Vampire Books Online / Vampires and Vampirism: Part 1

PREFACE

The awakened interest in supernormal phenomena which has taken place in recent years has included in its wake the absorbing subject of Vampirism. Yet there has not been any collection published of vampire stories which are common to all the five continents of the globe. The subject of vampirism is regarded more seriously to-day than it was even a decade since, and an attempt has been made in this volume to supply as far as possible all the instances which could be collected from the various countries. How far a certain amount of scientific truth may underlie even what may be regarded as the most extravagant stories must necessarily be, for the present, at any rate, an open question; but he would indeed be a bold man who would permit[v] his scepticism as to the objective existence of vampires in the past or the possibility of vampirism in the future to extend to a categorical denial. If this collection of stories helps, even in a slight degree, to the elucidation of the problem, the book will not have been written in vain.

DUDLEY WRIGHT.

Authors’ Club, 2 Whitehall Court, S.W.,
1st September, 1914.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

What is a vampire? The definition given in Webster’s International Dictionary is: “A blood-sucking ghost or re-animated body of a dead person; a soul or re-animated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep, causing their death.”

Whitney’s Century Dictionary says that a vampire is: “A kind of spectral body which, according to a superstition existing among the Slavic and other races on the Lower Danube, leaves the grave during the night and maintains a semblance of life by sucking the warm blood of living men and women while they are asleep.[2] Dead wizards, werwolves, heretics, and other outcasts become vampires, as do also the illegitimate offspring of parents themselves illegitimate, and anyone killed by a vampire.”

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: “The persons who turn vampires are generally wizards, suicides, and those who come to a violent end or have been cursed by their parents or by the Church. But anyone may become a vampire if an animal (especially a cat) leaps over the corpse or a bird flies over it.”

Among the specialists, the writers upon vampire lore and legend, two definitions may be quoted:—Hurst, who says that: “A vampyr is a dead body which continues to live in the grave; which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition, instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies”; and Scoffern, who wrote: “The best definition I can give of a vampire is a living mischievous and murderous dead body. A living dead body! The words are idle, contradictory, incomprehensible, but so are vampires.”

[3]

“Vampires,” says the learned Zopfius, “come out of their graves in the night time, rush upon people sleeping in their beds, suck out all their blood and destroy them. They attack men, women, and children, sparing neither age nor sex. Those who are under the malignity of their influence complain of suffocation and a total deficiency of spirits, after which they soon expire. Some of them being asked at the point of death what is the matter with them, their answer is that such persons lately dead rise to torment them.”

Not all vampires, however, are, or were, suckers of blood. Some, according to the records, despatched their victims by inflicting upon them contagious diseases, or strangling them without drawing blood, or causing their speedy or retarded death by various other means.

Messrs Skeat and Blagden, in Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (vol. i. p. 473), state that “a vampire, according to the view of Sakai of Perak, is not a demon—even though it is incidentally so-called—but a being of flesh and blood,” and support this view by the statement that the vampire cannot pass through walls and hedges.

[4]

The word vampire (Dutch, vampyr; Polish, wampior or upior; Slownik, upir; Ukraine, upeer) is held by Skeat to be derived from the Servian wampira. The Russians, Morlacchians, inhabitants of Montenegro, Bohemians, Servians, Arnauts, both of Hydra and Albania, know the vampire under the name of wukodalak, vurkulaka, or vrykolaka, a word which means “wolf-fairy,” and is thought by some to be derived from the Greek. In Crete, where Slavonic influence has not been felt, the vampire is known by the name of katakhaná. Vampire lore is, in general, confined to stories of resuscitated corpses of male human beings, though amongst the Malays a penangglan, or vampire, is a living witch, who can be killed if she can be caught in the act of witchery. She is especially feared in houses where a birth has taken place, and it is the custom to hang up a bunch of thistle in order to catch her. She is said to keep vinegar at home to aid her in re-entering her own body. In the Malay Peninsula, parts of Polynesia and the neighbouring districts, the vampire is conceived as a head with entrails attached, which comes forth to suck the blood of[5] living human beings. In Transylvania, the belief prevails that every person killed by a nosferatu (vampire) becomes in turn a vampire, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people until the evil spirit has been exorcised, either by opening the grave of the suspected person and driving a stake through the corpse, or firing a pistol-shot into the coffin. In very obstinate cases it is further recommended to cut off the head, fill the mouth with garlic, and then replace the head in its proper place in the coffin; or else to extract the heart and burn it, and strew the ashes over the grave.

