Histoire Des Vampires et Des Spectres Malfaisans – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
PREFACE
In this 19th century — so great, so enlightened, so remarkable for its learning — one might have thought that Vampires would be regarded as nothing more than a monstrosity unworthy of a single moment's attention. When we laugh with pity at tales of werewolves, sorcerers, ghosts, and specters, could anyone have imagined that France would concern itself with Vampires — those dead who rise body and soul from their coffins to suck the blood of the living, bring them death, and fatten themselves on their gore? Voltaire was astonished that Vampires dared show themselves in 1730: what would he say to see them return today to frighten the young, disturb the senses of our ladies, and unsettle weaker minds?
When reckless writers, under the pretense of arousing strong sensations in jaded souls, lead imaginations astray with the terrible adventures of Vampires — without thinking to counteract with a satisfying antidote the harm their hideous novels may cause — the friends of wisdom will perhaps applaud the efforts made here to give the reader a precise idea of Vampires: the monstrous qualities superstition attributes to them, and the atrocities laid at their feet. It is hoped above all that the reader will not be displeased to find, following the History of Vampires, an examination of the causes that may have given rise to belief in these specters, and which can show us today how much credence to give them.
It has been observed before us that belief in Vampires is an anti-religious abomination that outrages divinity and eternal morality. How could God — who is essentially good, just, wise, and powerful — permit the dead to rise from their tombs in flesh and bone (which ought only to occur at the great Resurrection, for the Last Judgment), to come and suck, smother, and kill in an instant strangers, innocent beings, young girls, and brides? From where was this execrable doctrine drawn? If vampirism had any foundation, one would have to believe that God has lost his power, and that Satan now governs this unhappy sublunary world.
And yet, priests have encouraged belief in Vampires and malevolent spirits. They had already invented ghosts that demand prayers: selfishness and self-interest explain all such villainy. Terror is a necessary tool for those who do not know how to guide men by reason.
It was believed that by publishing this history one would contribute further to uprooting those dark superstitions which so many wise minds strive to combat. It has been done without any pretension to glory — indeed, this book is, as they say, merely a compilation. We have drawn upon the learned dissertations of Dom Calmet on apparitions, ghosts, and Vampires; and those who have read widely will notice that everything remarkable in the two volumes of that virtuous Benedictine has been incorporated here. But care has been taken to trace the sources he indicated, and often passages have been uncovered which his position and his clerical robes prevented him from quoting — passages which present-day readers will not regret knowing.
Beyond a host of new details and insights, the confused researches of Dom Calmet have been given a methodical order; more precise conclusions have been drawn from them; and it is hoped, in some measure, that the result is a new work. It will doubtless be observed that this effort, imperfect as it is, has required lengthy research and some perseverance.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER ONE. Introduction. – What is meant by a Vampire.
What is most astonishing in the history of Vampires is that they shared with our great philosophers the honor of astounding the 18th century; that they terrified Lorraine, Prussia, Silesia, Poland, Moravia, Austria, Russia, Bohemia, and all of northern Europe, while the sages of England and France were boldly and surely overthrowing popular superstitions and errors.
Every century, it is true, has had its fashions; every country, as Dom Calmet observes, has had its prejudices and its ailments; but Vampires did not appear in all their splendor during barbarous centuries and among savage peoples — they showed themselves in the age of Diderot and Voltaire, in Europe, which calls itself civilized.
And while these specters were devastating the North, the South was exorcising the possessed; Spain and Italy were condemning sorcerers; Paris was witnessing the convulsions at the cemetery of Saint-Médard.
The name upiers, oupires, and more generally vampires, has been given to men dead for several years, or at least several months, who returned body and soul, spoke, walked, infested villages, mistreated men and animals, sucked the blood of their relatives, drained them, and ultimately caused their death. (1) One could only free oneself from their dangerous visits and infestations by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out their hearts, or burning them. Those who died having been sucked became Vampires in their turn.
(1) This is the definition given by Dom Calmet.
The small number of scholars who have until now written about Vampires maintain that antiquity had no knowledge of these kinds of specters. It may not be impossible to prove that the ancients also had their Vampires; and that is what we shall attempt before moving on to more recent events.
In this first part we will discuss the various Vampires who may have appeared up to around the 12th century. The second part will follow these same specters through to the height of their fame and on to the decline of Vampirism in the middle of the last century.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER II. Apparitions among Ancient Peoples.
A Vampire is a dead man who rises from the tomb, a corporeal revenant who appears, who torments, who heralds death, who brings it, and against whom action must be taken.
It goes without saying that apparitions have been sacred objects of belief among all ancient nations. In the infancy of peoples — that is to say, in all eras of ignorance and barbarism — men living in isolation developed fears, and from those fears, superstitions.
They found in their hearts the certainty of the existence of a God; but the sense of free will (which cannot exist if the world is not a mixture of good and evil, of vice and virtue) was a metaphysic too profound to strike crude souls. They imagined a wicked spirit who presided over all the evils of the earth, and who stood in continual opposition to God, author of good, creator and sustainer of nature; they gave this evil spirit subordinate spirits as executors of his orders. Spirits sent storms, meteors, and tempests; but they showed themselves only at night, because they feared God, who was far more powerful than they.
The inhabitants of the coasts of Brittany, who can still give us some idea of what child-like peoples are like, preserve all these beliefs. Among them, the red man roams the seashore at night and hurls into the waves any reckless soul who dares approach him; the flying phantom uproots trees and overturns cottages. A thousand similar specters sow terror around the huts. At the murmur of the wind, at the distant sound of the churning waves, the Breton peasant mingles, in his troubled mind, the cries of wretches being smothered by demons or dragged into the depths of the sea. It is likely that all ancient peoples held similar ideas.
When a lost individual perished at the hands of brigands, or under the blows of a storm, or by any other accident, it was proclaimed that an evil spirit had killed him. People even invented angels of death — demons who came to seize and carry off the being departing this world. Death was thus not believed to be a total annihilation: it was already known that the soul survives its mortal shell; from there to the system of revenants was but a single step. The soul that had been torn from tender affections would return to frighten its enemies, torment them, and announce their death.
When the Witch of Endor summons Samuel before Saul, the phantom says to the king: Tomorrow, you and your sons shall come to join me. It is certain that at that time belief in apparitions was widespread among the Jews, since Saul asks for a woman who knows how to evoke spirits or revenants.
Anchises appears to his son in the Aeneid; Romulus appears after his death; there are apparitions in Homer and in all ancient monuments; and doubtless among the specters of those times there were already Vampires, since blood was offered to them. When Ulysses summons the shade of his mother, he makes her drink the blood of a black ram; and all the other shades are so eager for this feast that he is forced to drive them away with violence in order to allow Anticleia all the pleasures of the banquet.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER III. Funeral Feasts and the Superstitious Terrors They Produced. (1)
(1) Drawn from the Essay on Errors and Superstitions. Amsterdam, 1765. Chapter X.
It was once a most solemn and august ceremony in the eyes of idolatrous peoples to offer sumptuous feasts to the gods of the underworld. Superstition, which always grows once it has taken hold, soon inspired those same peoples to render to the shades of the dead the same honors that had until then been paid to the infernal court. Feasts were offered to corpses to appease their souls.
The trappings of these feasts — the profound silence that reigned over them, the darkness of the place where the ceremony was held, the spectacle of tombs, bones, skulls, and half-consumed bodies seen by the pale light of funeral torches, the dejection and consternation of the guests who stretched out their arms toward the corpse and invited it to come and take part in the feast — what objects could more powerfully terrify the multitude! And so the custom and solemnity of these nocturnal celebrations came to be regarded as one of the most sacred duties of religion. How did this ceremony spread to all nations?
In Egypt, where the dead were held in such great respect and tombs inspired such veneration, the custom of funeral and nocturnal feasts was faithfully observed — it was with this that the Egyptians concluded the solemnity of burials.
In Rome likewise, funerals were always followed by a silent meal, which the heir gave to the relatives and friends of the deceased in the very place where his ashes rested.
Long ago in Courland and Semi-Gallia, as soon as a citizen had breathed his last, he was dressed in his finest clothes; a sum of money fixed by custom, and some food, were placed in his hands or beside him; he was enclosed in a coffin and carried to the tomb, which was always far from the towns, in a field or a forest. There the coffin was opened and food was offered to the corpse. To encourage him to eat, the leaders of the funeral procession ate themselves and treated all those who had been invited; it would have been an indecency to drink without saluting the deceased and without inviting him to do likewise.
In earlier times only honey, milk, eggs, bread, and wine were offered to souls; but as customs grew more fierce, it was believed that the souls of the dead would take greater pleasure in drinking blood than in eating vegetables. This mad and cruel idea led first to the spilling of animal blood on the tomb, and soon to human blood. Women, concubines, slaves, and captives who had belonged to those whose memory was to be honored expired under the knives of the sacrificers: it was amid these dreadful hecatombs, to the sound of the victims' groans and upon their quivering limbs, that the friends of the dead held their funeral feasts; it was then that, animated by wine and by the horror of the spectacle, they called out to the dead; it was then that, believing they saw his soul in the form of a hideous specter, a dreadful phantom, they said to him in a mournful and unsteady tone: "Specter! You have risen from your tomb; is it to come with us, to drink and eat as we do?"
When this barbarous feast was over, when the shade was believed to be satisfied, when there were no more wretches to sacrifice, and when the guests perhaps felt the torment of remorse in the depths of their hearts, they abruptly left the table and conjured the phantom — which their inflamed imaginations showed them as if it were present — to withdraw, and above all not to harm its friends.
These same cruelties, these same ceremonies were religiously observed by the savages of America. Even now in some parts of Louisiana, as soon as a noble woman — that is, one of the race of the sun — has died, twelve small children and fourteen adults are strangled on her tomb to be buried with her; and the same superstition that led to the sacrifice of these victims transforms them into as many phantoms, which the savages of the tribe believe they see every night wandering around the tombs and spreading terror through the huts, just like Vampires.
By offering food and blood to the dead in this way, it was thought that souls were grateful in return; that their phantoms protected those who honored them, while they attached themselves to pursuing and tormenting those who neglected them, those on whom they wished to take revenge, those they had reason to hate.
What folly gave authority to these fables? The greed of priests, who ruled through fear and superstition; their pride, which had an interest in leaving the people to languish in terror and ignorance.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER IV. Malevolent Spirits. – The Empusa or Demon of Noon. – Story of a Phantom from the Diocese of Mainz, and of a Revenant from Peru.
Ignorant peoples have always dreaded malevolent spirits and phantoms inclined to do harm. Debonnair writes in his History of France that when the Huns came to attack Chérebert or Caribert, our eighth king, these barbarians brought with them a formidable reinforcement composed of the specters of their ancestors, against whom the French were obliged to do battle. An old chronicle adds that these specters, during the combat, seized the living by the throat and strangled them. Nevertheless, the French won the victory.
While Charles the Bald was besieging Angers, malevolent spirits in the form of locusts the size of a thumb assailed the French army: these enemies of a new kind were only driven off by exorcisms that sent them into the sea. (1) This incident is less directly connected than the first to the history of Vampires; but although they appeared in the guise of locusts, they were nonetheless malevolent spirits against whom extraordinary measures had to be taken.
(1) History of Magic in France, by M. Jules Garinet, pp. 15 and 48.
Thomas Bartholin asserts that the ancient Danes frequently did battle with specters that infested their country; and the writers of our barbarous times tell a thousand stories of evil spirits that tormented the peoples of the North.
We see in Theocritus that ancient shepherds greatly feared the demon of noon. In the form of a man, this demon was Pan; with a woman's figure, it was called the Empusa. Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs, portrays the Empusa as a horrible specter that takes on various forms — of a dog, a woman, an ox, a viper, and so on — with an atrocious gaze, a foot of bronze, a flame around its head, and seeking only to do harm.
Greek and Russian peasants, who have preserved the popular beliefs attached to this monster, tremble at harvest and haymaking time at the mere thought of the demon of noon, which is said to break the arms and legs of mowers and reapers if they do not throw themselves face-down upon the ground when they catch sight of it.
We read in the life of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea that a deacon of that bishop, having entered one evening into a certain wood where all who showed themselves were put to death, saw a crowd of specters of every kind, from which he only freed himself by making the sign of the cross.
Even the grave Melanchthon himself recounts that his aunt was crippled by the treacherous touch of the specter of her late husband, who, upon squeezing her hand, burned it.
The chronicle of Sigebert presents as a certain fact that in the year 858 there appeared, in a village of the diocese of Mainz, a malevolent phantom that beat the neighbors and disturbed the peace of households with indiscreet revelations. It set fire to the huts, which was a far more serious matter, and burned the harvests. An attempt was made to exorcise it; but it answered the priests who threw holy water at it with showers of stones, and when more drastic measures were employed, it slipped under the cloak of a priest and put him to flight by reproaching him for having corrupted young girls. In the end, this phantom did not leave the village until it had burned it entirely.
Dom Calmet recounts, following the annals of the Society of Jesus, the sorry adventure of a young servant girl in Peru, who was kicked in the shoulder by a spirit while she slept. The girl's lover was dragged from his bed by the same phantom. A butter pot and a crucifix that were in the kitchen were smashed to pieces. It was determined that all this disorder was the work of a sixteen-year-old girl who had died without receiving absolution.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER V. Specters That Foretell Death. – Adventures of Dion, Brutus, Cassius, Drusus, the Emperor Tacitus, and Alexander III. – Melusine and Some Other Phantoms. – The Singular Story of a Spanish Nobleman.
The phantoms spoken of previously appear only to torment and to strike. Vampires did the same, and beyond that they foretold death — either by their mere appearance, or by explicit words.
Without bearing the name of Vampires, a multitude of ordinary specters have likewise brought news of death. Dion of Syracuse, being awake in his bed one night, caught sight of a tall woman resembling a fury, who was sweeping his house. The specter vanished as soon as Dion called for people to come. But his son killed himself a few days later; Dion himself was assassinated, and his family was swept from Syracuse, just as the specter seemed to have warned him.
It will be recalled that Brutus, the murderer of Caesar, being on the point of giving battle to Octavian, saw enter his tent in the middle of the night a hideous specter of monstrous form, which said to him: "I am your evil demon; you shall see me at Philippi." Cassius saw in that same battle a specter bearing the face of Caesar, advancing to fight him. Brutus and Cassius, terrified by these phantoms, took their own lives — or at least, writers have attributed their deaths to this cause; the loss of the battle doubtless also played some part.
When Drusus wished to cross the Elbe to continue his campaign of victories, the specter of a woman appeared to him and announced that the end of his life was near. Drusus, frightened, soon went to die on the banks of the Rhine.
Some time before the death of the Emperor Tacitus, the shade of his mother rose from her tomb — if Flavius Vopiscus is to be believed — and appeared to the monarch and to his brother Florin, both of whom died shortly afterward. (1)
When Alexander III, King of Scotland, was celebrating his third marriage, a gaunt specter was seen to enter the hall where the court had gathered for the ball, and capered before the king. He died shortly thereafter.
Camerarius recounts that in his time headless phantoms were often seen, with wide-open eyes, going to sit in churches upon the chairs of monks and nuns who were soon to die.
(1) All of this is drawn from Leloyer's Specters, Book III, Chapter 16.
It was, not so very long ago, a widespread belief in the country that whenever someone of the House of Brandenburg was about to die, the specter of a woman would pass through the prince's apartments carrying a candle. A page attempted, it is said, to stop this herald of death one day; but the phantom seized him by the throat and strangled him.
Cardan likewise writes that in the house of a noble family in Parma, whenever someone was about to die, the specter of an old woman was invariably seen seated by the fireplace.
Whenever a member of the house of Lusignan is threatened with some misfortune, or a King of France is to die in an extraordinary manner, the famous Melusine comes to cry out upon the towers of the castle she had built. (1) Yet it is nearly a century since she last appeared.
(1) Infernal Dictionary, by M. Collin de Plancy, under the entries Apparitions, Phantoms, Melusine. (2) Hexameron, Third Day, translation by Gabriel Chappuys of Touraine.
The following singular story, which appears somewhat old, is found in Antoine de Torquemada (2): "A very wealthy knight loved a nun, who, in order to find a way to be with him, contrived to have keys made similar to those of the church, adding that she would find a way to enter by means of a black tower that was there for the service of the sacristy, and that there they could fulfill their dishonest and abominable desires.
"The knight, greatly pleased, had the keys made; and since the abbey was a little way from the village, he set off there at the beginning of the night without taking any company, so that his affair might be more secret.
"And seeing that the church was open, and that within it there was a great brightness of lamps and candles, and that voices rang out as of persons singing and performing the office of the dead, he was frightened, and drew near to see what it was, and, looking all around, he saw the church full of monks and priests, who were singing thus at a funeral, and had in their midst a very tall tomb covered in black, and around it a great quantity of lit candles; and what astonished him most was that he recognized no one among them. And, after remaining some time to look on, he approached one of the priests and asked him who was the deceased for whom they were singing. The priest replied that a knight — and he named the man's own name — had died, and that this was his burial. The knight laughed and replied: that knight is alive, and therefore you are mistaken. The priest replied: you are the one who is mistaken. And he returned to singing. The knight, bewildered, went to another, to whom he put the same question, and this other gave him the same answer; so that without waiting any longer he left the church,
"and, remounting his horse, made his way toward his home. And immediately two very large black mastiffs began to accompany him, one on each side; and whatever he did and however he threatened them with his sword, they refused to leave him until they had come to the door of his house, where he entered; and when his servants came out to meet him, they marveled to see him so changed and undone, well supposing that something had befallen him. They asked him what was the matter: the knight recounted everything point by point, until he had entered his chamber, where, finishing the account of what had passed, the two black mastiffs entered, and, throwing themselves upon him, tore him to pieces and killed him before he could be helped. (He received the payment for his offense; and would to God that all those who strive to violate the monasteries of nuns were punished in this manner!..."
