Vampire Books Online / Vampires and Ghouls Saint Mary's beacon 1871

William of Newburgh, who lived in the twelfth century, narrates that in Buckinghamshire a man appeared several times to his wife after he had been buried. The archdeacon and clergy, being applied to, thought it right to ask the advice of the bishop of the diocese as to the proper course to be pursued. He advised that the body should be burned — the only cure for vampires. On opening the grave, the corpse was found to be in the same state as when interred — a property, we are told, generally possessed by vampires.

Calmet, in his curious work relating to the marvels of the phantom world, quotes a letter which was written in 1759, and which added one to the long list of vampire stories belonging to the Danubian provinces. “We have just had in this part of Hungary a scene of vampirism, fully attested by two officials of the tribunal of Belgrade, who went down to the places specified, and by an officer of the Emperor’s troops at Graditz, who was an ocular witness of the proceedings. At the beginning of September there died in the village of Kisilova, three leagues from Graditz, a man sixty-three years of age. Three days after his burial he appeared in the night to his son and asked for something to eat. The son having given him something, he ate and disappeared. The next day the son recounted to his neighbors what had occurred. That night the father did not appear, but on the following night he showed himself and asked again for food. They do not know whether the son gave him any on that occasion or not; but on the following day the son was found dead in his bed. On that same day five or six persons in the village fell suddenly ill and died one after another in a few days.”

The villagers resolved to open the grave of the old man to examine the body. They did so, and declared that the symptoms presented were such as usually pertain to vampirism — eyes open, fresh color, etc. The executioner drove a stake into the heart and reduced the body to ashes. All the other persons recently dead were similarly exhumed; but as they did not exhibit the suspicious symptoms, they were quietly reinterred.

Mr. Pashley, in his “Travels in Crete,” states that when he was at the town of Askifou he asked about the vampires, or katakhanadhes, as the Cretans call them — of whose existence and doings he had heard so much, stoutly corroborated by the peasantry. Many of the stories converged toward one central fact, which Mr. Pashley believed had given origin to them all. On one occasion a man of some note was buried at St. George’s Church at Kalikrati, in the island of Crete. An arch or canopy was built over his grave. But he soon afterward made his appearance as a vampire, haunting the village and destroying men and children.

A shepherd was one day tending his sheep and goats near the church, and on being caught in a shower went under the arch to seek shelter from the rain. He determined to pass the night, laid aside his arms, and stretched himself on a stone to sleep. In placing his firearms down (gentle shepherds of pastoral poems do not want firearms; but the Cretans are not gentle shepherds) he happened to cross them. Now this crossing was always believed to have the effect of preventing a vampire from emerging from the spot where the emblem was found.

Thereupon occurred a singular debate. The vampire rose in the night and requested the shepherd to remove the firearms in order that he might pass, as he had some important business to transact. The shepherd, inferring from this request that the corpse was the identical vampire which had been doing so much mischief, at first refused his assent; but on obtaining from the vampire a promise on oath that he would not hurt him, the shepherd moved the crossed arms.

The vampire, thus enabled to rise, went to a distance of about two miles and killed two persons, a man and a woman. On his return, the shepherd saw indication of what had occurred, which caused the vampire to threaten him with a similar fate if he divulged what he had seen. He courageously told all, however. The priest and other persons came to the spot next morning, took up the corpse (which in daytime was as lifeless as any other), and burned it. While burning, a little spot of blood spurted on the shepherd’s foot, which instantly withered away; but otherwise no evil resulted, and the vampire was effectually destroyed.

This was certainly a very peculiar vampire story, for the coolness with which the corpse and the shepherd carried on their conversation under the arch was unique enough. Nevertheless, the persons who related the affair to Mr. Pashley firmly believed in its truth, although slightly differing in their versions of it.

In 1854 an American newspaper, the Norwich Courier, said:

“Horace Ray of Griswold died of consumption in 1840; two of his children afterward died of the same complaint; eight years afterward, in 1854, a third died. The neighbors, evidently having the vampire theory in their thoughts, determined to exhume the bodies of the two first children and burn them, under the supposition that the dead had been feeding on the living. If the dead body remained in a fresh or semi-fresh state, all the vampire mischief would be produced.” In what state the bodies were really found we are not told; but they were disinterred and burned on the 8th of June in the above-named year.

Baring-Gould narrates the history of Marshal de Retz, a noble, brave, and wealthy man of the time of Charles the Seventh in France. He was sane and reasonable in all matters save one; but in that one he was a terrible being. He delighted in putting young and delicate children to death, and then destroying them, without (so far as appears) wishing to put the flesh or the blood to his lips. In the course of a lengthened trial which brought his career to an end, the truth came to light that he had destroyed 800 children in six years. There was neither accusation nor confession about a werewolf; it was a man afflicted with a morbid propensity of a dreadful kind.

Somewhat different was the case of Jean Grenier, in 1603. He was a herd-boy, aged fourteen, who was brought before a tribunal at Bordeaux on a most extraordinary charge. Several witnesses, chiefly young children, accused him of having attacked them under the guise of a wolf. The charge was strange, but the confession was still stranger; for the boy declared that he had killed and eaten several children, and the mothers of those children verified the same thing. Grenier was said to be half an idiot; if so, his idiocy on the one hand, and the superstitious ignorance of the peasantry on the other, may perchance supply a solution to the enigma.

One of the most extraordinary cases on record occurred in France in 1849, the facts being brought to light before a court-martial presided over by Colonel Mansuy. Many of the cemeteries near Paris were found to have been entered in the night, graves opened, coffins disturbed, and dead bodies strewn around the place in a torn and mangled condition. This was so often repeated, and in so many cemeteries, that great anguish and terror were spread among the people.

A strict watch was kept. Some of the patrols or police of the cemeteries thought they saw a figure several times flitting about among the graves, but could never quite satisfy themselves on the matter. Surgeons were examined to ascertain whether it was the work of the class of men who used in England to be called resurrectionists, or body-snatchers; but they all declared that the wild, reckless mutilation was quite of another character.

Again a strict watch was kept. A kind of man-trap was contrived at a part of the wall of Père la Chaise Cemetery which appeared as if it had been frequently scaled. A sort of grenade connected with the man-trap was heard to explode; the watch fired their guns; someone was seen to flee quickly; and then they found traces of blood and a few fragments of military clothing at one particular spot.

Next day it became publicly known that a non-commissioned officer of the Seventy-fourth Regiment had returned to the barracks in the middle of the night wounded, and had been conveyed to a military hospital. Further inquiry led to a revelation of the fact that Sergeant Bertrand, of the regiment here named, was the unhappy cause of all the turmoil. He was in general demeanor kind and gentle, frank and gay; and nothing but a malady of a special kind could have driven him to the commission of such crimes as those with which he was charged, and which his own confession helped to confirm.

He described the impulse under which he acted as being irresistible, altogether beyond his own control; it came upon him about once a fortnight. He had a terrible consciousness while under its influence, and yet he could not resist. The minute details which he gave to the tribunal of his mode of proceeding at the cemeteries might suit those who like to sup on horrors, but may be dispensed with here. It is enough to say that he aided by his confession to corroborate the charge; that he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment; and that eminent physicians of Paris endeavored to restore the balance of his mind during his quiet incarceration.