The murony of the Wallachians not only sucks blood, but also possesses the power of assuming a variety of shapes, as, for instance, those of a cat, dog, flea, or spider; in consequence of which the ordinary evidence of death caused by the attack of a vampire, viz. the mark of a bite in the back of the neck, is not considered indispensable. The Wallachians have a very great fear of sudden death, greater perhaps than any other people, for they attribute sudden death to the attack of a vampire, and believe that anyone destroyed by a vampire must[6] become a vampire, and that no power can save him from this fate. A similar belief obtains in Northern Albania, where it is also held that a wandering spirit has power to enter the body of any individual guilty of undetected crime, and that such obsession forms part of his punishment.

Some writers have ascribed the origin of the belief in vampires to Greek Christianity, but there are traces of the superstition and belief at a considerably earlier date than this. In the opinion of the anthropologist Tylor, “the shortest way of treating the belief is to refer it directly to the principles of savage animism. We shall see that most of its details fall into their places at once, and that vampires are not mere creations of groundless fancy, but causes conceived in spiritual form to account for specific facts of wasting disease.” It is more than probable that the practice of offering up living animals as sacrifices to satisfy the thirst of departed human beings, combined with the ideas of the Platonist and the teachings of the learned Jew, Isaac Arbanel, who maintained that before the soul can be loosed from the fetters of the flesh it must lie some months with it in the grave, may[7] have influenced the belief and assisted its development. Vampirism found a place in Babylonian belief and in the folk-lore and traditions of many countries of the Near East. The belief was quite common in Arabia, although there is no trace of it there in pre-Christian times. The earliest references to vampires are found in Chaldean and Assyrian tablets. Later, the pagan Romans gave their adherence to the belief that the dead bodies of certain people could be allured from their graves by sorcerers, unless the bodies had actually undergone decomposition, and that the only means of effectually preventing such “resurrections” was by cremating the remains. In Grecian lore there are many wonderful stories of the dead rising from their graves and feasting upon the blood of the young and beautiful. From Greece and Rome the superstition spread throughout Austria, Hungary, Lorraine, Poland, Roumania, Iceland, and even to the British Isles, reaching its height in the period from 1723 to 1735, when a vampire fever or epidemic broke out in the south-east of Europe, particularly in Hungary and Servia. The belief in vampires even spread to Africa, where the[8] Kaffirs held that bad men alone live a second time and try to kill the living by night. According to a local superstition of the Lesbians, the unquiet ghost of the Virgin Gello used to haunt their island, and was supposed to cause the deaths of young children.

Various devices have been resorted to in different countries at the time of burial, in the belief that the dead could thus be prevented from returning to earth-life. In some instances, e.g. among the Wallachians, a long nail was driven through the skull of the corpse, and the thorny stem of a wild rose-bush laid upon the body, in order that its shroud might become entangled with it, should it attempt to rise. The Kroats and Slavonians burned the straw upon which the suspected body lay. They then locked up all the cats and dogs, for if these animals stepped over the corpse it would assuredly return as a vampire and suck the blood of the village folk. Many held that to drive a white thorn stake through the dead body rendered the vampire harmless, and the peasants of Bukowina still retain the practice of driving an ash stake through the breasts of suicides and supposed vampires—a[9] practice common in England, so far as suicides were concerned, until 1823, when there was passed “An Act to alter and amend the law relating to the interment of the remains of any person found felo de se,” in which it was enacted that the coroner or other officer “shall give directions for the private interment of the remains of such person felo de se without any stake being driven through the body of such person.” It was also ordained that the burial was only to take place between nine and twelve o’clock at night.