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER VI. Specters and Demons That Bring Death. – Specters of Neocaesarea, Egypt, and Constantinople. – Muslim Opinions on the Same Subject. – Some Persons Killed by the Devil. – The Story of the Spirit of Hildesheim.
It was not enough to imagine apparitions and make them frightening; man, being generally wicked, attributed to spirits and revenants his own evil qualities: he gave to phantoms — which his weakness had just created — the inclination and the power to torment the living. Specters foretold death, and soon they began to bring it with them.
It is true that one cannot easily conceive how a spirit can kick a young girl in the shoulder, or punch a poor man in the stomach; but nothing should astonish us when dealing with hagiographers and demonologists. Caesarius of Cistercium recounts, in his book of miracles, that a monk having passed before a painting representing St. John the Baptist without saluting it as reverence requires, the image of the saint detached itself from the canvas, knocked the monk down, and disemboweled him with kicks.
Since revenants and specters fight bodily with men, one must presumably admit that they appear in body and soul, like Vampires; otherwise even the most subtle theologian cannot explain their actions. Amphilochius says, in the life of St. Basil, that the specter of St. Mercurius killed the Emperor Julian — with a Swiss halberd, it is true, but a hand was still needed to wield it.
St. Gregory of Nyssa assures us that, during a great plague that ravaged the city of Neocaesarea, specters were seen in broad daylight entering houses and bringing death within them.
John, Bishop of Asia, says (1) that during the great plague that occurred under the Emperor Justinian, black and headless specters were seen on bronze barques sailing the sea and advancing toward the places where the epidemic was beginning its ravages. This infection having depopulated a city of Egypt such that only eight persons remained, these unfortunates attempted to flee; but they were stopped by the specters and shared the fate of all their compatriots.
(1) Sim. Assemani, Biblioth. orient., Vol. II, p. 86, cited by Dom Calmet, p. 68.
The same Bishop John also recounts that, during a great plague that was carrying off fifteen to sixteen thousand persons per day in Constantinople, demons and phantoms were seen throughout the city running from house to house dressed as monks, and bringing death within them. This last detail would seem like a satirical jab were it not reported to us by a saintly bishop who intended no such thing.
Muslims also believe that the shades of the wicked can bring death. There is cited some petty prince who, having killed his father to seize his domains, then had his own son put to death in order to reign more peacefully. His father's specter had spared him; but the phantom of his son pursued him without respite, saying: I will kill you as you killed your father. The little despot fell from his horse and died from the fall. (1)
(1) Some historians report that upon leaving Antioch, the shade of the Emperor Severus appeared to Caracalla and said to him in his sleep: "I will kill you as you killed your brother."
In lands subject to Mohammed, spirits are likewise acknowledged (Fagia or Fages) that bring death to men. (1) We see in d'Herbelot's Oriental Library that Sultan Moctadi-Bemvilla was killed at a banquet, in the midst of his women, by one of these malevolent spirits.
We also grant to demons the power to smother, strangle, and carry off the living. It is known that the devil killed the first seven husbands of the young Sara; that an evil angel exterminated the firstborn of Egypt; that another killed those Hebrews who murmured in the desert; that another, or perhaps the same, made a horrible massacre of the army of Sennacherib, and so on.
(1) These spirits are the same as those the ancients called stryges. More on this shortly.
Caesarius of Cistercium tells the story of a gambler whom the devil carried off after winning all his money from him at backgammon. Gabrielle d'Estrées was smothered, and Carlstadt strangled, by an evil angel; many others met the same fate. We read in the History of Magic in France (1) the terrible and dreadful adventure of the poor wretch l'Espèce, who having lost all his money at gambling, "began to curse God and the saints, and frequently insulted the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, saying: A plague on God and that whore Mary! But when night came, a great and horrible monster approached the vessel where the blasphemer was snoring, and devoured him."
(1) By M. Jules Garinet, 1 vol. in octavo, published by Lecointe and Durey, p. 115.
In the diocese of Hildesheim in Saxony, around the year 1152, a phantom long appeared that the Saxons called the Spirit of the Bonnet on account of its headgear. It had taken up lodging with the bishop, to whom it often gave wise counsel, and it also carried water to the kitchen. But having been insulted by a kitchen boy without anyone taking its side, it smothered the wretched youth and had him cooked. From that point on, this spirit — which had shown itself so gentle — became so wicked that it had to be exorcised. (1)
(1) History of Phantoms and Demons Who Have Appeared Among Men, by Mme Gabrielle de P., p. 59, after Dom Calmet; after Trithemius.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER VII. Incubi and Succubi. – Stories of Pierron, Boucher, and Thibaud de la Jacquière. – The Adventure of a Priest's Daughter from Bonn. – The Adventure of a Young Englishwoman. – The Nightmare.
By incubi and succubi, the ancients and moderns have understood specters and demons who come to lie with mortals and share their caresses. Succubi, in the form of women, attach themselves to men; incubi, in the form of men, address themselves to women. These kinds of phantoms are relevant to our subject, since they present themselves with a material and tangible body, and since they often caress only in order to smother.
Enormous volumes could be filled with the dreadful stories of incubi and succubi; we shall content ourselves with citing the most celebrated.
Nicholas Remy recounts, in his Demonolatry, that a Lorrainese shepherd named Pierron, a married man who even had a young boy of eight to ten years, conceived a violent love for a girl of his village. One day when he was thinking of this girl, she appeared to him — or rather a demon in her guise. Pierron confessed his love to her; she was willing to reciprocate, but on condition that he submit to her in all things. The shepherd consented and took his pleasures with the specter.
Some time later the supposed girl gave the shepherd's son an apple that poisoned him. While the father and mother abandoned themselves to despair over the death of their only child, the infernal girl appeared and said: "If you will worship me, I will restore your child." The peasant fell to his knees, and his son revived. He lived thus for a year; but at the end of that time the girl left the country, the young man died again, and he was buried without ceremony in a remote field.
Ambroise Paré recounts, in his book On Monsters, Chapter XXVIII, that a manservant named Boucher, being deeply immersed in lustful thoughts, had a demon or specter appear to him in the form of a beautiful woman. He had no difficulty in obtaining the most precious favors from her; but immediately his belly and thighs caught fire, his whole body was consumed in flames, and he died miserably.
A young libertine named Thibaud de la Jacquière was a lover of all women. A demon presented itself to him in the form of a beautiful young lady: Thibaud took advantage of the opportunity; but while she held him in her arms, the lady resumed her devil's form, her claws and teeth, and strangled Thibaud.
"A priest of Bonn named Arnold, who lived in the twelfth century, had an extremely beautiful daughter. He watched over her with the greatest care, on account of the canons of Bonn who were in love with her; and whenever he went out he locked her alone in a small room.
"One evening when she was thus shut in, a devil or spirit came to her in the guise of a handsome young man and began to make love to her. The young girl, who was at the age when the heart speaks with force, soon allowed herself to be seduced, and granted the amorous demon everything he desired. He was faithful — unusually so — and from that point on did not fail to come and spend every night with his beautiful friend. At last she became pregnant, and so visibly that she was obliged to confess it to her father, which she did amid floods of tears. The priest, moved and grieved, had no difficulty discovering that his daughter had been deceived by an incubus; and so he quickly sent her to the other side of the Rhine to hide her shame and remove her from her lover's reach.
"The latter arrived the next day, and greatly surprised not to find his beauty again — 'Wicked priest,' he said to the father, 'why have you taken my wife from me?' Saying this, he gave the priest a good punch in the stomach, of which blow the priest died within three days. — What became of the rest of this edifying story is not known. (1)"
(1) M. Collin de Plancy, The Devil Painted by Himself, Chapter XX.
A young Englishwoman, going into a wood to a lovers' meeting, found a spirit or demon in the form of the lover she was seeking, and surrendered her most cherished favors to him. On her return she felt herself struck by a cruel illness, and accused her friend of it — who cleared himself by proving an alibi. Some devilry was suspected, and these suspicions were confirmed when, after a few days, the poor girl was seen to die in a state of utter corruption, and become so heavy that eight men could barely lower her into the ground.
Another young girl, pregnant by the devil, gave birth to a monster, the ugliest ever seen. (1)
(1) M. Collin de Plancy, Infernal Dictionary, under the entry Incubi.
All these stories are hideous enough; but can the imagination of theologians ever be restrained!
In the fifteenth century, the nature of the nightmare was not yet understood. A monster was made of it — a ready means of resolving the difficulty. Some maintained that the nightmare was a specter (a true Vampire) that pressed upon the bellies of sleeping persons in order to smother them; others claimed it was an incubus that strangled sleepers while exercising its lusts upon them. Delrio, who calls the nightmare incubus morbus, calls it a demon deflowerer.
Among the ancients, any girl who lost her virtue blamed a god for her weakness; in Christianity, the aged gods were replaced by demons and phantoms.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER VIII. The Love of Machates and the Specter of Philinnion. – A Related Story of a Woman Resurrected on the Rue Saint-Honoré.
A young man from Tralles in Asia, named Machates, maintained a love affair with the beautiful Philinnion, daughter of Demostratus and Charito, without the parents being aware of it. This young girl having died unknown to her lover, her specter continued to come and spend the night with him; and, wishing no doubt to tighten the bonds of a love that the tomb ought to have extinguished, she gave him a gold ring she wore on her finger and a linen band that covered her breast; she received in return from Machates an iron ring and a gilded cup.
"One evening, however, someone having caught sight of Philinnion near Machates, ran to inform her family. The parents, who had attended their daughter's funeral, could not at first believe what they were told; but, having entered Machates' lodgings during the night, they recognized Philinnion and rushed to embrace her. 'Stop!' she cried; 'why do you take away my happiness?...' At that moment the specter fell lifeless upon the bed.
"The tomb where Philinnion had been laid was visited: only the iron ring and the gilded cup that her lover had given her were found there. She was therefore buried a second time; and Machates, terrified at having slept with a specter, took his own life. (1)"
(1) History of Phantoms and Demons Who Have Appeared Among Men, p. 99, after Phlegon. A similar popular tale can be found in the Contes noirs of M. Saint-Albin (The Specter of Soissons). All these extraordinary occurrences are explained quite naturally in another story in the same book, entitled The Beautiful Julie, Vol. I.
We read in Volume VIII of the Causes célèbres an anecdote that may explain several others. A merchant on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris had promised his daughter to one of his friends, a merchant like himself on the same street; but a financier having fallen in love with the young girl, the father preferred him: the marriage took place.
Shortly after the wedding the young wife fell ill; and, as she was believed dead, she was shrouded and buried. Her first lover, thinking she might merely be in a state of lethargy, had her taken from the ground during the night: he had the good fortune to find her still alive; she was revived, and he married her. They went to England and lived there happily and in peace.
After ten years they returned to Paris, and the first husband, having recognized his wife during a walk, claimed her back in court. This gave rise to a great lawsuit: the young woman and her second husband defended themselves on the grounds that death had dissolved the bonds of the first marriage; they also reproached the financier for having had his wife buried too hastily. Nevertheless, foreseeing that they might lose the case, they withdrew once again to a foreign land, where they ended their days in peace.
"Who can tell us," adds Dom Calmet, "that in Phlegon's story the young Philinnion was not placed in a vault in the same way, without being truly dead, and that she did not come naturally every night to visit her lover Machates?" Her return would have been all the easier since she had been neither shrouded nor buried.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER IX. Werewolves, or Men-Wolves, Who Ate Children and Drank Human Blood.
All of these accounts, and above all the specters that kill, and the phantoms of Philinnion and other dead women who come body and soul to sleep with the living, are closely connected to Vampirism. We shall now draw even closer to Vampires in their fully developed form by speaking of werewolves and specters who eat flesh and drink blood.
Belief in werewolves and in the transformation of men into beasts is very ancient. We see in the Bible Nebuchadnezzar changed into an ox; in Homer, Ulysses' companions changed into swine; in Ovid, Lycaon changed into a wolf, and so on.
People have been known to believe themselves to be earthenware pots, and to keep their distance from passersby for fear of being bumped. The immortal Pascal always imagined there was a precipice to his left side. Ajax in his fury believed he was exterminating the Greek princes while slaughtering a flock of sheep, just as Don Quixote thrust at windmill sails while persuading himself he was cutting down giants.
Those afflicted with lycanthropy (a condition extremely rare today) imagine themselves to be wolves and act accordingly. (1) Virgil mentions in one of his eclogues the means shepherds used to transform themselves into wolves. In his Learned Incredulity, Father Jacques d'Autun recounts that a king of Bulgaria frequently took on the form of a wolf to terrify his people. Pliny tells the story of a certain Antaeus, whose lineage had the privilege of transforming into wolves and roaming the woods.
(1) See, in the Demoniana of Mme Gabrielle de P., a fairly entertaining little story entitled The Werewolf's Run, p. 205. It is a lively extract from the ponderous adventures of M. Oufle, by the Abbé Bordelon.
It is also said that by cutting off a werewolf's paw, the spell of its transformation is broken: it is forced to become human again, but with the hand or foot cut off. This is what happened to the wife of an Auvergne nobleman who, in the form of a she-wolf, tried to force herself upon a hunter; in defending himself he cut off her right paw, and her husband had her burned, as was the custom in those days. (1)
(1) Bouget. Abominable Discourse on Sorcerers.
It is well known that the distinguishing quality of werewolves is a great taste for fresh flesh. Delancre asserts that they strangle dogs and children; that they eat them with keen appetite; that they walk on all fours; and that they howl like true wolves, with great maws, flashing eyes, and hooked teeth.
Three notorious werewolves were tried at Besançon in the year 1521: Pierre Burgot, Michel Verdun, and Big Pierre. All three confessed that they had given themselves to the devil. Michel Verdun admitted that having led Burgot to a remote place, they had danced in honor of Lucifer with green candles in their hands; and that having then rubbed themselves with grease, they found themselves transformed into wolves. "In this state they coupled with she-wolves with as much pleasure as they had with women when they were men. Burgot admitted that he had killed a young boy with his wolf's paws and teeth, and was about to eat him when the peasants gave chase. Michel Verdun confessed that he had killed a young girl who was picking peas, and that he and Burgot had killed and eaten four other young peasant girls: they specified the time, place, and age of the children they had seized." These wretches were condemned to be burned alive; and their story was painted in the church of the Jacobins of Poligny. In this remarkable painting, each wolf had his right paw armed with a kitchen knife. (1)
(1) History of Magic in France, p. 118. The same work describes several other werewolves burned for eating small children, even on Fridays.
Bodin recounts without shame that in 1542 one morning a hundred and fifty werewolves were seen on a public square in Constantinople. The author of The Reality of Magic and Apparitions (1) adds that this fact is attested in the journals of the time. It would be curious to see the Turkish newspapers of 1542. The same author (M. the Abbé Simonnet), who in 1819 undertook to compile a work scarcely worthy of the thirteenth century, then recounts the story of three young men who maimed their sisters and mistresses disguised as she-wolves; and he claims to have drawn this from a chronicle of Poitiers — but this chronicle and this story exist only in M. Simonnet's head. It was pointless to invent werewolf tales when the work of Nynauld on lycanthropy is stuffed full of them.
(1) Or counter-poison to the Infernal Dictionary, p. 84.
Moreover, until around the middle of the seventeenth century, werewolves, sorcerers, and specters were to be seen everywhere in Europe. All devout writers speak of them with a shudder. One is quite surprised to find, in the admirable novel of Persiles and Sigismunda, Cervantes' last work, islands of werewolves and witches who transform into she-wolves to carry off the men they love.
A great number of wretched melancholics accused of lycanthropy were burned every day; and theologians and the devout complained continually that not enough of them were burned. Delancre proposes (1) as a fine and perfectly just example a tale he took from goodness knows where, of a duke of Russia "who, informed that one of his subjects was transforming himself into all manner of beasts, had him brought before him; and, after having him chained, commanded him to demonstrate his art, which he did, immediately turning into a wolf: but the duke, having readied two mastiffs, set them upon the wretch, who was instantly torn to pieces."
(1) A Picture of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons, Book IV, p. 304.
The physician Pomponazzi was brought a peasant afflicted with lycanthropy, who was crying out to his neighbors to flee if they did not wish to be eaten. As this poor man had nothing of the wolf's form about him, the villagers — convinced nonetheless that he was one — had begun to flay him to see whether he did not carry fur beneath his skin. Pomponazzi cured him, as many others might have been cured had people not preferred to burn them in order to terrify the irreligious. (1)
(1) Werewolves must have been common in times when the people were plunged in miseries we can barely imagine. Excessive toil and hunger brought on black melancholy. Priests and monks, unable otherwise to keep the wretched man obedient to his many and onerous tyrants, vouched for every story of specters, sorcerers, and werewolves. The peasant, his mind disturbed and his faculties weakened, became a werewolf and roamed the fields. Perhaps he hoped for fewer evils from the devil than from his masters. Though it was well known he was no wolf, he was burned for the glory of religion, etc. And so the wretched feared monks and hated God.
Werewolves were not the only ones in those fine times who ate fresh flesh. Without speaking of ogres, who are still feared in a host of villages, there were plenty of other Vampires — not dead, it is true, but no less harmful for that. We shall not recount here the hideous story of Gilles de Laval, who put hundreds of children to death to satisfy an infamous madness and debaucheries that were not hastily punished because the culprit was powerful.
