91-92)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 2

 

« In 1672 in the town of Kringa in present-day Croatia, a man called Jure Grando died and was buried by Father George, but when the monk returned to the widow’s house he saw Grando sitting inside. The monk and neighbours fled.

 

Soon stories began to circulate of a dark figure being seen on the streets at night, stopping now and then to tap at the door of a house but never waiting for an answer. People then began to die mysteriously in the houses at which the spectre had tapped its signal. Grando’s widow complained that her husband’s spirit visited her night after night and threw her into a deep sleep in order to suck her blood.

 

Led by the chief magistrate, a group of neighbours opened the man’s grave and found the body to be perfectly sound and undecomposed; the mouth was smiling pleasantly and the cheeks had a rosy flush. Most of the group fled in terror.

 

A second visit was made with a priest. When he addressed the corpse, tears were allegedly seen rolling down the vampire’s cheeks. Attempts were made to drive a hawthorn stake through the body but each time it rebounded. When someone sprang into the grave and cut off the vampire’s head, the evil spirit departed with a loud shriek and contortion of the limbs. »

(Wright, p.87-89)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 3

 

« After his death in 1725, Peter Plogojowitz, a peasant who had lived in the Serbian village of Kisilova (now part of Hungary), appeared at night to several villagers and squeezed their throats. Nine people, both young and old, who had suffered this treatment died within 24 hours, apparently of some disease. The man’s widow said he had visited her to demand his shoes, and she was so frightened that she moved to another village.

 

In the presence of the imperial officer of Gradiska and a priest, the corpse was dug up and found to be free from any offensive smell and perfectly sound as if alive except that the tip of the nose was a little dry and withered. The beard and hair had grown and a new set of nails had replaced the old ones that had fallen off.

 

Under the former skin, which looked pale and dead, there was a new one, of a natural fresh color. The hands and feet were as entire as if they belonged to a person in perfect health. The mouth of the vampire was full of fresh blood, which he was assumed to have sucked from the people he had killed.

 

The official report also speaks of ‘other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect’ – no doubt a reference to the corpse’s bloated penis. When a sharp stake was driven into his breast, a large quantity of fresh, ruddy blood issued from the wound and from his nose and mouth. The peasants then placed the body on a pile of wood and burnt it to ashes, after which the village ceased to be troubled. »

(Wright, p.83-85; Konstantinos, p.43-45)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 4

 

« A Serbian soldier, Arnold Paole, claimed to have been attacked by a vampire while he was in Gossowa (in Turkish Serbia). To rid himself of the vampire, he ate some of the earth from its grave and smeared himself with its blood, in accordance with local belief.

 

Paole returned to his native village of Meduegna near Belgrade in 1727. A week after confessing to his fiancée that he had once been attacked by a vampire, he fell from a hay cart and died shortly afterwards.

 

It was not long before several villagers reported that he was assaulting them at night and four victims died. After he had been dead 40 days, it was decided to publicly dig up his body. It was found to be undecayed, the skin and nails had fallen away and been replaced by new ones, and streams of fresh blood were flowing from his orifices.

 

Villagers drove a wooden stake through the body, which reportedly groaned while blood erupted from it. They then burned the body. Paole never bothered anyone again. His four victims were also dug up. As they were found to be in the ‘vampire condition’, they were disposed of in the same way.

 

Several years later, during another epidemic, 16 alleged vampires were dug up in the same graveyard; they, too, were said to be undecomposed, with new skin and nails, and fresh blood. »

(Wright, p.95-102; Konstantinos, p.39-40)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 5

 

« In 1738, three days after his death, a 62-year-old man in the Serbian village of Kisilova appeared in the night to his son and asked for something to eat. After he had eaten he disappeared. Two nights later he again appeared and asked for something to eat. The next day his son was found dead in his bed. On the same day five or six villagers suddenly fell ill and died one after the other within a few days.

 

Two officers and an executioner were sent to investigate. They opened the graves of those who had been dead six weeks and found the old man ‘with the eyes open, having a fine colour, with natural respiration, nevertheless motionless as the dead’ and concluded that he was a vampire. The executioner drove a stake into his heart and his corpse was then reduced to ashes.

 

No marks of vampirism were found on the corpses of the son or the other victims. »

(Wright, p.123-125)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 6

 

« At Croglin Grange, a one-storey house in what is now Cumbria, England, in the summer of 1875 a young lady, Amelia Cranswell, was sitting in bed looking out of her bedroom window one night when she noticed two strange lights darting between the trees. She then realized that they were the eyes of a dark, humanoid creature. It began to approach her house.

