Vampire Books Online / Vampires And Vampirism

Owen Prothero | The Occult Review | 1909

THE word vampire— the term applied to the soul of a dead man which quits the body to suck the blood of living persons— is not given in the original Johnson, but according to Skeat it is derived from the Servian “wampira.” The superstition— if superstition it be— is widely prevalent among the Slavonic nations even to-day ; the wandering tribes of Slavonian origin have probably introduced it to the Albanians and modem Greeks, who call vampires "brucolaken.” Vampirism is not an English nor Teutonic superstition. Madame Blavatsky in her Isis Unveiled states that the Hindus believe in vampires as firmly as the Servians or Hungarians, but exhaustive inquiries, both from natives and from those who know the country well, would seem to prove that there is no trace of vampirism among Indian superstitions. The Indian servant, like the obliging Irishman, would far sooner give any one wrong information than disappoint him, but he becomes so hopelessly involved that the information is obviously absurd. The nearest equivalent would seem to be the Hindu Yogini or Dakini, corresponding to our ogres.

As to analogies in classical ages, the striges were somewhat akin ; they were believed to suck the blood of children, and as protection garlic was put in the children’s swaddling clothes and white-thorn branches in the windows. It is curious that in Pliny * the following passage occurs : "Fabulosum enim arbitror de strigibus ubera eas infantium labris immulgere,” as this makes them not suck the children, but the children suck them. Ovid differs from Pliny in his conception of them, calling them "avidae volucres.” He describes them †:

"Grande caput, stantes oculi, nostra apta rapiris.”

Somewhat akin, too, were the Erinnyes, who sucked the blood of corpses, or the ghosts in the Odyssey, who drank up the blood of victims. The Lamia ‡ appears to have been an ogress like the Ghul of Arabia ; as to the Jewish Lilith one Jewish Encyclopedia says, “There is nothing in the Talmud to indicate that the Lilith was a vampire.”

* N. H., xi., c. 95, sect. 232.

† Fasti, vi., 131, et seq.

‡ Horace A. P. 340. The vampire Lamia who appears in Keats’ poem is of later origin.

There are analogies to ogres and ogresses galore, but vampires are not ogres and the superstition of vampirism stands alone, weird and ghastly, and would seem to owe its being wholly to the Slavonic countries of Eastern Europe.

Most stories of vampires have much in common. The vampire usually appears at night to certain persons with whom he was acquainted in his life-time, and by sucking their blood maintains himself (i.e. the body of the dead person) under the earth. On the grave being opened, the body is found fresh and rosy and full of blood, with no sign of decay. When a stake is driven through the heart, or the heart tom out and the body burnt, nothing more is ever seen of the vampire. Vampires have no special place for sucking (though it is usually the throat) but where they do suck they leave a blue mark like that of a mole ; in one case recounted by Gorres, a woman who had been the victim of a vampire was found with a blue mark, streaked with blood a finger long, on the neck under the right ear.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century there occurred in Russia one of the most frightful cases of vampirism on record. The Governor of the province of Tch------ , a man of a cruel and jealous disposition, married, against her will, a young girl who was engaged to a man she loved. All his life he treated her most brutally and finally, on his death-bed, made her swear never to marry again, saying that if she did he would return from the grave and kill her. He was buried in the cemetery across the river, and the young woman, at length getting the better of her fears, became again betrothed to her former lover. On the night of the customary betrothal feast, when all had retired, the old mansion was aroused by shrieks proceeding from her room. The doors were burst open and the unhappy woman was found lying on her bed in a swoon and at the same time a carriage was heard rumbling out of the courtyard. The body was black and blue, and from a slight puncture in her neck drops of blood were oozing. She stated that her husband had suddenly entered her room, appearing exactly as in life, with the exception of a dreadful pallor; that he had upbraided her for her inconstancy and had then beaten and pinched her most unmercifully. The next morning the guard stationed at the bridge which spans the river reported that just before midnight a black coach-and-six had driven furiously past from the direction of the cemetery.