Open the theologians who described the witches' sabbath, and you will find witches busy cooking and eating young children. People wanted to burn sorcerers; crimes had to be found; the most horrible ideas were attributed to them: they were made to confess them by the gentle means of torture.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER X. The Lemures. – The Lamiae. – Gello, Gilo, Eurynome. – The Stryges.
The ancients gave the name Lemures to the souls of the wicked and of those who died violent deaths; these Lemures were true Vampires. We see, in Apuleius and Ovid, that these specters appeared only to threaten, terrify, and torment the living.
The Romans so greatly dreaded the Lemures that they instituted religious ceremonies to appease them. These ceremonies were called the Lemuria. The head of the household rose at midnight while all his family slept; he went barefoot, in great silence, filled with a holy dread, to a fountain, making a little noise by cracking his fingers to drive away the shades. After washing his hands three times he turned back, throwing large black beans over his head and saying: "I redeem myself and mine with these beans." This he repeated nine times without looking behind him. He imagined that the specter following him was picking up the beans unseen; he then took water a second time, struck upon a bronze vessel, and nine times begged the shade to leave his house; (1) after which he returned to his bed.
(1) Dom Calmet, Dissertation on Apparitions, p. 111.
Besides the Lemures, the ancients also feared other specters or malevolent spirits whom they called Lamiae. Wierius, in his book on Lamiae, applies this name to witches and enchantresses; but the Greeks understood by Lamiae hideous specters that haunted deserts, with the bodies of women and the heads of dragons for feet. Dion Chrysostom says that the Lamiae were numerous in Libya; that they displayed their breasts to men to lure them, and that they devoured those foolhardy enough to draw near. Philostratus, in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, speaks of a Lamia who slept with men in order to eat them.
The Lamiae were especially fond of the blood of young children, which they sucked until the children died. Delrio cites two specters or Lamiae (1): the first, named Gello, roamed the island of Lesbos and snatched newborn children to devour them. Gilo, the second, had the same habits. Nicephorus asserts that she once carried off the young Maurice (later emperor); but she could not eat him because he wore amulets.
(1) Gello et Gilo spectra vel lamiae. Disquisit magic., lib. II, quest. 27, s. II.
We may also count among the Lamiae the specter or demon Eurynome, who ate dead bodies and left nothing but the bones.
Among Eastern peoples, the Lamiae dig up corpses in cemeteries and hold great feasts upon them. Among the Persians, these Vampires are called Gholes.
In the theologians of antiquity we find several monsters of the same kind, who devoured dead bodies while terrifying the credulous common people with the living. It was by threatening our ancestors with demons and specters that ate the breasts of women and sucked the blood of husbands that the tithe was established in France under Charlemagne. These threats were attributed to Jesus Christ himself, who had written a letter to the French expressly for that purpose.
We come now to the Stryges. In antiquity these were old Lamiae. (1) Among our ancestors they were witches or specters that ate the living. There is even an article in the Salic Law against these monsters: "If a stryge has eaten a man, and is convicted of it, she shall pay a fine of eight thousand denarii, which is two hundred gold sous." It appears that stryges were common in the fifth century, since another article of the same law condemns to one hundred and eighty-seven and a half sous anyone who calls a free woman a stryge or a prostitute.
(1) See Ovid, Fasti, Book VI; Pliny, Book II, etc. — Isaiah, prophesying the ruin of Babylon, says it will become the dwelling place of lamiae and stryges. Chapter 34, verse 14.
Since stryges are subject to fines, some have believed that the name must apply exclusively to sorceresses. But in those days, specters and phantoms were subject to the law just as much as living beings: the capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonair impose severe penalties on flaming phantoms that appeared in the air — and these luminous apparitions were nothing but the aurora borealis.
The same Charlemagne, in the Capitularies he composed for the Saxons, his conquered subjects, condemns to death (with rather more justice) those who have caused men or women accused of being stryges to be burned. The text uses the words stryga vel masca; and it is known that this latter term means, like larva, a specter or phantom.
We may observe in this passage of the Capitularies (1) that it was a widely held belief among the Saxons that there were witches and specters who ate or sucked the living; that such creatures were burned; and that to protect oneself henceforth from their voracity, the flesh of these stryges or Vampires was consumed. We shall see something very similar in the treatment of Vampirism in the eighteenth century.
(1) Capitularies of Charlemagne for Saxony, Chapter 6.
Finally, what should further prove that the Lamiae or stryges of the ancients were true Vampires is that among the Russians and in certain regions of modern Greece, where Vampirism has wrought its ravages, Vampires have retained the name of Stryges.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part One: Ancient Vampires
CHAPTER XI. The Story of the Vampire Polycrites.
A citizen of Aetolia named Polycrites was elected by the people to govern the country, on account of his integrity and his talents. During his time in office he married a lady from Locris, with whom he hoped to be happy; but he died on the fourth night of his wedding, leaving his wife pregnant with a hermaphrodite child, which she bore nine months later.
The priests and augurs having been consulted on this prodigy, conjectured that the Aetolians and the Locrians would go to war with each other, because the monster had two natures. It was decided that, to avert these misfortunes, the mother and child must be led outside the borders of Aetolia and burned there, both of them.
Accordingly the sacrificers and their victims set out, accompanied by a great crowd of people. But just as the execution was about to take place, the specter of Polycrites appeared on the pyre and placed itself beside its child; this specter was dressed in a black robe. The terrified onlookers wished to flee; he called them back, invited them to fear nothing, and then made a speech in a thin, low voice, showing his compatriots that if they burned his wife and son, they would fall into extreme calamity.
But seeing that, despite his remonstrances, the Aetolians were no less determined to carry out what they had resolved, the specter seized its child and, living as it was, tore it apart and devoured it. The people raised cries of horror against him and threw stones to drive him away. He paid little attention to these insults, braved the blows, and continued to eat his son, leaving nothing but the head. After that the Vampire disappeared.
This prodigy seemed so dreadful that people wished to consult the oracle at Delphi, when the child's head, having begun to speak, predicted in verse all the misfortunes that were to befall the Aetolians in the future. (1)
(1) Infernal Dictionary, under the entry Specters.
This ogre's tale is also found in the fragments of Phlegon, a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian. If this work had allowed for a greater scope, still other stories of the same kind could be cited; but all that has already been said will doubtless suffice to prove that Vampires were not unknown to the ancients, and that we have merely perfected them.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER I. Of Excommunicated Bodies That the Earth Rejects. – Of the Dead Who Have Shown Signs of Feeling, etc.
Modern Greeks are persuaded that the bodies of the excommunicated cannot decay, even in consecrated ground, until they have received absolution; they further claim that the earth casts these profane bodies out from its bosom. Since this belief — which is also held by our own theologians — has been used to support the possibility of Vampire apparitions, we shall recount some cases cited by Dom Calmet in his dissertations.
Under the Patriarch Manuel or Maximus, who lived in the fifteenth century, the Turkish emperor of Constantinople wished to know whether it was true, as the Greeks claimed, that bodies dying under excommunication did not decay. The Patriarch had the tomb of a woman opened — a woman who had carried on a criminal affair with an archbishop and had been excommunicated by another prelate. Her body was found black and greatly swollen. The Turks enclosed it in a chest under the sultan's seal; the Patriarch said his prayer and granted absolution to the dead woman; and after three days, when the chest was opened, the body was found reduced to dust. It is true that there is nothing miraculous in this; for everyone knows that bodies taken whole from their tombs crumble to powder as soon as they are exposed to the air.
At the Second Council of Limoges, held in 1051, the Bishop of Cahors recounted an adventure of his own, which he presented as quite recent: "A knight of our diocese, having been killed while under excommunication, I refused to yield to the prayers of his friends, who urgently begged me to grant him absolution; I wished to make an example of him, so that others might be moved by fear. He was buried nonetheless by some noblemen, without ecclesiastical ceremony, without permission or the assistance of priests, in a church dedicated to St. Peter.
"The next morning his body was found outside the ground and thrown naked far from its tomb, which had remained intact with no sign that anyone had touched it. The noblemen who had buried him found nothing there but the linen in which he had been wrapped; they buried him a second time and covered the grave with an enormous quantity of earth and stones.
"The next day they found the body once again outside the tomb, with no apparent evidence of interference. The same thing occurred up to five times; at last they buried him as best they could far from the cemetery, in profane ground; which filled the neighboring lords with such great terror that they all came to beg me for peace. (1)"
(1) Councils, Vol. IX, p. 902. For a guilty person to be absolved, he must feel contrition. How then could a priest, on his own authority, absolve a dead person incapable of repentance?
Is this not, as Dom Calmet says, an incontestable fact? The following is no less worthy of credence. John Bromton recounts in his chronicle, and the Bollandists on the 26th of May, that St. Augustine, Apostle of England, having preached a sermon on the necessity of paying the tithe, cried out before all the people before beginning the Mass: "Let no excommunicated person attend the holy sacrifice!" Immediately a dead man who had been buried in the church for a hundred and fifty years was seen to exit.
After the Mass, St. Augustine, preceded by the cross, went to ask this dead man why he had come out. The deceased replied that he had died long ago under excommunication. The saint then asked the poor excommunicated man to tell him where the priest who had pronounced the sentence of excommunication against him was buried. They went there, St. Augustine ordered the priest to rise: he returned to life, and declared that he had principally excommunicated the man for his obstinacy in refusing to pay the tithe. After that, at St. Augustine's prayer, he granted him absolution, and the two dead men returned to their tombs. (1)
(1) This account is also given in the Taxes of the Casual Offices of the Pope's Shop, etc., in octavo, 1820, published by Aimé André and Brissot-Thivars, p. 244. It is also found in Dom Calmet, p. 550; and in the Reality of Magic and Apparitions by the Abbé Simonnet, p. 96, under the entry Miracles.
One might however make a few modest observations on this miraculous story. In the time of St. Augustine, Apostle of England, the English did not pay the tithe and were not excommunicated. A hundred and fifty years before that, far from anyone thinking of tithes and excommunications, there were in that country neither Christians, nor priests, nor churches, nor any idea of anything that forms the basis of John Bromton's tale. But let us pass on to others.
Plato and Democritus say — and the Hebrews held the same opinion — that souls remain for a certain time near their dead bodies, which they sometimes preserve from decay, and to which they cause the hair, beard, and nails to grow in their tombs — an advantage that has been attributed to the Vampires of the last century.
The early Christians also believed that the dead respectfully left their sepulchers to make room for worthier deceased persons who were to be buried beside them. St. John the Almsgiver, having died at Amathus on the island of Cyprus, his body was placed between those of two bishops who had died some years before, and who withdrew on either side with reverence to yield him the place of honor.
When the tender Heloise died she asked to be buried in the same tomb as her lover. Abelard, who had been dead for more than twenty years, opened his arms at her approach and received her to his breast.
The Roman Church has believed from a very early date that the bodies of saints do not decay in their tombs; it is even for this reason that one waits a hundred years before canonizing a dead man, because if a body has not rotted within a century, it is taken as proof that it belongs to one of the blessed. The Greeks hold the same view; but they claim that the bodies of saints have a pleasant odor, while those of the excommunicated are black, stinking, swollen, and taut as drums.
St. Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen in the eleventh century, having excommunicated some pirates, one of them died and was buried in Norway. Seventy years later his body was found intact but black and foul-smelling. A bishop granted him absolution, and from that point he was at last permitted to decay in peace.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER II. Broucolaques, or Excommunicated Vampires. – Story of a Vampire from Candia. – Another Vampire of the Same Kind in England. – Of the Dead Who Chew in Their Tombs, etc.
The Greeks also believe that the bodies of the excommunicated frequently appear to the living, both in broad daylight and in the middle of the night; that they speak and torment; and that their presence is dangerous. Leon Allatius, writing in the sixteenth century, goes into great detail on this subject: he asserts that on the island of Chios, the inhabitants only answer when they have been called twice, for they are persuaded that the Broucolaques — the name they give to their Vampires or specters of the excommunicated — can only call a person once. They further believe that when a Broucolaque calls a living person, if that person answers, the specter or Vampire disappears; but the one who has answered dies within a few days. The same is said of the Vampires of Bohemia, Moravia, and so on.
To protect themselves from the fatal influence of the Broucolaques, the Greeks dig up the specter's body and burn it after reciting certain prayers over it. The body thus reduced to ashes no longer appears.
Ricaut, who traveled in the Levant in the seventeenth century, adds (1) that fear of the Broucolaques is as common among the Turks as among the Greeks. He recounts a fact he had from a Candian monk who had assured him of it under oath. A man having died on the island of Milo, excommunicated for an offense he had committed in the Morea, was buried without ceremony in a remote place, and not in consecrated ground. The inhabitants were soon terrified by horrible apparitions, which they attributed to this unfortunate man. His tomb was opened after several years; his body was found swollen but healthy and fresh; his veins were distended with the blood he had sucked — and in this they recognized a Broucolaque or Vampire. After deliberating on what was to be done, the monks advised that the body be dismembered, cut to pieces, and boiled in wine, as has been their custom from time immemorial with the bodies of Vampires.
(1) State of the Greek Church, ch. 15.
But the dead man's relatives obtained, by dint of prayers, a postponement of this execution; and in the meantime they sent urgently to Constantinople to obtain from the Patriarch the absolution that the deceased required. While they waited, the body was placed in the church, where prayers were said for his repose every day. One morning when the monk in question was celebrating divine service, a kind of detonation was suddenly heard from within the coffin; it was opened, and the body was found dissolved, as it should be for someone buried seven years. The moment at which the sound had been heard was noted; it was precisely the hour at which the absolution granted by the Patriarch had been signed.
The Greeks and Turks also imagine that the corpses of Broucolaques eat during the night, walk about, digest what they have eaten, and are truly nourished. They say that when these Vampires are disinterred, some have been found with a ruddy complexion and with veins distended by the quantity of blood they had sucked; that when their bodies are opened these specters pour out streams of blood as warm, boiling, and fresh as that of a vigorous young man. This popular belief is so widespread that everyone recounts circumstantial stories about it.
The custom of burning the bodies of Vampires is very old in several other countries, as has already been noted. William of Newbridge, who lived in the twelfth century, recounts (1) that in his time there was seen in England, in the territory of Buckingham, a specter appearing in body and soul that came several nights in succession to terrify his wife and relatives. They could only defend themselves from his mischief by making a great noise when he approached. He even showed himself to certain persons in broad daylight. The Bishop of Lincoln assembled his council on the matter, who told him that such things had often occurred in England, and that the only known remedy was to burn the specter's body.
(1) Wilhelmi Neubrig. Rerum anglic. Lib. V, cap. 22.
The Bishop could not bring himself to approve this advice, which seemed to him cruel. He wrote out a writ of absolution, which was placed on the body of the deceased, found as fresh as on the day of his burial; and from that moment the phantom appeared no more. The same author adds that apparitions of this kind were at that time very frequent in England.
As for the belief widespread in the Levant that specters feed themselves, it has been established in other regions for several centuries as well. For a long time the Germans have been persuaded that the dead chew like pigs in their tombs, and that one can easily hear them grunting as they grind what they devour. (1) Philip Rehrius in the seventeenth century, and Michel Raufft at the beginning of the eighteenth, even published treatises on these dead who eat in their sepulchers. (2)
(1) The ancients also believed that the dead ate. I do not know if they could hear them chewing; but it is certain that the custom of funeral feasts served from time immemorial on the tombs of the deceased, in all nations, must be attributed to the idea that the dead retained the faculty of eating. Originally the priests ate this feast at night, which reinforced the said belief; for the true eaters did not boast of it. Among more civilized peoples, the relatives themselves ate the funeral meal.
(2) De Masticatione mortuorum in tumulis.
After speaking of the German conviction that there are dead who devour the linen and everything within their reach, even their own flesh, these writers remark that in some parts of Germany, to prevent the dead from chewing, a clod of earth is placed under their chin in the coffin; that in other places a small coin and a stone are put in their mouth; and that in still others their throat is tightly bound with a handkerchief. They then cite several dead persons who have devoured their own flesh in their sepulchers. One should be astonished to see learned men find anything extraordinary in such natural facts. On the night following the funeral of Count Henry of Salm, muffled cries were heard in the church of the abbey of Haute-Seille where he had been buried — cries that the Germans would doubtless have taken for the grunting of someone chewing; and the next day, when the Count's tomb was opened, he was found dead but overturned and lying face down, though he had been buried on his back. He had been buried alive.
A similar cause must be attributed to the story reported by Raufft of a woman from Bohemia who in 1545 ate half her burial shroud in her grave.
In the last century a poor man having been buried in haste in the cemetery, noise was heard from his tomb during the night; it was opened the next day, and he was found to have eaten the flesh of his own arms. This man, having drunk brandy to excess, had been buried alive.
A young woman of Augsburg having fallen into a lethargic state, she was believed dead, and her body was placed in a deep vault without being covered with earth. Some noise was soon heard from her tomb, but no attention was paid to it. Two or three years later someone from the same family died; the vault was opened, and the young woman's body was found near the stone that closed the entrance. She had futilely attempted to dislodge the stone, and had no more fingers on her right hand, which she had devoured in despair.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER III. Vampirism Among the Arabs. Story of a Female Vampire from Baghdad.
Belief in Vampires, Gholes, and Lamiae — which are more or less the same kind of specter — appears to have been widespread from time immemorial among the Arabs, the Persians, in modern Greece, and throughout the Orient. The Thousand and One Nights and several other Arabic tales revolve around this subject; and even now this terrible superstition spreads terror in certain parts of modern Greece and Arabia.
