Vampire Books Online / The Vampyre, a Hungarian Legend - New York dispatch (New York [N.Y.]), June 4, 1871

In the year 1725, on the borders of Hungary and Transylvania, a vampyre story arose, which was renewed afterward in a noteworthy way. A peasant of Madveiga, named Arnold Paul, was crushed to death by the fall of a wagon load of hay. Thirty days afterward four persons died, with all the symptoms (according to popular belief) of their blood having been sucked by vampyres. Some of the neighbors remembered having heard Arnold say that he had often been tormented by a vampyre, and they jumped to a conclusion that the passive vampyre had now become active. This was in accordance with a kind of formula or theory on the subject, that a man who, when alive, has had his blood sucked by a vampyre, will, after his death, deal with other persons in like manner. The neighbors exhumed Arnold Paul, drove a stake through the heart, cut off the head, and burned the body. The bodies of the four persons who had recently died were treated in similar way, to make surety doubly sure.

Nevertheless, even this did not suffice. In 1732, seven years after these events, seventeen persons died in the village near about one time. The memory of the unlucky Arnold recurred to the villagers the vampire theory was again appealed to he was believed to have dealt with the seventeen as he had previously dealt with the four; and they were therefore disinterred, the heads cut off, the hearts staked, the bodies burned, and the ashes dispersed. One supposition was that Arnold had vampyrized some cattle, that the seventeen villagers had eaten of the beef, and had fallen victims in consequence. This affair attracted much attention at the time. Louis the Fifteenth directed his ambassador at Vienna to make inquiries in the matter. Many of the witnesses attested on oath that the disinterred bodies were full of blood, and exhibited few of the usual symptoms of death—indications which the believers in vampyres stoutly maintained to be always present in such cases. This has induced many physicians to think that real cases of catalepsy or trance were mixed up with the popular belief, and were supplemented by a large allowance of epidemic fanaticism.