The whole story was disbelieved, but the same thing happened night after night. The soldiers said that the toll-bar would rise of itself and the spectral equipage would sweep past them in spite of their efforts to stop it ; at the same time every night the watchers, including the priest who had come to spend the night in prayer, would be seized with a terrible lethargy, and every morning the young victim would be found bleeding and swooning as before. The whole town was thrown into consternation. The Bishop of the province came and performed the ceremony of exorcism in person, but to no purpose. Finally, the Governor stationed fifty Cossacks along the bridge with orders to stop the spectral carriage at all costs. Promptly at the usual hour it was heard approaching. An officer of the guard and a priest bearing a crucifix planted themselves in front of the toll-bar and together shouted : “In the name of God and the Czar, who goes there?” Out of the coach was thrust a well-remembered head, and a familiar voice replied, “ The Privy Councillor of State and Governor, C------" At the same moment the officer, the priest, and the soldiers were flung aside and the ghostly equipage dashed by.

The Archbishop then resolved as a last expedient to resort to the time-honored plan of exhuming the body and driving an oaken stake through its heart. The story is that the body was found gorged with blood, and with red cheeks and lips. When the first blow was struck upon the stake a groan issued from the corpse and a jet of blood spurted high into the air. The Archbishop then pronounced the usual exorcism, the body was reinterred, and from that time no more was heard of the vampire.*

This very ghastly story seems to embrace nearly every element of known vampirism. The weakest part of the account is the lethargy which seized the watchers. This seems to be without precedent. The account of the Governor popping his head out of the window and saying who he was may well be an exaggeration, but there seems to be no explaining away the coach-and-six. On the other hand, the whole affair is testified to by an extraordinary number of witnesses, including an Archbishop, the Governor of the province, the officers of the guard, and the whole population of the town.

Although, as in this case, the vampire is usually visible, he is not necessarily so, nor does he always leave any mark. Dom Calmet, a skeptical Benedictine monk of the eighteenth century, recounts the following story †:

“Most of those who fell sick believed they saw a white ghost which pursued them in every place. They grew weak, lost all appetite, pined away and died after eight, ten, and at times fifteen days without there being any symptoms of fever or any other symptoms but this getting lean and consumption.” C. T. von Scherz, in his Magia Posthuma on the Moravian vampires, gives an account of a woman, who four days after burial appeared to many, sometimes in the shape of a dog, sometimes in that of a human being. She gripped their neck and stomach and choked them, and also attacked the cattle, which were found exhausted and half dead. Sometimes she tied their tails together. The horses were found as though they had returned from a long journey, with their backs covered with sweat, breathless and foaming.

* From Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, who held the account from an eyewitness.

† From the Mercurius, 1693-4, P- 56.

As in the case of the Governor of Tch------ the vampire usually appears by night soon after burial, but this is not always the case, it being recorded that in the years 1693-4, vampires were seen, in broad daylight in Poland. Count Cabrera, the colonel of a regiment quartered in Haidanae, personally investigated the case of a vampire who had died thirty years before ; the vampire came to his former home in full daylight and first killed, by sucking, his brother, then one of his sons, then the house servant. The Count had the grave opened and the body was found with the fresh appearance of a living man. A nail was driven through the temples of the corpse and it was reburied. The Count also burnt a second who had been dead sixteen years and had killed his two sons, and beheaded a third who had been dead ten years.* The Count’s report was sent in to the commanding officers of the regiment, who sent it to the Court. The Emperor then nominated a commission of officers, judges, physicians and learned men to investigate the matter more closely.

In every case of vampirism the body is found wholly without decay when exhumed, and as fresh and as rosy as it had been in life. There is a very full account of the appearance of a body so exhumed by the Commandant at Gradisca in 1720. At Kisolva, a village in Lower Hungary, one P. Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks, appeared as a vampire and killed nine persons within eight days. The inhabitants threatened to leave the village in a body unless the corpse was dug up and burnt, and so, though with much reluctance, the Commandant went with the priest of Gradisca to the place. When Peter’s grave was opened the body was found entire and undecayed. Only the tip of the nose was somewhat dried up.

* Taken from the report of a witness, to whom the Count himself told, the matter in 1730.