Stories are cited that go back as far as the reign of the famous Harun al-Rashid. It need not be said that these stories are tales — or rather romantic poems.
We shall not fatigue the reader by recalling in this vein what he may already have read elsewhere; but we shall recount an adventure of a Ghoul or Vampire, translated quite recently by a young scholar very well versed in the Oriental languages. We believe this piece to be unknown. The estimable writer who, without permitting us to name him, has kindly allowed us to publish his work here, has avoided the poetic forms of the original, because these turns of phrase — which certain novelists nevertheless wish to bring into fashion — are ridiculous in French prose.
STORY OF A FEMALE VAMPIRE
"In a suburb of Baghdad there lived, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, an old merchant who had amassed a considerable fortune, and whose sole heir to his great wealth was a son he tenderly loved. He had resolved to give him in marriage the daughter of one of his fellow merchants, a man like himself, with whom he had formed a friendship during his frequent travels.
"This young woman was very rich, but at the same time quite plain; and the charming Aboul-Hassan (1), to whom the portrait of the woman intended for him was shown, asked for time to make up his mind about this marriage.
(1) That is the young man's name.
"One evening as he was walking alone, in the soft glow of the moon, through the countryside near Baghdad, he heard a melodious voice singing some verses of the Quran to the accompaniment of a guitar. He quickly crossed the grove that hid the young singer from his view, and found himself at the foot of a country house, where he saw, on a balcony shaded with trailing plants, a woman more seductive than the houris.
"He dared make himself known only by signs of respect and love; and when the window closed again he made his way back to his father's house very late, not knowing even whether he had been seen at all.
"The next morning, after the prayer at sunrise, he returned to the spot where he had seen the charming girl for whom he already burned with irresistible love. He made a thousand inquiries, and discovered, not without difficulty, that his beauty was seventeen years old; that she was unmarried; that she was the daughter of a wise man who had no gold to give her, but who had raised her in all the most sublime sciences — tidings that inflamed him utterly.
"From that point on, the marriage his father had planned became impossible. He went to the old man and said: 'Father, you know that until now I have known only how to obey you: today I dare to beg you to grant me a wife of my own choosing.' He then set out his reluctance toward the woman proposed for him, and his love for the charming unknown.
"The old man raised some objections; but seeing that his son was drawn by an irresistible fate, he placed no more obstacles in the way of his happiness; he went to the old sage and asked for his daughter. The two lovers met; they adored each other, and the marriage took place.
"To describe their happiness one would have to feel it. After three months spent in the intoxication of the most tender pleasures, Aboul-Hassan, having woken in the middle of the night, noticed that his young wife had left the conjugal bed. He thought at first that some unforeseen accident or sudden indisposition had caused this absence, and resolved to wait; but Nadilla — that is the young woman's name — did not return until an hour before daylight. Aboul-Hassan, who was beginning to grow impatient, noticed that she came back with a startled air and a mysterious bearing; he pretended to be asleep and showed nothing of his unease, firmly resolved to clarify matters a little later.
"Nadilla said nothing to him about her nocturnal absence; and the following night, after the most tender caresses, she gently slipped from the arms of her husband, whom she believed asleep, and went out as was her custom.
"Aboul-Hassan hastened to dress himself; he followed her at a distance and made several long detours. He saw her at last enter a cemetery; he entered it as well. Nadilla went deep inside a large tomb lit by three funeral lamps. What was Aboul-Hassan's astonishment when he saw his young and beautiful wife, whom he cherished so tenderly, surrounded by several Ghouls (1), who gathered there every night for their dreadful feasts!
(1) Women who, like the Lamiae, eat the dead in cemeteries.
"He had noticed since his marriage that his wife ate nothing in the evenings; but he had drawn no alarming conclusions from this observation.
"He soon saw one of these Ghouls bringing a still-fresh corpse, around which all the others ranged themselves. The idea came to him to step forward, to disperse these hideous witches; but he would not have had the upper hand, and he resolved to swallow his indignation.
"The corpse was cut to pieces, and the Ghouls ate it while singing infernal songs. Then they buried the bones and separated after embracing one another.
"Aboul-Hassan, who did not wish to be seen, hastened back to his bed, where he feigned sleep until morning.
"All the next day he gave no sign of what he had seen; but when night came, he invited his young wife to share a light supper. Nadilla made her usual excuses; he insisted at length, and at last cried out in anger: 'You would rather go sup with the Ghouls!'
"Nadilla made no reply, turned pale, trembled with fury, and went silently to bed with her husband. In the middle of the night, when she believed him sunk in deep sleep, she said to him in a somber voice: 'Come, expiate your sacrilegious curiosity.' At the same moment she knelt upon his chest, seized him by the throat, opened a vein, and made ready to drink his blood. All of this was the work of an instant.
"The young man, who was not asleep, tore himself with violence from the fury's arms and struck her with a dagger blow that left her dying at his side.
"He immediately called for help; the wound at his throat was dressed, and the next day the young Ghoul was carried to the ground.
"Three days later, in the middle of the night, she appeared to her husband, threw herself upon him, and sought to smother him once more. Aboul-Hassan's dagger was useless in his hands; he found safety only in swift flight.
"He had Nadilla's tomb opened, and she was found as though alive, seeming to breathe in her coffin. They went to the house of the wise man who passed for the father of this unfortunate woman. He confessed that his daughter, married two years before to an officer of the Caliph, and having abandoned herself to the most infamous debaucheries, had been killed by her husband; but that she had found life again in her sepulcher; that she had returned to her father's house; in short, that she was a female Vampire. The body was exhumed; it was burned on a pyre of scented wood; its ashes were cast into the Tigris; and Arabia was delivered from a monster...."
It is clear enough that this story is also merely a tale; but it can give an idea of the beliefs of the Arabs. In the Oriental Tales of Caylus there is a kind of Vampire who can only sustain his odious life by swallowing the heart of a young man from time to time. One could cite a host of similar details in tales translated from the Arabic: these tales prove that the horrible ideas of Vampirism are very ancient in Arabia.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER IV. Story of a Vampire Who Allowed Himself to Be Run Through With a Lance. – Of Some Spirits or Specters Similarly Vulnerable.
Thomas Bartholin, writing in the seventeenth century, recounts — after an ancient sorceress named Landela, whose work has never been printed — an incident that must date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
A man named Harppe, being at the point of death, ordered his wife to have him buried upright before the door of his kitchen, so that he would not entirely lose the smell of the stews that he so dearly loved, and so that he might at his ease observe what went on in his house. The widow dutifully and faithfully carried out what her husband had commanded her. But some weeks after Harppe's death he was often seen appearing in the form of a hideous phantom, killing workers and molesting the neighbors to such a degree that no one dared live in the village any longer.
However, a peasant named Olaüs Pa was bold enough to attack this Vampire: he delivered a great lance blow and left the lance in the wound. The specter disappeared, and the next day Olaüs had the dead man's tomb opened; he found his lance in the body of Harppe, at the same spot where he had struck the phantom. The corpse was not decayed. It was drawn from the earth, burned, and its ashes cast into the sea; and they were delivered from his fatal apparitions. (1)
(1) Bartholin, de Causa contemptûs mortis, etc., lib. 2, cap. 2.
"Harppe's body, then," says Dom Calmet, "had truly left the earth when it appeared. This body must have been tangible and vulnerable, since the lance was found in the wound. How did it leave its tomb, and how did it return? That is the crux of the difficulty; for that the lance and the wound were found on the body should not surprise us, since it is asserted that sorcerers who transform themselves into dogs, werewolves, cats, etc., bear in their human bodies the wounds received in the corresponding parts of the bodies in which they appear."
Dom Calmet could have supported his argument with several good stories proving that spirits have no need of borrowed bodies to receive wounds inflicted on them. A nun of the monastery of Hoven caught sight of the devil in the nuns' dormitory; she gave him a slap so well applied that the devil took flight.
One evening when St. Loup wished to drink, the devil threw himself into his cup, thinking to enter the saint's body without obstacle; but Loup recognized the enemy, took his pillow, covered the vessel with it, and kept the devil enclosed there until morning.
Another man, who had great power over spirits, shut a dozen of them up in a butter pot. It appears that these spirits were material, since they could not evaporate.
A demon went one day to offer his services to St. Anthony: for all answer, St. Anthony spat in his face. That demon must have had a face.
A spirit went to find St. Juliana in her prison and advised her to sleep with her husband and not to die. Juliana seized the spirit or demon, bound his hands behind his back, laid him on the ground, beat him soundly despite his cries, and then putting a chain around his neck, dragged him along the ground through the streets of Nicomedia to a cesspit where she threw him.
St. Dunstan seized another demon by the nose with red-hot tongs.
St. Dominic obliged another to hold the candle for him while he wrote; and since it held the candle until the end, spirit though it was, it had its five fingernails burned, along with a kick from the saint into the pit, etc. (1)
(1) The Devil Painted by Himself, by M. Collin de Plancy, chapters 9, 10, 21.
Finally, Father Taillepied cites Plutarch who, "in the Notable Sayings of the Lacedaemonians, speaks of a man who ran a spirit through with his javelin while passing through a cemetery at night. But apparently," he adds, "it was some rascal who wanted to play the ghost." (1)
(1) Taillepied, On the Apparition of Spirits, chapter 6.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER V. Prodigious Story of a Nobleman to Whom the Devil Appeared, with Whom He Conversed and Slept Under the Body of a Dead Woman, Which Occurred in Paris on the 1st of January 1615. Extract from the Second Edition. – Other Anecdotes of the Same Kind.
"On the first day of January 1615, during those rains that had tormented us for so long, a young Parisian nobleman, returning around four in the afternoon from some company with whom he had spent a good part of the day, encountered in a small alleyway forming the entrance to his door a young lady well turned out, with the appearance of some courtesan, handsomely dressed in a gown of cut taffeta, adorned with a pearl necklace and several other fine and handsome jewels, who, as if astonished, yet with a pleasant manner, addressed the nobleman and said to him: Sir, although the severity of the weather does not permit me to expose myself to it, I would nonetheless rather face it than cause you the least inconvenience in the world by occupying without any permission the entrance to your lodgings; and if it is something I may do without your displeasure, I shall be as obliged to you for the rest of my life as any of those who have ever had the honor of being your most affectionate servants.
"The nobleman, considering what the young lady might be, judging by appearances and by the courtesy she had shown, thought it his duty to respond in kind, both in word and in deed, and so he said to her: Mademoiselle, I am greatly grieved that my arrival was too late to show you the service I have always vowed to render ladies, and in particular to those of your quality; and to make this known to you, I offer you not only lodgings but everything that depends on me and that you believe to be within my power: and in the meantime I shall beg you to take the trouble to come inside while the rain passes.
"The young lady said to him: Sir, I have never deserved the offer you make me, and I shall remember it when the occasion presents itself; I ask only that you permit me to await my carriage here, which I have sent my footman to fetch. No, said the nobleman; you will oblige me by coming to take a humble collation while you wait for your carriage; and although you will not be received as befits your rank and merit, I shall endeavor to do what is my duty.
"At last, after much contesting on both sides, the young lady came in, and was greatly vexed that her footman was not coming. The day passed without the footman having legs or the carriage wheels to arrive. When the supper hour came, the nobleman did his best to entertain her; and as bedtime approached, the young lady begged him that, since he had done her so much honor as to take her in, he would do her the further kindness of giving her a bed to herself, since it would not be seemly for a young lady to admit anyone to her bed; which he readily granted. While she was undressing, the nobleman addressed her with some amorous discourse, to which he found she responded with great knowledge; which moved him; and, thinking he would easily obtain from her what he desired, he let her go to bed; then, driven by the audacity that love alone gives us, he made his way toward her and went to find her in her bed, pretending to enquire whether she was comfortable or not; and little by little, as they talked, he slipped his hand upon her breast, which she endured. At last after several attempts he obtained some kisses with a promise of more. So there was this poor nobleman who had great trouble obtaining what one would have wished to grant him freely. After several kisses that lit a fire in his soul, after an infinity of entreaties, what he desired was permitted him. He at once lay down and long enjoyed what he believed were perfect pleasures.
"When morning came, he rose; and, fearing that someone might come to see him, and that on seeing this young lady something might be thought, he sent his footman to wake her, to whom she replied that she had not slept all night, and that he should permit her to make up for it in the morning. The footman brought this back to his master, who, after having taken a short turn about town, returned with some of his friends, and before bringing them up to his chamber, went there first alone in order to excuse himself to the young lady if she had not been better entertained. He drew back the curtain and, having called her by some fond names, wished to take her by the arm; but he found her as cold as ice, without pulse or breath of any kind; at which, frightened, he called his host; and several persons having arrived, the young lady was found stone dead: the law and the physicians were then sent for, all of whom declared with one accord that it was the body of a woman who had been hanged some time before; (1) and that perhaps a specter or devil had clothed himself in her body to deceive this poor nobleman.
(1) Some persons have claimed that the young lady, having gone out willingly or by force in the nobleman's absence, the footman, who was pious, accompanied by some people of the same stamp, had placed a dead body in his master's bed to teach him a lesson in continence. If this story is not a tale, this supposition explains it. One can see moreover that the narrator has embroidered.
"They had barely uttered these words when before everyone's eyes a great dark smoke arose from the bed, lasting approximately the space of a Pater Noster: this smoke, little by little dissipating, they found that the one who had been in the bed had disappeared...
"It is by such examples that God calls back those who, giving free rein to their passions, allow themselves to be swept away by all manner of unknown women, of whom we have never seen so many as there are at the present time."
Guillaume de Paris also recounts that a soldier, having slept with a beautiful girl, found a stinking carcass at his side the next morning.
St. Hippolytus often saw a beautiful woman who loved him, who presented herself naked before him and, despite his resistance, pressed him to her breast and overwhelmed him with caresses. Hippolytus, tired of these importunities — as the legend tells it — passed his stole around the woman's neck and strangled her. From that point on he found in his arms nothing but a stinking corpse, which was thought to be recognized as the body of a woman who had been dead several years. (1)
(1) The Devil Painted by Himself, pp. 77–78, after the 115th legend of Jacques de Voragine.
A citizen of Lyon was condemned to sleep for three years with the specter of his wife whom he had murdered, and who returned every night hideous and bloodied to torment and punish him. Mme de Genlis incorporated this detail into her novel The Knights of the Swan.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER VI. The Vampires of Russia and Poland, and the Methods Used Against Them.
The public journals of France and Holland speak in 1695 and 1694 of the Vampires appearing in Poland and especially in Russia. We see in the Mercure galant of those two years that it was then a very widespread belief among those peoples that Vampires appeared from noon until midnight; that they sucked the blood of men and living animals with such avidity that it often poured out of their mouths, their nostrils, and their ears; and that sometimes their corpses were swimming in the blood spilled within their coffins.
It was said that these Vampires, being perpetually ravenous, also ate the linen found around them; and it was added that, leaving their tombs, they went at night to embrace their relatives or friends violently, sucking their blood while pressing their throats to prevent them from crying out.
Those who were sucked grew so weak that they died almost immediately. These persecutions did not stop at a single person; they extended to the last member of the family or the village — for Vampirism has scarcely ever been practiced in towns — unless its course was interrupted by cutting off the head or piercing the heart of the Vampire, whose corpse was found soft, flexible, but fresh, despite having been dead for a very long time.
Since a great quantity of blood flowed from these bodies, some mixed it with flour to make bread, claiming that by eating this bread they were protected from the Vampire's attacks.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER VII. Moravian Vampires, etc. – Story of a Female Vampire. – Story of the Famous Vampire of Blow. – Story of the Vampire Peter Plogojowitz.
Here are some further stories of Vampires that predate the eighteenth century. M. de Vassimont, sent to Moravia by Duke Leopold I of Lorraine, asserted — Dom Calmet tells us — that these kinds of specters appeared frequently and had done so for a very long time among the Moravians, and that it was quite ordinary in that country to see men dead for several weeks present themselves in company, sit down at table without a word among people of their acquaintance, and infallibly nod their head at someone who would die within the week.
An old parish priest confirmed this fact to M. de Vassimont, and even cited several examples that had, he said, occurred before his own eyes. The bishops and priests of the country had consulted Rome on these embarrassing matters; but the Holy See made no reply, regarding the whole affair as ridiculous visions.
From that point on, the practice arose of exhuming the bodies of those who returned in this way and burning or otherwise destroying them; and by this means they were delivered from these Vampires, which became less and less frequent with each passing day.
These apparitions nonetheless gave rise to a small work composed by Ferdinand de Schertz, printed at Olmütz in 1706 under the title Magia posthuma. The author recounts that in a certain village a woman having died with all her sacraments was buried in the ordinary manner in the churchyard — and so she was not excommunicated. Four days after her death the villagers heard a great noise and saw a specter that appeared, sometimes in the form of a dog, sometimes in the form of a man, not to one person alone but to several. This specter seized those it addressed by the throat, compressed their stomachs until it suffocated them, shattered almost their entire bodies, and reduced them to extreme weakness; so that they could be seen pale, thin, and emaciated. Even the animals were not safe from its malice; it tied cows together by the tail, wore out horses, and tormented livestock of every kind to such a degree that nothing was heard on all sides but bellowing and cries of pain. These calamities lasted for several months; they were not stopped until the female Vampire's body was burned.
