Vampire Books Online / The Surprising Account of those Spectres Called Vampyres

Unknown | The Hartford Courant | 1765

Containing the Freshest Advises, Foreign and Domestic

These Vampires are supposed to be the bodies of deceased persons animated by evil spirits, which come out of the graves in the nighttime, suck the blood of many of the living, and thereby destroy them. Such a notion will probably, be looked upon as fabulous: but it is related and maintained by authors of great authority. From one whom we take the following extract:

“The vampires which come out of the “graves in the nighttime, rush upon people “sleeping in their beds, suck out the blood “and destroy them. They attack men, “women and children, sparing neither age “nor sex. The people attacked by them “complain of suffocation, and a great “hindrance to their spirits; after which they “soon expire. Some of them, being asked, “at the point of death, what is the matter “with them, say, they suffer in the manner “just related from people lately dead, or “rather, the specters of those people; upon “which, their bodies from the description “given of them by the sick person, being “dug out of the graves, appear in all parts, “as the nostrils, cheeks, breast and mouth, “etcetera, rigid and full of blood. Their “countenance are fresh and ruddy, and their “nails, as well as hair, very much grown. “And, though they have been much longer “dead than many other bodies, which are “perfectly purified, nor the least mark of “corruption is visible upon them. Those “who are destroyed by them, after their “death, become vampires; so that to “prevent so spreading an evil, it is found “requisite to drive a stake through the dead “body, from whence, on this occasion the “blood flows as if the person was still “alive. Sometimes the body is dug out of “the grave and burnt to ashes; upon which “all disturbances cease. The Hungarians “call these specters Pamgri, and the “Serbians; Vampires, but the etymology or “reason of these names is not know.

- Johann Heinrich Zopfius

These specters are reported to have infested several districts of Serbia and the Banat of Timişoara, in the year 1725, and for seven or eight years afterwards, particularly those o Medveda near Pristina and Paracin near the Moraca River. In 1732, we had a relation of some of the fears in the neighborhood of Košice; and the public prints took notice of the tragedies. They acted in the Banat of Timişoara, in the year 1738. Father Gabriel Rzcznski in his natural History of the Kingdom of Poland, and the Great Dutchy of Lithuania, published at Sendomir in 1721, affirms, that in Russia, Poland and he Great Dutchy of Lithuania, dead bodies actuated by infernal spirits, sometimes enter peoples houses in the night, fall upon men, women, and children, and attempt to suffocate them; and that of such diabolical facts his countrymen have several very authentic relations.

The Poles call a man’s body thus infected Upier, and that of a woman Upierzyco (old spelling for Uperczi) etcetera, a winged or feathered creature; which name seems to be deduced from the surprising lightness and activity of these incarnate demons. If we remember right, an account of them, also, from Poland, is to be met with in some of the newspapers for 1693, perfectly agreeing with those of the Serbian vampires given us by the M. Zopfius. In some, the notion of such pestiferous being has prevailed from time immemorial over a great part of Hungary, Serbia, Košice, Poland, etcetera, as is shown by several authors in conjunction with the aforesaid M. Zopfius. To which we shall beg leave to add, hat the Ancient Greeks also seem to have been firmly persuaded that dead bodies were sometimes possessed by several spirits, as appears from a fragment of Phlegion of Tralles. Neither is this opinion, however it may be ridiculed by many people, altogether without foundation; since the Supreme Being may make wicked Spirits his instruments of punishment here as well as plagues, wars, famines, etcetera, and that he actually has done so, is sufficiently apparent from Scripture, to omit what has been said on this head by some of the most eminent profane authors. See Calmet’s dissertation upon good and bad angels: his articles of Angels, Demons, Devils, Satan etcetera, in dictionalry biblical and the following texts of scripture: Psalm 28 verse 49. Job 1. Matt 12 verses 22-23. Mark 3 verses 23-31. Luke 11 verses 14-31, 13 verses 16. Acts 19 verses 13-17.