There was no unpleasant smell, and the body was like that of a man asleep. The hair and beard had grown, and the old nails had fallen off and new ones grown. Under the external skin, which appeared dead and white, there was another quite fresh skin, and the hands and feet were those of a perfectly healthy man. Quite fresh blood was found in the mouth and when a stake was driven through the breast fresh pure blood flowed from the wound, and from the mouth and nose.*

In many cases it is stated that the bodies are found in their coffins swimming in blood. In the case of one investigation in Meduegya, Servia, in 1732, undertaken at the command of the Emperor Charles VI by Prince Alexander of Wirtenburg, then Governor of Servia, the report being made in his presence, and all present being under oath, the whole churchyard was dug up. No less than thirteen of the bodies were found to be vampires, while the rest were completely decayed, although they were lying with the others. In the case of one, a woman, the surgeon states that when the coffin was opened the nose bled and that he found when he opened the body, to use his own expression, a quite balsamic (balsamich) blood not only in the cavity of the breast but in the heart itself. The relatives and friends of the woman were amazed at the fat well-nourished body, because the woman, her whole life through and right up to her death, had always been very lean and dried up. †

The usual method of putting a stop to the vampire’s ravages is by driving a stake through the heart and then either burning nr beheading the corpse. In the case of one Arnot Paole it is stated (in the above-mentioned report) that when a stake was driven through the heart the corpse gave a quite perceptible sigh. Still more extraordinary is the account given by Dom Calmet of a Bavarian vampire. "The corpse howled like a madman, kicking and tearing as if he had been alive. When he was run through again with the sharp-pointed stakes, he uttered piercing cries and vomited masses of crimson blood.”

Another method is by pouring boiling water and vinegar into the grave ; wild garlic and wild roses are supposed to act as a prevention against vampires, while in Russia the belief prevails that any one who mixes the blood of a vampire with dough will always be safe from them.

• This report was sent to Vienna. From it the story is taken in Rauf, vom Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in den Gräbern. Leipzig, 1728. Quoted from Görres.

† This report was certified with the signatures of the officers and surgeon, published in the Belgrade Times.

This last circumstance (as Gorres says) brings to remembrance the Capitularía of Charlemagne * : "He who, led astray by the Devil, believes as the heathen do, that a man or woman eats human beings, and then burns such a person and either eats his flesh himself or gives it to another, shall be put to death.”

And now it is time to leave the open highway of facts and to venture into the treacherous swamp of theory and ask, "How does a man become a vampire?” It is commonly believed that all those who have been tormented and killed by vampires must themselves become vampires. The man Arnot Paole (referred to above) had often been plagued by a vampire dining his life-time, and when he died became a vampire; he attacked both men and animals and since people had eaten the flesh of these animals they (according to the belief of the country) became vampires too. So that within three months ‘ seventeen persons, young and old, died, mostly after a short sickness. But this case can only be where there is a vampire abroad already. How does the vampirism begin?

According to one account, the persons who turn vampires are wizards, witches, suicides, persons who have come to a violent end or who have been cursed by their parents or the Church. But anyone may become a vampire if a cat leaps over his grave or if a bird flies over it.

These glaring superstitions contrast oddly with the theory of Pierart, the famous French spiritualist and mesmeriser who flourished about 1855, and which was as follows : As long as the astral form is not entirely liberated from the body there is a liability that it may be forced by magnetic attraction to re-enter it. Sometimes it will be only half-way out when the corpse, which presents the appearance of death, is buried. In such cases the terrified astral soul re-enters its casket, and then one of two things happens : the person buried either writhes in the agony of suffocation or, if he had been grossly material, he becomes a vampire. The bi-corporeal life then begins. The ethereal form can go where it pleases, and as long as it does not break the link connecting it with the body can wander visible or invisible and feed on its victim. It then transmits the results of the suction by some mysterious invisible cord of connection to the body, thus aiding it to perpetuate the state of catalepsy. †

That persons are only too often buried before they are really dead is common knowledge ; one instance, from the Rev. H. Haweis’ Ashes to Ashes, will suffice : “ At Bergerac (Dordogne) in 1842 the patient took a sleeping draught . . . but he woke not. They bled him and he woke not .... At last they buried him. After a few days, remembering the sleeping draught, they opened the grave. The body had turned and struggled.”