The author of the Magia posthuma recounts another still more singular incident. A herdsman from the village of Blow, near the town of Kadam in Bohemia, appeared some time after his death with the symptoms announcing Vampirism. This specter would call certain persons by name, and those called never failed to die within the week. He tormented his former neighbors and caused such terror that the peasants of Blow dug up his body and drove it into the ground with a stake passed through his heart.
This specter, which spoke although it was dead — and which at least should no longer have been able to do so in such a situation — nevertheless mocked those who were making him suffer this treatment. "A fine thing," it said to them, opening its great Vampire mouth, "to give me a stick with which to defend myself against the dogs!" No attention was paid to what it said, and he was left there.
The following night he broke his stake, rose up again, terrified several people, and suffocated more than he had done before. He was then handed over to the executioner, who put him on a cart to transport him outside the town and burn him there. The corpse moved its feet and hands, rolled its burning eyes, and howled like a madman. When it was run through again with stakes it let out great cries and gave out very bright red blood; but when it had been thoroughly burned, it appeared no more.
The same was done in the seventeenth century, and doubtless before, against revenants of this kind; and in several places, when they were taken from the ground, they were likewise found fresh and ruddy, their limbs supple and pliable, without worms or decay, but not without a very great stench.
The author we have cited above asserts that in his time Vampires were frequently seen in the mountains of Silesia and Moravia. They appeared in broad daylight as well as in the middle of the night; and objects that had belonged to them could be seen moving and changing place without anyone appearing to touch them. The only remedy against these apparitions was to cut off the Vampire's head and burn his body.
Michel Raufft, of whom we have already spoken, recounts that a peasant named Peter Plogojowitz, buried for about ten weeks in the village of Kisilova in Hungary, appeared at night to certain sleeping peasants and seized them so tightly by the throat that they died within twenty-four hours. In this way nine persons of various ages perished within the space of eight days.
Plogojowitz's widow even declared that the specter of her husband had come to ask her for his shoes, as he was obliged to run about barefoot — which so frightened this woman that she left the village of Kisilova to retire elsewhere.
These circumstances led the villagers to exhume Plogojowitz's body and burn it to free themselves from his infestations. They applied to the emperor's officer commanding in the territory of Gradisch in Hungary, and to the parish priest of the same place, for permission to exhume Peter Plogojowitz's body. The officer and the priest at first refused this permission; but the peasants declared that if they were not willing to dig up and burn this Vampire, they would be obliged to abandon the village and retire wherever they could.
The emperor's officer (1), seeing that threats and arguments could not restrain these poor people, went to the village of Kisilova and had Peter Plogojowitz's body exhumed.
(1) It was this same officer who wrote the account of this adventure.
They found that the body gave off no bad smell; that it was intact and as though alive, except that the tip of the nose appeared slightly withered; that his hair and beard had grown, and that in place of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had grown; that beneath his outer skin, which was as though dead and whitish, a new skin appeared, healthy and of its natural color. His feet and hands were as sound as one could wish in a fully living man.
They also believed they could make out in his mouth quite fresh blood, which he had doubtless recently sucked from the persons he had just killed.
The emperor's officer and the parish priest having carefully examined all these things, and the peasants having conceived fresh indignation against the Vampire, they at once rushed to find a well-sharpened stake, which they drove into his chest, from which there poured out a great quantity of fresh, bright red blood, as there did from his nose and mouth, and from other parts that decency prevents us from naming; they then placed the body on a pyre, and having reduced it to ashes, the village was at peace from that point on.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER VIII. Story of Another Vampire from Kisilova. – Apparitions of the Vampire Arnold Paul. – Death of Stanoska, Sucked by a Young Vampire, etc.
The Marquis d'Argens recounts, in his one hundred and thirty-seventh Jewish Letter, a Vampire story that took place in the same village of Kisilova, three leagues from Gradisch. What is most astonishing in this account is the degree of credulity shown by the famous d'Argens toward a fact he had not witnessed himself and which presents no satisfying character of authenticity.
There has just occurred in Hungary, says the philosophical writer, a scene of Vampirism duly attested by two officers of the tribunal of Belgrade who conducted an on-site investigation, and by an officer of the emperor's troops at Gradisch who was an eyewitness to the proceedings.
At the beginning of September there died in the village of Kisilova an old man of sixty-two years of age. Three days after his burial he appeared to his son during the night and asked him for something to eat; the son having brought some, the specter ate; after which he disappeared. The next day the son told his neighbors what had happened; and the phantom did not appear that day; but on the third night it returned to ask again for supper. It is not known whether his son gave it any or not; but the son was found dead in his bed the next morning. The same day five or six persons in the village suddenly fell ill and died one after another in a very short time.
The local bailiff, informed of what was happening, had a report of it presented to the tribunal of Belgrade, which sent two of its officers to the village along with an executioner to investigate. An imperial officer came there from Gradisch to witness a fact he had heard spoken of so often.
The tombs of all those who had died within the past six weeks were opened; when they came to that of the old man they found him with open eyes, of a ruddy color, with natural respiration, yet motionless and dead; from which they concluded he was a notorious Vampire. The executioner drove a stake into his heart; a pyre was built and the corpse reduced to ashes.
No signs of Vampirism were found in either the son's body or those of the other dead.
"Thanks be to God," adds the Marquis d'Argens, "we are anything but credulous; we confess that all the lights of physics we can bring to bear on this fact reveal nothing of its causes: however, we cannot refuse to believe as true a fact attested legally and by men of probity...."
The same writer then recounts an adventure that took place in 1752 and which he had published at the time in issue No. 18 of the Gleaner.
In a district of Hungary, the people known by the name of Heiduques believe, as in many other places, that certain dead persons whom they call Vampires return to suck the blood of the living; so that the latter waste away visibly, while the corpses, like leeches, fill so abundantly with blood that it can be seen coming out through their ducts and even through their pores.
A certain Heiduc, an inhabitant of Medreïga named Arnold Paul, was crushed by the fall of a hay-wagon. Thirty days after his death four persons died suddenly and in the manner in which, according to local tradition, those die who are molested by Vampires.
It was then recalled that this Arnold Paul had often recounted that near Cassova, on the borders of Turkish Serbia, he had long been tormented by a Vampire. It should be noted that these peoples also believe that those who have been sucked during their lifetime in turn become suckers after their death.
Arnold Paul had found a means of curing himself of the Vampire's attacks by eating earth from the sepulcher where the corpse was buried, and by rubbing himself with its blood. This precaution did not prevent him from becoming a Vampire after his death.
He had been buried forty days and had already sucked or smothered a good number of peasants when he was exhumed. On his corpse all the signs of Vampirism were found: his body was ruddy; his hair, nails, and beard had renewed themselves; his veins were all filled with fluid blood flowing from every part of his body onto the shroud in which he was wrapped.
The local bailiff, in whose presence the exhumation took place, and who was an expert in matters of Vampirism, had a very sharp stake driven through Arnold Paul's heart, passing through his body from side to side. The Vampire could not, it is said, endure this treatment without letting out a dreadful cry, as if it had been alive; despite this his head was cut off and everything burned. The same was done with all the corpses of the other persons who had died of Vampirism, lest they in turn cause the deaths of others.
However, five years after these expeditions, these fatal prodigies began again, and several inhabitants of the same village perished miserably. In the space of three months, seventeen persons of different sexes and ages died of Vampirism, some suddenly and others after two or three days of languishing.
It is reported among other things that a young person named Stanoska, daughter of the Heiduc Sotwitso, who had gone to bed in perfect health, woke in the middle of the night trembling violently, letting out cries of pain, and saying that the son of the Heiduc Millo, dead nine weeks before, had come to strangle her in her sleep. From that moment on she merely languished and died at the end of three days.
What this girl had said about Millo's son led to the exhumation of that corpse, in which a Vampire was recognized. The leading men of the place, physicians, and surgeons examined how Vampirism could have returned after the precautions taken some years before. At last, after much inquiry, it was discovered that the late Arnold Paul had killed not only the persons already mentioned but also several cattle, whose flesh the new Vampires had eaten — and in particular, Millo's son.
On these grounds it was resolved to exhume all those who had died within a certain period. Among about forty, seventeen were found with all the most evident signs of Vampirism: their hearts were pierced, their heads cut off, they were burned, their ashes scattered; and they were thereafter protected from their nocturnal infestations.
All of these facts are attested by...
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER IX. Story of Three Vampires from Hungary.
Around the year 1725, a soldier who was billeted with a peasant on the borders of Hungary saw, at the moment of supper, an unknown man enter who seated himself at table beside the master of the house; the latter was extremely frightened, as was the rest of the company. The soldier did not know what to make of it, and feared to be indiscreet in asking questions, as he did not understand what was going on.
But when the master of the house died the next day, he at last tried to find out what had caused this accident and thrown the whole household into confusion. He was told that the unknown man he had seen enter and sit down at the table, to the great terror of the whole family, was the father of the master of the house; that he had been dead and buried for more than ten years, and that by coming to sit beside his son he had brought him his death.
The soldier recounted all of this to his regiment. The general officers were soon informed of it and gave a commission to Count Cabreras, a captain of infantry, to investigate the fact.
Count Cabreras having gone to the place with other officers, a surgeon, and an auditor, they heard the depositions of all the people of the household, who attested that the revenant was the father of the host, and that everything the soldier had reported was exactly true; which was also affirmed by most of the inhabitants of the village.
Consequently the body of this specter was drawn from the earth; his blood was fluid and his flesh as fresh as that of a man just expired. His head was cut off; after which he was put back in his tomb.
After ample inquiries, they then exhumed a man dead for more than thirty years, who had returned three times to his house at mealtimes and had sucked the neck, the first time, of his own brother, the second time of one of his sons, and the third time of a servant of the household; all three had died almost immediately. When this old Vampire was disinterred he was found, like the first, with fluid blood and a fresh body. A large nail was driven into his head, and he was then put back in his tomb.
Count Cabreras then had burned a third Vampire, who had been buried for more than sixteen years and had sucked the blood of and caused the deaths of two of his sons. — At last the country was at peace. (1)
(1) Dom Calmet declares that he holds these facts from a private individual who told him he had them from Count Cabreras himself.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER X. Exhumation and Adventures of a Broucolaque or Vampire from the Island of Mykonos.
Tournefort recounts, in Volume I of his Voyage to the Levant, how he witnessed the exhumation of a broucolaque on the island of Mykonos, where he happened to be on the 1st of January 1701. This adventure must find its place in this work; it predates the Vampires of 1730, and, as we have said, such things had long been occurring in modern Greece.
"We were witnesses," says Tournefort, "to a very singular scene on account of one of those dead who are said to return after their burial. The one whose story we shall give was a peasant of Mykonos, naturally ill-tempered and quarrelsome — a circumstance worth noting in regard to such subjects. He was killed in the countryside, by nobody knows whom or how.
"Two days after he had been interred in a chapel in the town, the rumor spread that he was seen at night walking with great strides; that he came into houses to overturn the furniture, put out the lamps, embrace people from behind, and play a thousand mischievous tricks. At first people only laughed; but the affair became serious when the most respected persons began to complain; even the priests admitted the fact, and doubtless had their reasons.
"Masses were duly said; yet the specter continued its ways without reforming. After several assemblies of the leading citizens, the priests, and the monks, it was concluded that, following some ancient ceremony or other, they must wait nine days after the burial.
"On the tenth day a Mass was said in the chapel where the body lay, in order to drive out the demon believed to have taken up residence in it. The body was dug up after the Mass, and they set about removing its heart; which drew the applause of the whole assembly. They were however obliged to burn incense to cover the bad smells. But this smoke, combined with the exhalations of the broucolaque, soon heated the brains of these poor people; their imaginations, struck by the spectacle, filled with visions; someone said that a thick smoke was coming out of the body; we dared not observe that it was the incense smoke.
"Nothing was shouted but Vroucolacas in the chapel and in the square in front of it. That is the name given to these supposed revenants. The noise spread through the streets like bellowing, and the name seemed made to shake everything to pieces. Several of those present asserted that the blood of this unfortunate man was very bright red; the butcher swore that the body was still warm all through; from which they concluded that the dead man was greatly at fault for not being properly dead — or rather, for having allowed himself to be reanimated by the devil. That is precisely the idea they have of a broucolaque; and the name was made to ring out in a stunning manner.
"Other persons now entered, who protested loudly that they had clearly noticed the body had not become stiff when it was carried from the countryside to the church for burial; upon which it was once more decided that it was a true Vroucolacas. That was the refrain.
"I have no doubt they would have maintained that it gave off an excellent smell if we had not been present, so infatuated were these poor people with their revenants.
"At last it was agreed to go to the shore and burn the dead man's heart, which, despite this execution, proved less docile and made more noise than before. He was accused of beating people at night, of breaking down doors and even terraces, of shattering windows, of tearing clothing, of emptying jugs and bottles. He was a very thirsty dead man: I believe he spared only the house of the consul with whom we were lodging.
"Yet I have seen nothing so pitiful as the state of that island: everyone had their imagination overturned; the most sensible-minded persons seemed as stricken as the rest; entire families could be seen abandoning their houses and coming from the far ends of town with their beds to spend the night on the square; the most levelheaded retired to the countryside.
"In such a general panic, we chose to say nothing; not only would we have been treated as ridiculous, but as unbelievers. How could one bring the whole population back to reason? Those who in their hearts believed we doubted the truth of the fact came to us as though to reproach us for our incredulity, and claimed to prove to us that there were broucolaques by citing some authorities drawn from the town's butcher and from Father Richard, a Jesuit missionary.
"Every morning we were treated to a comedy in the form of a faithful account of the fresh follies this creature of the night had committed. He was even accused of having committed the most abominable sins.
"The most zealous citizens for the public good believed that the most essential point of the ceremony had been omitted: they maintained that Mass should have been celebrated only after the heart had been torn from this unfortunate man; they claimed that with this precaution they would not have failed to catch the devil; and surely he would not have dared return; whereas by beginning with the Mass, he had, they said, had all the time he needed to flee, and then return at his leisure.
"After all this reasoning they found themselves in the same predicament as on the first day: assemblies were held morning and evening; discussions were held; processions were made for three days and three nights; the priests were required to fast; they could be seen running through the houses with aspergillum in hand, sprinkling holy water everywhere and washing the doors; they also took care to continually fill the broucolaque's mouth with it.
"As we had often repeated to the town's administrators that in such a case in Europe one would certainly set a watch at night to observe what was happening in town, some vagabonds were finally arrested who had assuredly played a part in all these disturbances; but they were doubtless not the principal authors, or else they were released too soon; for two days later, to make up for the fast they had observed in prison, they resumed emptying the wine jugs of those foolish enough to abandon their houses at night. They were thus obliged to fall back on prayers.
"One day, while certain orations were being recited — after any number of naked swords had been planted on the grave of this corpse, which was dug up three or four times a day according to the whim of whoever happened by — an Albanian who happened to be in Mykonos took it into his head to say, with a doctorly air, that it was highly ridiculous in such a case to use the swords of Christians. Do you not see, he added, that the hilt of these swords, forming a cross with the guard, prevents the devil from leaving this body? Why do you not rather use Turkish sabres?
"The advice of this able man served for nothing: the broucolaque proved no more tractable, and everyone was in a strange state of consternation. They no longer knew which saint to invoke, when all at once, as if on a signal, a cry went up throughout the whole town that it had gone on long enough, that the vroucolacas must be burned entire, and that after that they defied the devil to come back and lodge there; that it was better to resort to that extreme than to let the island be deserted. Indeed there were already entire families packing their belongings, with the intention of retiring to Syra or Tinos.
"The broucolaque was therefore carried by order of the administrators to the tip of the island of Saint George, where a great pyre had been prepared with pitch, lest the wood, however dry it might be, not burn fast enough. The remains of this unfortunate corpse were thrown there and consumed in a short time.
"One could well call this fire a true bonfire, for from that moment on no more complaints were heard against the vroucolacas; they contented themselves with saying that the devil had been well caught out this time, and they composed a few songs to hold him up to ridicule.
"Throughout the Archipelago, people are quite persuaded that only the corpses of Greeks of the Greek rite can be reanimated by the devil. The inhabitants of the island of Santorini greatly fear these kinds of specters. Those of Mykonos, after their illusions were dispelled, feared equally the reprisals of the Turks and those of the Bishop of Tinos. No priest was willing to be present at Saint George when the body was burned, for fear the bishop would demand a sum of money for having had the dead man dug up and burned without his permission. As for the Turks, it is certain that at their first visit they did not fail to make the community of Mykonos pay for the blood of this poor revenant, who was in every way the abomination and horror of his country."
This story will doubtless have seemed a little long, but it is of great importance; for it shows what sound minds should think about Vampirism.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
History of Vampires – Part Two: More Recent Vampires
CHAPTER XI. Story of a Vampire from Moldavia. – A Singular Anecdote Reported by Torquemada.
In a village a few leagues from Barlaw in Moldavia, there died in February 1729 an old gardener dreaded by all his neighbors, who believed him to be a sorcerer.
During the night before his burial, his body, which had been placed in the church, was disturbed in its position, and the black cloth that covered it was stolen; however, the corpse was found motionless the next morning.
This did not prevent people from claiming that the dead man was already returning, and he was hastily buried, with a stone placed on his throat.
Three nights later a young girl who was engaged and on the point of being married woke beside herself, left her bed pursued by a dreadful vision, and ran to tell her parents that the old gardener had just entered her room, that he had said to her: "I come to suck you as I have already sucked him who was to be your husband"; that at the same moment he had seized her by the throat; and that she had woken struggling with this Vampire.