 

When it disappeared from view she ran to her bedroom door, but then she heard it scratching at her window. It had a hideous brown face with flaming eyes. It broke through the window and stood over her. Grabbing her by the hair, it pulled her head back and bit into her throat.

 

Her screams alerted her two brothers, Edward and Michael, who broke down the door to reach her. They found her unconscious with blood pouring from wounds in her throat and shoulders. One brother pursued the creature into the woods but it disappeared over the wall of the churchyard.

 

To recover, the woman went to Switzerland for a few months. On her return, the creature again tried to enter her bedroom through the window but was chased away by the brothers and shot in the leg. The attacker still made it over the churchyard fence and vanished into an old vault.

 

The next morning the brothers and several other tenants opened the vault and found that all the coffins inside had been opened and their contents ripped out. One coffin was untouched and inside they found the vampire. It was shrivelled, brown and mummified in appearance. On its leg was the mark of a pistol shot. The vampire was taken out and burned. »

(Konstantinos, p.48-52; Keel, p.29)

 

 

 

 

 

Case 7

 

« In 1922 in the Greek village of Pyrgos, a depressed young farmer hanged himself from a tree. For this reason he was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church and buried in unconsecrated ground. The wife and several other villagers believed that the young man’s soul would never find rest, but the priest refused to relent.

 

After the two-month mourning period, eight villagers reported that they had been shaken and bitten by something in their beds at night. They were forced to remain in bed due to loss of strength, and two died.

 

No connection was made with the recent suicide. The wife then admitted that her husband had returned to her every night and had ‘lain with her’ until the early morning for the entire past week.

 

The priest gathered some men from the village and exhumed the suspected ‘vrykolakas’. They found it to be shrivelled and hardened as if it were a skeleton with only a thin layer of wrinkled flesh. They began to dismember the corpse, and on opening the creature’s chest, they allegedly found a completely preserved heart that was still beating.

 

The priest poured holy water over it and the heart began to melt until it liquefied entirely. The pieces of the body were then burned. The bodies of the two other people who had died were burned as a precaution. When the group returned to the village, they learned that those who were sick were feeling much better.

 

The widow later gave birth to a baby which she believed to have been fathered by the vrykolakas, but it died seconds after being born. The basic elements of this story were considered factual by local residents as recently as the mid-1970s. »

(Konstantinos, p.52-57)

 

 

Books

 

·        “Strange Creatures from Time and Space” by John A. Keel, London: Sphere, 1979.

·        “Vampires: The occult truth”, Konstantinos, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2002.

·        “Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from around the world”, Dudley Wright, Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe, 2001 (1924).

 

(Source: http://davidpratt.info/vampire.htm)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helena Blavatsky

 

She mentioned two stories that came to her knowledge. One is an 18th century report mentioning a village herdsman who vampirized various inhabitants near Kodom in Bavaria. And the other is from the early nineteenth century about a cruel and tyrannical governor of Chernigov who tradition says turned into a vampire. And those two stories can be read at this (link).

 

 

 

 

 

Franz Hartmann

 

He also mentioned three stories about vampirism that came to his knowledge and that occurred in the Austrian region. One is of an old consumptive who vampirized the vitality of a strong man to death. The second is about a lawyer who when his grave was exhumed twenty years later, his body was still fresh. And the third is about a Carpathian countess. And those three stories can be read at this (link).

 

 

 

 

 

Colonel Henry Olcott

 

In an article, he related the following story:

 

« Some years ago the grandmother of our Mr Gopalacharlu had a neighbor, a Hindu woman, who was supposed to have been obsessed by a devil (pisacha). For about a year she would find herself every morning on awakening deprived of all strength, pale and anemic. Twice becoming pregnant, she had miscarriages. Finally, resort was had to a Mussalman mantriki, or exorcist, who, by arts known to himself, discovered that the “control” was a deceased man of his own Faith.

 

He went secretly to the country, opened the grave of the suspect, found the corpse fresh and life-like, made a cut on its hand near the thumb and found fresh blood flowed spurting out from the wound. He then performed the usual placatory rites, recited his mantrams, and drove the phantom away from his victim and back to its grave. The woman recovered, and no fresh victim was visited. »

(Theosophist, April 1891)