* Pro partxbus Taxoniae, 1-6.

† From Pierart’s Revue Spiritualiste, chap, on " Vampires.’

If one can believe in soul duplication one can believe in Pierart's theory, and could someone explain that "mysterious connecting link ” it would be well indeed. But even Pierart quails before attempting such explanation and prefers to call it a link “of which we can know nothing.”

Madame Blavatsky in her Isis Unveiled suggests a slightly different explanation. “There is,” says she, “a phenomenon in nature not unknown— half-death. Virtually the body is dead ; in cases of persons in whom matter does not predominate over spirit and in whom wickedness is not so great as to destroy spirituality, if left alone, the astral soul will disengage itself by gradual efforts, and when the last link is broken it finds itself repelled from the earthly body, as equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the ethereal man from the decaying organic mass. The difficulty is that the ultimate moment of separation between the two is believed to be when the body is declared by science to be dead, and a prevailing unbelief in the existence of either soul or spirit by the same science.”

Gorres thinks that the alleged facts of vampirism are real facts, and his theory in Die Christiche Mystik is that vampires form a part of the diabolic influence pervading the world ; but his whole account of what vampires are is hardly intelligible apart from the rest of his huge book.

If we can bring ourselves to believe any theory at all Pierart’s is the most convincing. The body is half dead, and the soul, driven in desperation to find a means of sustaining the body in the grave, feeds upon the blood of living people. The crushing argument against such theories is, "Why should this result occur only among the Slavonic nations?”

And again, one has only to take a psychological theory such as this and place it beside the idea that a person may become a vampire by a cat leaping over his grave to see how inextricably all the facts of vampirism are enmeshed in the net of superstition, and how widely scientific explanation may differ from folk-lore. Add to this the inevitable exaggerations that are bound to occur in every account and the tangle becomes well-nigh hopeless. The only accounts that can be considered are those which are highly authenticated and signed, for it must be remembered that no evidence is of any value until it has been cross-examined and tested scientifically. It requires a trained faculty to avoid mixing up the imagination with the observation.

Some reports are manifestly absurd and may be rejected at once as remnants of old heathenism. Such is the story of the Hungarian who drove away a vampire by taking possession of the grave clothes it had left, and when it came back to get them threw it head over heels down into the grave. Just as legendary is the account of the vampire who, when the grave was opened, smiled and opened his mouth as if to breathe the fresh air. When a crucifix was held before him tears dropped out of his eyes, and when his head was cut off he wriggled and writhed as though he had been alive.

Dom Calmet's account of the white ghost which pursued people so that they wasted away may have had its origin in a superstition invented to explain away the much-dreaded disease of consumption. It is equally possible that the vampire is the form that the embodied horror of the grave, common to all nations and ages, has taken in Slavonic folk-lore. Yet, on the other hand, it is certain, from signed and authenticated testimonies, that bodies have been found long after burial quite undecayed and fresh, and which do not decay, like mummies, as soon as the air reaches them.

“How is it,” asks the sceptic Dom Calmet, " that these creatures quit their tombs without disturbing the earth? How is it they are seen in their usual clothes? How do they walk and eat? How can one explain the cause of their feet being found muddy and covered with dirt on the day following the night they had appeared? And how is it that when once burnt they never appear again? ”

Gorres believes that the body becomes a kind of zoophyte and that the process going on cannot be the same as in life. Perhaps some future scientist will reveal to us what this process is, and in the meantime it would be idle to set vampirism down as a mere legendary tale ; the testimony of so many credible witnesses, whose credit should be nonetheless because most of them lived a century ago, alone belies the idea.

For conclusion there can be no words more apt than those of Bishop d'Avranches Huet: “I will not examine,” he wrote, “whether the facts of vampirism are true or not, but it is certain they are testified to by so many eye-witnesses that no one ought to decide upon the question without a great deal of caution.”