Instead of reassuring her and showing her that all of this was nothing but a vision, her parents, as frightened as she was, thought only of telling their neighbors of their daughter's misfortune and demanding the exhumation of the sucking corpse. Meanwhile the young girl died within two days.
But here is a more remarkable fact: the man she was about to marry had not seen the Vampire and had not been sucked; yet no sooner had he learned what the specter had said while strangling the young girl than he fell ill as well, and died eight days after her.
The dead man publicly accused of Vampirism was exhumed. He was thought to have a fresh complexion, and he was burned. (1) But could one fail to recognize in this adventure the sad effects of the imagination? The truth is here so evident that it is pointless to demonstrate it.
(1) Voyage to Moldavia in 1735, published at Munich, 1740, Vol. I.
We shall content ourselves with recounting an anecdote that has some connection with the accident that made a Vampire out of the corpse that was about to be buried.
Torquemada recounts (1) that a distinguished nobleman, notable for his birth and his riches, having died in a Spanish town, his body was brought to the church of a monastery to be buried there with the customary ceremonies. There was at that time in the same town a woman who had lost her reason: she ran day and night through the whole town without anyone paying any attention to her. Finding herself toward evening near the church of this monastery, she entered it and hid herself so well that all the doors were closed without her being noticed.
(1) Third Day of the Hexameron, cited by Lenglet Dufresnoy in the preface to the Dissertations on Apparitions...
The night was rather cold; she went to lie down precisely under the funeral pall of the deceased; this pall was of velvet; she wrapped herself in it to get some warmth, and slept there until the middle of the night, when the monks went to the choir to sing matins.
The sound of voices having wakened this woman, she began to laugh with outbursts that began to alarm the fathers; after that she began to strike, to cry out, and even to howl with all her strength. This was quite enough to put the monks to flight. A spark of courage however revived the prior and some of the monks: they armed themselves with candles and holy water, after which they returned to the church to perform the exorcisms customary on such occasions.
The madwoman, hearing them return, began to cry out louder than before; she even lifted and let fall several times the tomb, which had not yet been sealed. The prayers and exorcisms were useless, and the prior wisely chose to leave the church, as his monks could soon no longer resist their terror.
The madwoman, who had nothing more to fear, slept the rest of the night. The next day she retired to a corner, gave no sign of what had happened, and left with some other people without being noticed.
The monks, somewhat reassured, went before Mass to visit the tomb, which they found greatly disturbed; and everyone in the town and the convent was persuaded that a specter had come into the church.
But after two months the whole mystery was cleared up. This madwoman, meeting some monks, cried out to them: Monks, monks, did I not frighten you well one of these recent nights? The monks came over to find out what she meant; she confessed everything she had done — and that was one fine apparition the less.
There are many adventures of this kind, which are only marvelous because their denouement is unknown.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER I. Procedures Against Vampires. – The State and Signs of Vampirism.
As we have seen throughout all that precedes, when Vampires are exhumed their bodies generally appear ruddy, supple, and well preserved. Nevertheless, despite all these signs of Vampirism, proceedings against them were not conducted without legal formalities. Witnesses were summoned and heard; the complaints of the plaintiffs were examined; the corpses were inspected with care: if everything pointed to a Vampire, it was handed over to the executioner, who burned it.
Sometimes these specters still appeared for three or four days after their execution, even though their bodies had been reduced to ashes.
Quite often the bodies of certain suspect persons were left unburied for six or seven weeks. When they did not decay, and when their limbs remained supple and their blood fluid, they were burned.
It was asserted that the clothing of these persons moved and changed position without anyone touching them. The author of the Magia posthuma, of whom we have already spoken, recounts that at Olmütz at the end of the seventeenth century one of these Vampires could be seen, without even being buried, throwing stones at the neighbors and greatly molesting the inhabitants.
Dom Calmet reports, as a particular circumstance, that in the villages infested by Vampirism, people went to the cemetery and inspected the graves; some were found to have two, three, or several holes the width of a finger. They then dug into these graves and invariably found a supple and ruddy body within.
If the head of such a corpse is cut off, an abundant quantity of fluid, fresh blood flows from its veins and arteries.
The learned Benedictine then asks whether these holes found in the earth covering the Vampires might have contributed to preserving in them a kind of life, respiration, or vegetation, and made their return among the living more credible. He rightly concludes that this idea — founded moreover on facts that have nothing real about them — is neither probable nor worthy of attention.
The same writer cites elsewhere, regarding the Vampires of Hungary, a letter from M. De l'Isle de Saint-Michel, who lived for a long time in the infested regions and who knew something about the matter. Here is how M. De l'Isle explains it:
"A person finds themselves struck with languor, loses their appetite, grows thin visibly, and after eight or ten days, sometimes fifteen, dies without fever or any other symptom of illness other than thinness and wasting. In Hungary it is said that a Vampire has attached itself to this person and is sucking their blood.
"Of those attacked by this black melancholy, most, having troubled minds, believe they see a white specter that follows them everywhere, as a shadow follows a body.
"When we were in winter quarters among the Wallachians, two cavalrymen from the company of which I was a cornet died of this illness; and several others who were attacked by it would probably have died in the same way if a corporal of our company had not cured their imaginations by performing the remedy that the local people use for this purpose. Although quite singular, I have never read it in any ritual; here it is:
"A young boy is chosen who is old enough never to have performed the act of the body — that is, one who can be believed a virgin; he is made to mount bareback a stallion that is entirely black and likewise a virgin. The young man and the horse are led to the cemetery, where they walk over all the graves. The one over which the animal refuses to pass, despite the whip-strokes applied to it, is regarded as containing a Vampire. This grave is opened, and a corpse is found there as beautiful and fresh as if it were a man peacefully asleep. The neck of this corpse is cut with one stroke of a spade, from which a great quantity of the most beautiful bright red blood pours out — or at least so it appears. This done, the Vampire is put back in his grave, which is filled in; and one can count on the illness ceasing from that point, and on all those attacked recovering their strength little by little, like people escaping from a long wasting illness."
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER II. Vampirism Produced by Imagination and Fear. – Anecdotes on the Fatal Effects of a Frightened Imagination.
The Marquis d'Argens, having shown a certain credulity regarding Vampires — whose prodigious adventures may have surprised his astonished mind — soon recovers from this weakness; and he reasons as follows on the subject in the same Jewish Letters we have cited:
"There are two different means of destroying fear of Vampires and of showing the impossibility of the fatal effects attributed to corpses entirely deprived of sensation: the first is to explain by physical causes all the prodigies of Vampirism; the second is to deny entirely the truth of these stories; and this last course is without doubt the most certain and the wisest.
"But since there are persons for whom the authority of a certificate signed by men in official positions appears a convincing demonstration of the reality of the most absurd tale, before showing how little trust is to be placed in legal formalities in matters that concern philosophy alone, I shall suppose for a moment that several persons truly do die of the illness called Vampirism. I first put forward the principle that it is possible for certain corpses, though buried for several days, to shed fluid blood through the vessels of their bodies; I further add that it is very easy for certain people to imagine that they are being sucked by Vampires, and that the fear caused by this imagination can produce in them a violent enough disturbance to deprive them of life. Being occupied all day with the terror these supposed specters inspire in them, is it so very extraordinary that during their sleep the idea of these phantoms presents itself to their imagination and causes them a terror so violent that some die of it in an instant, and others a few days later? How many people have been seen to die of fright! Has not joy itself produced an equally fatal effect?"
In 1733 a small work was published entitled Philosophical and Christian Reflections on Vampires, by Johann Christoph Harenberg. (1) The author mentions in passing a specter that appeared to him personally in broad daylight; he maintains at the same time that Vampires do not cause the living to die, and that everything said about them must be attributed solely to the disturbed imagination of the sick.
(1) Philosophicae et Christianae cogitationes de Vampiriis, a Joanne Christophoro Herenbergio.
He proves, by various experiments, that the imagination is capable of causing very great disturbances in the body and the humors.
He recalls that in Slavonia, murderers were impaled, and that the heart of a guilty person was pierced with a stake driven into their chest. If the same punishment was applied against Vampires, it is because they are supposed to be the cause of the deaths of those whose blood they are said to suck.
Christoph Harenberg cites some examples of this punishment carried out against Vampires, one as early as 1337, another in 1347, and so on; he discusses the belief that the dead chew in their tombs, a view whose antiquity he attempts to prove through Tertullian at the beginning of his book on the Resurrection, and through St. Augustine in Book VIII of the City of God.
The passage from Tertullian he cites proves very well that pagans offered food to their dead — even to those whose bodies had been burned — in the belief that their souls nourished themselves on it. This concerns only the pagans; but St. Augustine speaks in several places of the custom among Christians, especially those of Africa, of bringing meat and wine to tombs, from which devotional meals were made, to which relatives, friends, and the poor were invited. These meals were subsequently forbidden because Christians rarely failed to get drunk at them.
On examining the accounts of the deaths of supposed martyrs to Vampirism, one discovers all the symptoms of an epidemic fanaticism, and can clearly see that everything must be attributed to the impressions produced by terror. A young girl named Stanoska, who had gone to bed in perfect health, wakes in the middle of the night trembling violently; she lets out dreadful cries, and says that the son of the Heiduc Millo, dead nine weeks before, came to strangle her in her sleep. From that moment she merely languishes, and after three days she dies.
For anyone with a little philosophy in their mind, is it not obvious that this supposed Vampirism is an effect of the frightened imagination? Here is a girl who wakes up, who says someone tried to strangle her, and yet who was not sucked, since her cries prevented the Vampire from taking his meal. Apparently she was not sucked afterward either, since she was doubtless not left alone during the other nights, and if the Vampire had wished to molest her, her cries would have alerted those present: yet she dies three days later. To one who knows what impressions the imagination is capable of, there is nothing astonishing in this.
At the same time that Vampires were devastating Germany, Paris was infested by the convulsionaries of the cemetery of Saint-Médard — other people whom imagination did not kill but whom it drove mad. When the cemetery that was the theater of their antics was closed, they held sessions in private drawing rooms and garrets. A brave soldier, whom nothing had ever astonished, was curious enough to go and see them. He took a place among the crowd of spectators and at first laughed at the veneration shown to the pious imbeciles. One of the convulsionaries, turning wild eyes upon him, cried in a hoarse and solemn voice: "You laugh!... remember that you will die in seven days." The soldier turned pale and left a moment later. He returned to his lodgings, his imagination struck by a ridiculous threat he should have despised; he put his affairs in order, made his will, and died on the seventh day of madness or fright. (1)
(1) Infernal Dictionary, under the entry Convulsionaries. — The same weak spirits who were dying in Germany and Lorraine from fear of Vampire corpses were cavorting in Paris and performing a thousand extravagances on the tomb of the deacon Paris. The corpse of a saint whom Rome subsequently rejected was brought to Dijon in the ninth century. Those who approached this corpse went into dreadful convulsions, just like our convulsionaries of 1732. It had to be made to disappear.
Guymond de la Touche, it is said, met a very similar fate. He had gone to a supposed sorcerer's house with the intention of discovering the tricks he employed; he accompanied a great princess, who showed on this occasion more strength of mind than he did. The religious apparatus of each experiment, the silence of the spectators, the respect and terror with which some were seized, began to affect him. At the moment when, greatly disturbed, he was attentively watching pins being stuck into a young girl's breast, "You are very eager to find out everything done here," she said to him; "very well, since you are so curious, know that you will die in three days." These words made an astonishing impression on him; he fell into a deep reverie; and this prediction, as well as everything he had seen, caused such a revolution in him that he fell ill, and did indeed die at the end of three days, in 1760. (1)
(1) Same work, under the entry Predictions.
Those who have found themselves in cities afflicted by plague know from experience how many people the fear of it costs their lives. As soon as a person feels the slightest ailment, they imagine themselves struck by the epidemic illness; and so great a disturbance takes place in them that it is rare for them not to die of it. A woman from Marseille is cited who died, during the plague of 1720, from the fear caused by a fairly minor illness of her maid, whom she believed to be stricken by the epidemic. The maid did not die. A thousand similar examples could be given; but let us return to the Vampires.
An old man from Kisilova appears after his death to his son, asks him for food, eats, and disappears. The next day the son recounts to his neighbors what happened to him. The following night the father does not appear; but on the third night the son is found dead in his bed.
Who could fail to see in this adventure the surest marks of preconception and fear? The first time they act upon the imagination of this poor young man, tormented by a supposed Vampire, they do not produce their full effect, and merely predispose his mind to be more susceptible to a vivid impression of them — which is precisely what did not fail to occur. Let us note that the dead man did not return on the night the son communicated his dream to his friends, because, to all appearances, they stayed up with him and prevented him from giving himself over to his fears.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER III. Some Physical Causes That May Have Favored Vampirism.
Let us now come to those corpses said to have been found full of fluid blood, and whose beards, hair, and nails had renewed themselves. With a good deal of charity one may first discount three-quarters of these prodigies; and one must still be very obliging to admit even a small portion of them. All who reason know well enough how inclined the credulous common people — and even certain historians — are to exaggerate things that appear even slightly extraordinary. Nevertheless it is not impossible to explain their cause by physical means.
It is known that there are certain soils well-suited to preserving bodies in a perfectly fresh state; the reasons have been explained so often that it is unnecessary to dwell on them here. One can still see in Toulouse, in a monastic church, a vault where bodies remain so perfectly intact that in 1789 some were found that had been there for nearly two centuries and appeared to be alive. They had been arranged upright against the wall, still wearing the clothes in which they had been buried.
What is most singular is that bodies placed on the other side of that same vault become food for worms within two or three days.
As for the growth of nails, hair, and beard, it is observed very often in many corpses. While there is still much moisture remaining in the body, there is nothing surprising in seeing some increase during a certain time in parts that do not require the influence of the vital spirits.
The Dutch Gleaner observed in 1733 (No. IX) that all the peoples among whom Vampires had been seen were steeped in the thickest ignorance and extremely credulous; that if there happened to be among them any physicians or even slightly educated people, they were safe from the attacks of these specters; and finally that Vampirism, so terrible in villages, scarcely ever dared show itself in towns; from which he naturally concluded that this fatal epidemic was the effect of stricken imaginations.
This illness was further aggravated by the poor nourishment of the peasants afflicted by it. These wretched people — serfs of the soil for the most part, and crushed under every kind of misery — ate nothing but bread made of oats, roots, and tree bark: food that can only produce a coarse blood, and consequently one very prone to corruption.
As for the cry that Vampires emit when a stake is driven into their hearts, nothing is more natural. The air enclosed in the corpse, which is violently forced out of it, necessarily produces this noise as it passes through the throat: dead bodies even frequently produce sounds without being touched.
Here is another anecdote that may explain some of the features of Vampirism; the reader will draw from it the conclusions that naturally follow. This anecdote was reported in several English journals, and particularly in the Sun of the 22nd of May 1802.
At the beginning of April of the same year, one Alexander Anderson, traveling from Elgin to Glasgow, felt a certain malaise which obliged him to enter a farmhouse along the road to take some rest. Whether he was drunk or feared making a nuisance of himself, he went to lie down in a barn, where he covered himself with straw in such a way as not to be noticed. Unfortunately, after he had fallen asleep, the people of the farm had occasion to add a fairly large quantity of straw to that in which this man lay buried. It was only after five weeks that he was discovered in this singular situation. His body was nothing but a hideous and emaciated skeleton; his mind was so completely disordered that he gave no sign of understanding whatsoever: he could no longer use his legs. The straw that had surrounded his body was reduced to dust, and that which had been near his head appeared to have been chewed.
When he was taken from this kind of tomb, his pulse was almost extinguished, though its beats were very rapid; his skin was moist and cold; his eyes immobile, wide open, and his gaze bewildered.
After a little wine was made him swallow, he recovered sufficient use of his physical and intellectual faculties to tell one of the persons questioning him that the last circumstance he could remember was that of feeling straw being thrown upon his body; but it appears that since that moment he had had no awareness of his situation. It was supposed that he had remained in a constant state of delirium, brought on by the lack of air and the smell of the straw, during the five weeks he had spent thus — if not without breathing, at least breathing with difficulty, and without taking any nourishment other than the little sustenance he could extract from the surrounding straw, which he had the instinct to chew.
This man may still be alive. If his resurrection had taken place among peoples infected with ideas of Vampirism, one would — on observing his wide eyes, his bewildered air, and all the circumstances of his situation — have burned him before giving him time to come to his senses; and there would be one more Vampire.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER IV. The Effects of the Moon on Vampires.
The worship of the stars — which doubtless preceded all other forms of worship — attributed several singular influences to the moon. Its soft and melancholy light, its silent course, the bizarre errors caused by its uncertain rays, the kind of mystery that surrounds this beloved daughter of the heavens, all reinforced the superstitious and sometimes poetic ideas that men attached to its appearance. In paganism, among Muslims, and even among Christians, these ideas were preserved, and they are far from being eradicated.
A host of people will still tell you that the moon eats stones. Those minds subject to periodic returns of madness are still called lunatics, and it is a common belief that a woman who conceives in the first days of the new moon will infallibly give birth to a boy; but in the last quarter a husband's caresses can only produce a girl.
People have likewise been mistaken in subjecting women to the empire of the moon in the regular return of the signs of fertility; it has also been falsely claimed that the rays of the moon — which has no heat — darkened the complexion of delicate persons.
It has been said that the moon protected evocations and all the dark operations of magicians and sorcerers; powerful enchanters have even been granted the power to bring the moon down into their caverns.
And there are still good villagers who, persuaded like some ancient peoples that the moon's disk is barely larger than the bottom of a vat, believe when an eclipse occurs that a sorcerer is tearing the moon from the sky and forcing it to come and foam on the grass, (1) in order to give that grass infernal powers.
(1) "And the moon, wrenched from her proud throne, / Trembling and colorless, comes to foam upon the grass." Lucan, translated by Brébeuf.
And those are not all the slanders that imbecile superstition has imagined against the so gentle star of love and tender meditations. Most peoples have believed that the rising of the moon was a mysterious signal at which specters left their tombs. The Orientals say that Lamiae and Ghouls go to dig up the dead in cemeteries and hold their horrible feasts by moonlight. In certain districts of eastern Germany it was claimed that Vampires did not begin their infestations until the moon rose, and that they were obliged to return to the earth at cockcrow.
But the most extraordinary idea — and this idea was truly adopted in some villages — is that the moon revived Vampires. Thus when one of these specters, pursued in its nocturnal wanderings, was struck by a bullet or a lance blow, it was thought that it could die a second time, but that on being exposed to the moon's rays it regained its lost strength and the power to suck the living once more.
This horrible yet romantic belief was not very widespread; nonetheless it was used to quite good effect in the story attributed to Lord Byron. Ruthwen, killed by brigands, asks to be exposed to the moon's rays; and within a quarter of an hour he is revived.
In the dreadful melodrama that this story inspired, this scene concludes the second act. Ruthwen dies struck by a bullet; he is exposed on a rock where the moon casts its light, and he comes back to life.
Nevertheless, in reading the story of the Vampire Harppe and of some other phantoms who received lance or bullet wounds, we find no evidence that the moon's rays could have revived them.
But surely there is no need to dwell any longer on so frivolous a subject.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER V. Miraculous and Natural Resurrections. – Story of a Dead Man Resurrected by St. Stanislaus. – Various Anecdotes of Resurrected Persons.
Resurrections have further strengthened belief in apparitions and given rise to every kind of specter. It is known through what miracles Hippolytus and some others had the good fortune to return to life after having been dead. Plutarch tells of a wicked scoundrel named Thespius who broke his neck and died; but after three days, just as his funeral was being prepared, he sneezed, asked for something to drink, recounted that he had just made a little journey to the other world, and lived thereafter as an honest man, converted by his fear of hell.
A certain Pamilius, killed in battle, lay among the dead for ten days and revived when he was being carried to the pyre.
"All the lives of the saints are so full of resurrections of the dead that one could compile thick volumes from them: these resurrections are manifestly related to the subject we are treating here, since they concern persons who are dead — or held to be dead — who leave their tombs body and soul, and appear to the living." (1)
(1) Dom Calmet, Dissertation on Revenants and Vampires, IV.
We shall cite, among other stories, the adventure of St. Stanislaus, Bishop of Krakow, who resurrected — if the Bollandists are to be believed — a man who had been dead for three years. The event took place in Poland, where Vampires subsequently became so common.
St. Stanislaus, having bought from a nobleman named Pierre a piece of land on the Vistula, paid the seller the price but without any contract, receipt, or written document of any kind; he enjoyed it for three years without being troubled in his possession, though the sons of the nobleman who had sold the land claimed it as their property. At last, three years after their father's death, they cited the bishop before King Boleslas. The bishop maintained that he had paid for the land; but he could produce no witnesses. He was about to be condemned; whereupon he cried out that he requested a delay of three days, promising to bring before the king the very nobleman who had sold him the land. Ridiculous as this proposition was, it was accepted.
On the third day St. Stanislaus went in his episcopal vestments, with all his clergy, to Pierre's tomb; he ordered him to come out and bear witness. The dead man arose; a cloak was put upon him; he was led before the king. The specter, who was unrecognizable, took the floor, declared that he had received the price of his land, and reproached his sons for their impiety. Stanislaus then asked him whether he wished to remain alive; but he replied that he did not, and returned in peace to his tomb. (1)
(1) In the thirteenth century, in a district of Germany, a monastic abbot seized the land of a nobleman and announced that this nobleman had given it to him on his deathbed. But the nobleman was not dead; he had been locked in a dungeon of the convent, where he languished for seven years. At the end of that time, having found a way to escape, he reappeared and claimed his property; but he was made to pass for a specter. The people and the monks were about to proceed against him if he had not taken flight. What became of him is not known.
This event ought to have had a prodigious effect on the Poles; it appears, however, that the king was not taken in by it — or rather that his heart was well hardened, since some time later, without any respect for a miracle-working saint, he had Stanislaus put to death as a seditious person.
A similar incident is read in the Lives of the Desert Fathers. A monk was accused of having killed a rich man in order to take a large sum of money he was carrying. The abbot of the convent prayed and ordered the dead man to tell the truth. The deceased rose immediately, proclaimed the monk's innocence, and said that he had been killed by another person; whereupon the holy abbot said to him: Sleep in peace. And the dead man fell asleep and died.
St. Augustine recounts that a peasant from near Hippo named Curma died one morning and remained two or three days without sensation. As they were about to bury him, he opened his eyes and asked what was happening at the house of another peasant from the neighborhood who was also named Curma; he was told that this other man had just died at the very moment he himself had been resurrected. "That does not surprise me," he said; "a mistake had been made about the names: I was just told that it was not Curma the churchwarden but Curma the blacksmith who was to pass over." He also recounted that he had seen hell; and he had himself baptized.
It will be readily understood that juggleries of this sort, often repeated, were not calculated to diminish superstitious beliefs. The Christian religion, like all others, made use of revenants, resurrections, and supernatural apparitions to get news from hell and to govern through terror.
These means are no longer fashionable in the age in which we live, because even if the dead were to return to life after two or three days of lethargy, no one would see a miracle in it. It is known that there are many cases of apparent death, and it is recognized with dismay that living persons are sometimes buried; it is therefore to be desired that France finally adopt the practice of opening bodies before burying them, to ensure that homicides are not being committed.
The famous Doctor Scot was buried alive at Cologne; and when his tomb was opened on some occasion, it was found that he had gnawed his own arms.
In the seventeenth century, the funeral of a great lady was held in Rome; she regained her senses and her life while the office of the dead was being sung over her coffin.
The physician Zacchias speaks of a young man who was believed dead twice, and who twice revived at the moment when he was about to be put in the ground.
A woman from Orléans was buried with a precious ring on her finger which could not be removed. The following night a servant opened the tomb, broke open the coffin, and wished to cut off the finger bearing the ring. The deceased immediately let out a loud cry; the servant fled. The poor woman freed herself as best she could, returned home, and outlived her husband.
The surgeon Benard saw taken from his tomb alive and breathing a Franciscan monk who had been shut in it for three or four days and had gnawed his own hands; he died as soon as he took in air.
The wife of a councilor from Cologne having been buried in 1571 with a valuable ring, the gravedigger opened the tomb during the night to get the ring; but the lady, who was believed dead, came out of the coffin and went to knock at the door of her house. She was at first taken for a phantom; the door was finally opened; and she subsequently had three sons who became men of the church.
Everyone knows the adventures of François de Civile, who, wounded at the siege of Rouen under Charles IX, was buried for half a day, then abandoned for five days on a bed where he showed no sign of life, then thrown as dead on a dunghill, and yet recovered in perfect health.
During a great plague that ravaged Dijon in 1558, a lady, reputed to have died of the epidemic, was thrown into a mass grave along with several corpses. She came to herself the following morning and made great efforts to get out; but her weakness and the weight of the bodies covering her prevented her. She remained in this situation for four days; then the gravediggers brought her home, where she made a full recovery. (1)
(1) These details are cited in Dom Calmet's Dissertation.
Anecdotes of this kind could be multiplied indefinitely, which at least show that natural resurrections can occur. Charlatanism has seized upon them to impose upon credulous minds, and superstition has made bogeymen of them.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER VI. Continuation of the Same Subject.
The Abbé Salin, prior of Laye-Saint-Christophe in Lorraine, was believed dead in 1680. He was already in his coffin and on the point of being buried when he was resurrected by a friend who made him swallow a glass of Champagne wine; he died again fourteen years later. In a somewhat more barbarous age or country, this would have been a great miracle — and perhaps it was one for the Lorrainese, who a few years later were also infested with Vampires.
We shall say another word about miraculous resurrections, which are cited in ancient authors and which took place in distant times where we cannot seek proof. Pliny speaks, in the seventh book of his Natural History, of a young man who, having fallen asleep in a cave, remained there for forty years without waking. Our legends recount the story of the Seven Sleepers, who slept in the same way for a hundred and fifty years. The philosopher Epimenides likewise slept for forty — or forty-seven, or fifty-seven — years, for historians do not agree.
Christians believe that Enoch and Elijah are still alive; several even believe that St. John the Evangelist is not dead, but still lives in his tomb, like the Vampires.
Clement of Alexandria recounts, after Plato, that Er, son of Zoroaster, was resurrected twelve days after his body had been burned on a pyre. Phlegon says that a Syrian soldier of Antiochus's army, after being killed at Thermopylae, appeared in broad daylight in the Roman camp and spoke to several people — one might think he had not been killed very thoroughly.
We find in Pliny yet another small detail that has some connection to Vampirism. It is known that Cardan, St. Paul, and a host of others boasted of being able to send their souls traveling without the body's participation. The soul of Hermotimus of Clazomenae would leave his body whenever he wished, travel to distant lands, and on its return recount surprising things. Apparently this soul also played wicked tricks, for Hermotimus made enemies. One day when his soul was out traveling, and his body, showing no sign of life, was as usual entirely like a dead corpse, the enemies of Hermotimus burned this body and thus removed from the soul the means of returning to lodge in its case.
It has been observed, with regard to miraculous resurrections, that the resurrected should report news from the other world — which they do not do — instead of tormenting the living, which is fairly pointless. Revenants and Vampires have never said anything about what happened to them from the moment of their death. Even Lazarus, or the widow of Nain's son, whom Jesus Christ resurrected, or the dead who walked through the streets of Jerusalem when the Savior expired on the cross, have revealed nothing to men about the state of souls in the other life; and if certain supposed revenants have said some absurdities on the subject, they have done so in the spirit and interest of their religion. The pagans spoke of Pluto, Minos, the Fates, and the Furies; Christians speak of the devil, of boiling cauldrons, and of blessed souls who spend eternity singing hosanna.
Some natural resurrections may have given rise to belief in miraculous returns. From that point on it is no longer only spirits that return; sometimes they are revenants in body and soul that a demon has resurrected and sent for a time back among the living: if these material revenants are wicked, they are Vampires.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
CHAPTER VII. What Is to Be Believed About Vampires. – Conclusion.
It may also have happened that in the countries subsequently infested by Vampires, some living person was buried, and that this person found a means of escaping from their sepulcher. This supposed phantom will have shown itself to its family, which will have been frightened by it and refused to receive it; friends and the whole village will have experienced the same sensations and behaved the same way. The importunities of the unfortunate specter then make it into whatever one wishes.
Should one of those who received its visits die of fright or otherwise, the whole country is thrown into confusion by a superstitious contagion.
While agreeing that the stories of Vampires have been greatly exaggerated, all wise writers believe that if one in ten of them truly did return, it was a man buried alive in a state of lethargy.
Dom Calmet examines whether Vampires did not possess the faculty of living in their coffins, though without movement or respiration; and he adds that this difficulty is not the one that gives him pause: "It is knowing how they leave their tombs, how they return to them without it appearing that they have disturbed the earth and put it back in its original state; how it comes about that they eat their clothes, yet always appear fully dressed; why, if they are not dead, they do not remain among the living; why they infest and trouble persons who must be dear to them and who have not offended them; if all of this is merely imagination on the part of those who are molested, why are these Vampires found in their tombs without decay and full of blood; why their feet are muddy the day after they have been running about and frightening the neighborhood; why nothing similar is noted in other corpses buried at the same time in the same cemetery; why they no longer return and no longer infest once they have been burned or impaled?"
One need not be astonished by all this gradation of prodigies. From the moment people were willing to believe in Vampires, they were obliged to construct their history. We know them only from a distance; and of a thousand adventures that could be told about these specters, scarcely ten would be found to have any more foundation than the tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
Louis XV, wishing to know the truth of all these extraordinary facts, ordered the famous Duke of Richelieu, then his ambassador in Vienna, to examine the matter carefully, to review the official reports, and to give him an account. The Duke had himself thoroughly informed of everything and replied to the king that nothing seemed more certain than what was being published about the Vampires of Hungary.
The philosophers were not satisfied with this answer; they observed that the Duke of Richelieu had gathered his information far from the theater of Vampirism: the king ordered his ambassador to go to the places where the Vampires were exercising their ravages and to see everything for himself. The Duke obeyed; and he found that everything recounted about these specters was generally the effect of imagination and preconception.
One can see how flimsy historical certainties can be. If one had been content with information gathered from a distance, the partisans of Vampirism would have leaned on this irrefutable evidence — which was nothing but lying reports and popular rumors.
Dom Calmet, who was at least sincere in his theology, and who at the same time reported everything he knew for and against Vampires, speaks of a letter written to him on the 3rd of February 1745 by the Reverend Father Sliwiski, visitor of the province of the Fathers of the Mission in Poland. This wise priest had intended to write memoirs on Vampires; but his duties prevented him.
He says in his letter that two resolutions are to be found in the records of the Sorbonne, from the years 1700 to 1710, which formally forbid cutting off the heads and burning the bodies of Vampires. It would appear from these resolutions that the Sorbonne did not admit this sort of specters — being less credulous, despite its character, than certain men of our own century who cannot even cover their imbecility with an ecclesiastical cassock.
Father Sliwiski also said that in Poland belief in the existence of Vampires was so strong that those who dared doubt it were regarded as almost heretical. Facts said to be incontestable were reported, and a host of witnesses was cited to that effect.
"I took the trouble to go to the source," adds this judicious priest; "I wished to examine those cited as eyewitnesses; and it turned out that there was no one who dared affirm having seen the facts in question, and that these facts were nothing but pure fantasies and imaginings caused by fear and groundless reports."
Let us conclude that all these stories of phantoms, revenants, specters, demons, Stryges, Broucolaques, and Vampires deserve more attention than the prodigious adventures of the Thousand and One Nights and the Tales of Mother Goose; but any sensible mind will place no more faith in these Histories than in those Tales.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
VOLTAIRE'S ARTICLE ON VAMPIRISM – Taken from the Philosophical Dictionary
What! It is in our eighteenth century that Vampires have existed! It is after the reign of Locke, Shaftesbury, Trenchard, and Collins; it is under the reign of d'Alembert, Diderot, Saint-Lambert, and Duclos that people believed in Vampires, and that the Reverend Father Dom Augustin Calmet, priest, Benedictine of the congregation of Saint-Vannes and Saint-Hidulphe, abbot of Senones — an abbey worth a hundred thousand livres a year, neighboring two other abbeys of the same revenue — printed and reprinted the History of Vampires, with the approval of the Sorbonne, signed Marcilli!
These Vampires were corpses that left their cemeteries at night to come and suck the blood of the living, either at the throat or the belly; after which they went back to their graves. The living who were sucked grew thin, turned pale, and fell into a wasting illness; while the dead suckers grew fat, took on a ruddy color, and were altogether appetizing. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine that the dead indulged in this good cheer. One heard nothing of Vampires in London, nor even in Paris. I confess that in these two cities there were stock-jobbers, financiers, and men of business who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupt enough. These true suckers did not dwell in cemeteries but in very agreeable palaces.
Who would believe that the fashion for Vampires came to us from Greece! Not the Greece of Alexander, Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, and Demosthenes — but Christian Greece, unfortunately schismatic.
For a long time the Christians of the Greek rite have imagined that the bodies of Christians of the Latin rite buried in Greece do not decay, because they are excommunicated. This is precisely the opposite of us Latin-rite Christians: we believe that bodies that do not decay are marked with the seal of eternal blessedness; and as soon as we have paid a hundred thousand crowns to Rome to have them issued a certificate of sainthood, we adore them with the adoration of dulia.
The Greeks are persuaded that these dead are sorcerers; they call them broucolacas or vroucolacas, depending on how they pronounce the second letter of the alphabet. These Greek dead go into houses to suck the blood of small children, eat the supper of fathers and mothers, drink their wine, and smash all the furniture; they can only be brought to reason by burning them when caught; but one must take care not to put them to the fire until after tearing out their heart, which is burned separately.
The celebrated Tournefort, sent to the Levant by Louis XIV along with so many other virtuosi, (1) was witness to all the tricks attributed to one of these Broucolaques and to the ceremony itself.
(1) Tournefort, Vol. I, pp. 155 ff.
After slander, nothing spreads more promptly than superstition, fanaticism, sorcery, and ghost stories. There were Broucolaques in Wallachia, Moldavia, and soon among the Poles, who are of the Roman rite — this superstition was all they lacked; it spread throughout eastern Germany. From 1730 to 1735 nothing was talked of but Vampires; they were watched for, their hearts were torn out and burned; they resembled the ancient martyrs — the more were burned, the more were found.
Calmet at last became their historiographer, and treated the Vampires as he had treated the Old and New Testaments: by faithfully recounting everything that had been said before him.
I find it a very curious thing that the official reports drawn up in legal form concerning all the dead who had left their tombs to come and suck the little boys and girls of their neighborhood. Calmet reports that in Hungary two officers delegated by the Emperor Charles VI, assisted by the local bailiff and the executioner, went to investigate a Vampire who had been dead six weeks and was sucking all the neighborhood. He was found in his coffin, fresh, cheerful, with open eyes, and asking for something to eat. The bailiff delivered his sentence; the executioner tore out the Vampire's heart and burned it; after which the Vampire ate no more.
Let anyone dare, after that, to doubt the resurrected dead of which our ancient legends are full, and all the miracles reported by Bollandus and by the sincere and reverend Dom Ruinart!
You find stories of Vampires even in the Jewish Letters of that d'Argens whom the Jesuits, authors of the Journal de Trévoux, accused of believing in nothing. One must see how they triumphed over the story of the Hungarian Vampire; how they thanked God and the Virgin for having at last converted that poor d'Argens, chamberlain of a king who did not believe in Vampires.
So here, they said, is the famous unbeliever who dared to cast doubts on the angel's appearance to the Holy Virgin, on the star that guided the Magi, on the healing of the possessed, on the submersion of two thousand pigs in a lake, on a solar eclipse at full moon, on the resurrection of the dead who walked through Jerusalem; his heart has softened, his mind has been enlightened — he believes in Vampires.
The only question then was whether all these dead had been resurrected by their own virtue, or by the power of God, or by that of the devil. Several great theologians of Lorraine, Moravia, and Hungary displayed their opinions and their learning; everything that St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and so many other saints had said most unintelligibly about the living and the dead was cited; all the miracles of St. Stephen found in the seventh book of St. Augustine's works were cited — here is one of the most curious. A young man was crushed in the town of Aubzal in Africa, under the ruins of a wall; the widow immediately went to invoke St. Stephen, to whom she was very devoted. St. Stephen resurrected him. He was asked what he had seen in the other world. "Gentlemen," he said, "when my soul left my body, it encountered an infinity of souls that asked it more questions about this world than you are asking me about the other. I was going I know not where when I met St. Stephen, who said to me: Give back what you have received. I answered: What do you want me to give back? You have never given me anything. He repeated three times: Give back what you have received. Then I understood that he meant the Creed; I recited my Creed to him, and he at once resurrected me."
Above all the stories reported by Sulpicius Severus in the Life of St. Martin were cited. It was proven that St. Martin had among other things resurrected a damned man.
But all these stories, however true they may be, had nothing in common with the Vampires who went to suck their neighbors' blood and then returned to their coffins. A search was made for some Vampire in the Old Testament or in mythology that could serve as a precedent; none was found; but it was proven that the dead ate and drank, since so many ancient nations placed provisions on their tombs.
The difficulty was in knowing whether it was the soul or the body of the dead that ate; it was decided that it was both. Delicate and insubstantial dishes such as meringues, whipped cream, and melting fruits were for the soul; the roast beef was for the body.
The kings of Persia were, it is said, the first to have themselves served food after death. Almost all the kings of today imitate them; but it is the monks who eat their dinner and their supper and drink the wine; and so the kings are not, strictly speaking, Vampires — the true Vampires are the monks, who eat at the expense of kings and peoples.
It is quite true that St. Stanislaus, who had bought a considerable piece of land from a Polish nobleman and had not paid for it, being taken before King Boleslas by the heirs, resurrected the nobleman; but it was solely to get himself a receipt; and it is by no means said that he even offered the seller a pot of wine, and the man returned to the other world without having eaten or drunk.
The great question was then debated whether one can absolve a Vampire who died under excommunication; that is more to the point. I am not deep enough in theology to give my opinion on this article; but I would readily be in favor of absolution, because in all doubtful matters one should always take the gentlest course. Odia restringenda, favores ampliandi.
The upshot of all this is that a great part of Europe was infested with Vampires for five or six years, and that there are none any more; that we had convulsionaries in France for more than twenty years, and that there are none any more; that we had possessed persons for seventeen hundred years, and that there are none any more; that people have always been resurrecting the dead since Hippolytus, and that they no longer do so; that we had Jesuits in Spain, Portugal, France, and the Two Sicilies, and that we have none any more.
History of Vampires and Malevolent Spirits – With an Examination of Vampirism
by Collin de Plancey
Part Three: Examination of Vampirism
SOME RECENT WORKS ON VAMPIRES, SPECTERS, WEREWOLVES, ETC. (1)
(1) These works are also available from Masson, quai des Augustins, No. 19.
Byron. – The Vampire, a story translated from the English of Lord Byron by H. Faber, 1819, octavo. Published by Chaumerot jeune. 1 franc 50.
This story, published under the name of Lord Byron, does not appear to be the work of that celebrated poet, who disavowed it in several journals; one can recognize something of his manner in it, but it is not his genius. Whatever the author of this frightening production may be, he has not followed the popular ideas about Vampires: he has made his Ruthwen a specter who travels, frequents society, seduces young girls, and marries in order to suck his wife. The Vampires of Moravia were much feared; but they had less power. This one is charming, seductive, and although his eyes are dead grey, he makes conquests. One may reproach the author of this story for having brought into fashion things that should have been left in oblivion.
Collin de Plancy. – Infernal Dictionary, or Researches and Anecdotes on Demons, Spirits, Phantoms, Specters, Revenants, Werewolves, the Possessed, Sorcerers, the Sabbath, Magicians, Salamanders, Sylphs, Gnomes, etc.; Visions, Dreams, Prodigies, Charms, Curses, Marvelous Secrets, Talismans, etc.; in short, on everything connected with apparitions, magic, commerce with hell, divinations, secret sciences, superstitions, mysterious and supernatural things, etc., by J. A. S. Collin de Plancy, 1818, 2 vols. octavo, illustrated, published by Mongie aîné. 12 francs.
This work, published against all superstitions, presents a host of anecdotes on phantoms, revenants, werewolves, malevolent specters, etc. We have made use of it in several chapters of this volume. The author devoted only four or five pages to Vampires, which he treated too superficially. He was mistaken in supposing that the Vampirism adventures were for the most part tales invented at leisure: these tales have in general had some natural foundation, as we have shown in our third part.
The Devil Painted by Himself, or Gallery of Short Novels, Bizarre Tales, Prodigious Anecdotes on the Adventures of Demons, the Traits That Characterize Them, Their Good Qualities and Their Misfortunes; the Witticisms and Singular Replies Attributed to Them; Their Love Affairs and the Services They Have Been Able to Render to Mortals, etc. Extracted and translated from the demonologists, the theologians, the legends and the various chronicles of the dark empire; by J. A. S. Collin de Plancy, 1819; octavo, illustrated. Published by Mongie aîné. Price: 6 francs.
A great many anecdotes and entertaining short tales on the subject of apparitions and the various actions of spirits are to be found in Chapters V and VIII (pranks and malice of certain demons); VII (the devil's honest deeds); IX (the devil and St. Dominic); X (misadventures and weaknesses of demons); XI (small lessons and various punishments inflicted by the devil); XIII (those who have had their necks wrung by the devil; those carried off by the devil, etc.); XII and XIV (the deaths of Rodrigo and Julian the Apostate); XVII (those who have brought us news from hell); XX (the loves of demons with mortals); XXI (the devil caught by the nose); XXIV (against those who refuse to believe in devils); XXVI (the false princess, a melodrama); XXX (the devil at confession, etc.). This singular work, inspired by merriment according to the Revue Encyclopédique, has furnished us with several citations.
Désaugiers. – Cadet Buteux at the Vampire, or Truthful Account of the Prologue and the Three Acts of That Dreadful Melodrama, Written at the Dictation of This Gros-Caillou Ferry Operator by His Secretary Désaugiers. 1820; octavo. Published by Rosa. Price, 1 franc 25 centimes.
This is a medley less ingenious than that of the Vestal, but full of pointed remarks that offer an agreeable critique of M. Nodier's monstrous play.
Explanation of the Apocalypse, published two or three years ago by LeClerc; octavo. This farrago attempts to prove that the Antichrist has appeared with all his demons, and that the world is nearing its end.
Fantasmagoria, or Stories of Apparitions, Specters, etc. 2 vols. duodecimo. Published by Lerouge. Price, 5 francs; published around 1810.
These two volumes were presented as a translation from the German. The stories that make them up are generally interesting and reasonably well written. Some specters in them are somewhat Vampiric. The author inserted the story of that famous barber who returned for three hundred years to shave those who entered a certain castle; he was not delivered from his penance until a bolder knight thought to shave the phantom in return. It will be observed in this connection that in this popular tale the barber returned in flesh and blood. The last stories of the Fantasmagoriana are resolved in a way that explains the apparitions. This work deserved some success, and would have made its fortune had it been given a better-chosen title.
Fiard. – Philosophical Letters on Magic; octavo. – France Deceived by the Magicians and Demon-Worshippers of the Eighteenth Century, octavo; published at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one by the Abbé Fiard, a former Jesuit.
Nothing is more extravagant than these two volumes, worthy of the tenth century. The author maintains that Cagliostro, Mesmer, and Saint-Gilles were sorcerers; he places in the same list the Robertsons, the Oliviers, the Comtes, all physicians, all conjurers; he is indignant about the phantasmagoria, which he regards as a work of Satan because it clarifies certain pious frauds of the old days; he claims that all philosophers are incarnate demons or specters; that the devil alone produced the Encyclopedia and the Revolution, etc.
Gabrielle de P. – History of Phantoms and Demons Who Have Appeared Among Men, or a Selection of Anecdotes and Tales, Marvelous Facts, Bizarre Details, Extraordinary Adventures on Revenants, Phantoms, Goblins, Demons, Specters, Vampires, and Various Apparitions. By Mme Gabrielle de P. 1819. Duodecimo. Published by Locard. Price, 2 francs 50 centimes.
This collection, made with discernment and carefully enough written, consists of about a hundred stories on the various kinds of apparitions. The author's aim was to destroy belief in specters, Vampires, and every kind of phantom, concluding the volume with a series of short tales whose denouements show what account is to be taken of ghost stories.
We have consulted the History of Phantoms on several occasions.
Demoniana, or New Selection of Surprising Anecdotes, Prodigious Tales, Bizarre Adventures on Revenants, Specters, Phantoms, Demons, Werewolves, Visions, etc. A Work Suited to Reassure Timid Imaginations Against Superstitious Fears. By Mme Gabrielle de P. 1820; small format, illustrated. Published by Locard. Price, 1 franc 25 centimes.
The author has followed still more consistently in this new collection the useful and laudable aim of enlightening the common people about apparitions. The Demoniana contains some imaginary tales, and a great many very gay anecdotes, all of which explain how there is nothing marvelous in facts that appear to be self-evident prodigies.
Garinet. – History of Magic in France from the Beginning of the Monarchy to the Present Day, by M. Jules Garinet. 1818; octavo. Published by Lecointe and Durey. Price, 5 francs.
Among the multitude of anecdotes that make up this work there are a good number about werewolves and malevolent specters; we cited the most notable when they fitted into the economy of the History of Vampires. We refer the reader to the book itself, which contains philosophical insights and a host of amusing details.
History of Revenants, or Supposed Such, etc., without an author's name. Two vols. duodecimo, published five or six years ago by Barba. Price, 4 francs.
This is a poor compilation, without aim, without order, without taste, and without merit. It was made, as the saying goes, with a pair of scissors.
The Book of Prodigies, or Collection of Anecdotes on Revenants, Specters, etc., published around the same time, without an author's name, small format. Price, 1 franc. A compilation as flat as the preceding one.
Mercier. – Philosophical Dreams. Two or three dreams in this work concern Vampires.
A Thousand and One Memories, or Conjugal Evenings. 1819. Five vols. duodecimo.
This work is generally written in an insipid style; but it contains some singular pieces. In the fourth volume one may read five or six ghost tales, of which the most remarkable is that of a revenant who appears in body and soul before the court to testify against his murderers.
Nodier. – The Vampire, a melodrama in three acts with a prologue; by MM. Charles Nodier and Carmouche, (1) performed for the first time in Paris, at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, on the 13th of June 1820; octavo. Price: 1 franc 25 centimes.
(1) Barba's catalogue, on the last page of The Three Vampires.
One will long be astonished that the government, in its prudence, permitted the performance of this hideous and immoral piece. The prologue and the denouement offer as the sole punishment for the Vampires, after all their crimes, nothingness — which is contrary to all religions. In the last scene of the second act, the Vampire Ruthwen wishes to violate or suck offstage a young bride who flees before him on the stage: is this situation moral? The entire play indirectly represents God as a weak or odious being who abandons the world to the spirits of hell. The result of this melodrama is that ladies leave it ill or with their imaginations disordered.
The Vampire by MM. Scribe and Mélesville, performed at the Vaudeville on the 15th of June 1820, is on the contrary a charming comedy that can relieve the horror one experiences at the melodrama. This Vampire is a young man believed dead in prison for six months, killed in battle for six weeks, hanged for a fortnight, etc., who nonetheless reappears and takes advantage of the news of his death to test his mistress.
The Three Vampires at the Variétés is a romp by MM. Brazier, Gabriel, and Armand. The Vampire La Rose is employed in the revenue service, the Vampire Le Doux is the son of a bailiff, the Vampire La Sonde is a toll-gate clerk. These three Vampires frighten M. Gobe-Tout in the garden where they show themselves at night, and end up marrying his daughters and his maidservant.
Lord Ruthwen, or the Vampires, a novel by C. —, published by M. Charles Nodier, author of Jean Sbogar and Thérèse Aubert. Two vols. duodecimo. 1820. Published by Ladvocat. Price, 5 francs.
M. Nodier has disavowed this pathos-laden novel, which indeed does not appear to be his work. Neither his style nor his warmth is to be found in it; but it is very much in the dark, romantic, terrible genre now being offered to our ladies. The author of Lord Ruthwen moreover claimed, in his two volumes, to be giving the continuation of the story attributed to Lord Byron.
Bloody Shadows (The) – Funereal Gallery of Prodigies, Marvelous Events, Nocturnal Apparitions, Dreadful Dreams, Mysterious Crimes, Terrible Phenomena, Historical Misdeeds, Mobile Corpses, Bloodied and Animated Heads, Atrocious Vengeances and Criminal Schemes, Drawn from Real Sources. A Collection Designed to Produce the Strong Emotions of Terror. 1820. Two vols. duodecimo. Illustrated. Published by Mme Lepetit. Price, 5 francs.
The title alone of this disgusting production spares us the need to say anything further.
Precursors of the Antichrist (The). A volume octavo published some years ago in Lyon, by Rusand, by a pupil of the Abbé Fiard. This farrago attempts to show that the philosophers of the last century, the encyclopedists, and the revolutionaries are incarnate demons sent to precede the Antichrist and prepare his way.
Revelations of Sister Nativity. Second edition, 1820. Three vols. duodecimo. Published by Beaussé-Rusand. Price, 12 francs. Same farrago as the preceding work. Sister Nativity predicts the Revolution that has already passed, visits hell, and recommends paying the tithe if one does not wish to be eaten by the devil.
The Novels of Ann Radcliffe. Everyone knows these horrors, beside which may be placed The Monk by Lewis, etc.
Saint-Albin. – The Dark Tales, or Popular Terrors: Stories, Tales, Marvelous, Bizarre, and Singular Adventures, Unpublished Anecdotes, etc., on Apparitions, Devils, Specters, Revenants, etc.; by J. S. C. Saint-Albin. 1820. Two vols. duodecimo. Published by Mongie aîné. Price, 5 francs.
In these two volumes there are stories at least as frightening as the novels of Ann Radcliffe; but they are interspersed with entertaining tales. Several specters are to be found there who lack only the name of Vampires.
Salgues. – On the Errors and Prejudices Spread Among the Various Classes of Society, by J. B. Salgues. Third edition. 1818. Three vols. octavo. Published by Mme Lepetit. Price, 21 francs.
This work offers many good things against prejudices and superstitions; but the author has not insisted enough on the falsity of apparitions of phantoms, whose belief is so dangerous, while most prejudices are merely ridiculous. One has especial reason to be astonished that in three volumes of about 600 pages each, M. Salgues devoted only a single paragraph of seventeen lines to Vampires. (Vol. I, p. 303.)
Simonnet. – The Reality of Magic and Apparitions, or Counter-Poison to the Infernal Dictionary. A Work in Which the Existence of Sorcerers, the Certainty of Apparitions, the Faith Due to Miracles, the Truth of Possessions, etc., Are Proven by a Multitude of Facts and Authentic Anecdotes, and by a Host of Incontestable Authorities; Preceded by a Very Precise History of Magic Considered from Its True Point of View; the Whole Designed to Demonstrate How Much France Is Still Deceived by the Author of the Infernal Dictionary. 1819; octavo. Published by Brajeux and Mongie aîné. Price, 3 francs.
We have spoken of this volume in the first part of the History of Vampires, in the chapter on Werewolves.
Spectriana, or Collection of Surprising, Marvelous, and Remarkable Stories and Adventures of Specters, Revenants, Spirits, Phantoms, Devils, and Demons; Manuscript Found in the Catacombs. 1817; small format. Published by Lécrivain. Price, 1 franc.
A compilation made with scissors, from Dom Calmet's dissertations on revenants, the Book of Prodigies, the History of Revenants or Supposed Such, and the Collection of Dissertations by Lenglet-Dufresnoy.
Superstitions and Demonolatry of the Philosophers; duodecimo published around 1816, by Rusand in Lyon, to teach the faithful to be wary of philosophers and atheists, who worship the devil and attend the sabbath with sorcerers.
Without speaking of the multitude of works that past centuries have produced on these subjects, we could cite many more from the century in which we live; but we fear to weary the reader, and have wished to dwell only on the most widely known.
In closing, we hope that the men who possess some enlightenment will at last employ it together to dispel the terrors of the night, and to restore to still feeble spirits that inner peace and assurance without which one is so unhappy.
THE END.