The driving of a stake through the body does not seem to have had always the desired effect. De Schartz, in his Magia Postuma, published at Olmutz in 1706, tells of a shepherd in the village of Blow, near Kadam, in Bohemia, who made several appearances after his death and called certain persons, who never failed to die within eight days of such call. The peasants of Blow took up the body and fixed it to the ground by means of a stake driven through the corpse. The man, when in that condition, told them that they were very good to give him a stick with which he could defend himself against the dogs[10] which worried him. Notwithstanding the stake, he got up again that same night, alarmed many people, and, presumably out of revenge, strangled more people in that one night than he had ever done on a single occasion before. It was decided to hand over his body to the public executioner, who was ordered to see that the remains were burned outside the village. When the executioner and his assistants attempted to move the corpse for that purpose, it howled like a madman, and moved its feet and hands as though it were alive. They then pierced the body through with stakes, but he again uttered loud cries and a great quantity of bright vermilion blood flowed from him. The cremation, however, put an end to the apparition and haunting of the spectre. De Schartz says that the only remedy for these apparitions is to cut off the heads and burn the bodies of those who come back to haunt their former abodes. It was, however, customary to hold a public inquiry and examination of witnesses before proceeding to the burning of a body, and if, upon examination of the body, it was found that the corpse had begun to decompose, that the limbs were[11] not supple and mobile, and the blood not fluidic, then burning was not commanded. Even in the case of suspected persons an interval of six to seven weeks was always allowed to lapse before the grave was opened in order to ascertain whether the flesh had decayed and the limbs lost their suppleness and mobility. A Strigon or Indian vampire, who was transfixed with a sharp thorn cudgel, near Larbach, in 1672, pulled it out of his body and flung it back contemptuously.

Bartholin, in de Causa contemptûs mortis, tells the story of a man, named Harpye, who ordered his wife to bury him exactly at the kitchen door, in order that he might see what went on in the house. The woman executed her commission, and soon after his death he appeared to several people in the neighbourhood, killed people while they were engaged in their occupations, and played so many mischievous pranks that the inhabitants began to move away from the village. At last a man named Olaus Pa took courage and ran at the spectre with a lance, which he drove into the apparition. The spectre instantly vanished, taking the spear with it. Next morning[12] Olaus had the grave of Harpye opened, when he found the lance in the dead body, which had not become corrupted. The corpse was then taken from the grave, burned, and the ashes thrown into the sea, and the spectre did not afterwards trouble the inhabitants.

To cross the arms of the corpse, or to place a cross or crucifix upon the grave, or to bury a suspected corpse at the junction of four cross-roads, was, in some parts, regarded as an efficacious preventive of vampirism. It will be remembered that it was at one time the practice in England to bury suicides at the four cross-roads. If a vampire should make its appearance, it could be prevented from ever appearing again by forcing it to take the oath not to do so, if the words “by my winding-sheet” were incorporated in the oath.

One charm employed by the Wallachians to prevent a person becoming a vampire was to rub the body in certain parts with the lard of a pig killed on St Ignatius’s Day.

In Poland and Russia, vampires make their appearance from noon to midnight[13] instead of between nightfall and dawn, the rule that generally prevails. They come and suck the blood of living men and animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows from them at the nose and ears, and occasionally in such profusion that the corpse swims in the blood thus oozing from it as it lies in the coffin. One may become immune from the attacks of vampires by mixing this blood with flour and making bread from the mixture, a portion of which must be eaten; otherwise the charm will not work. The Californians held that the mere breaking of the spine of the corpse was sufficient to prevent its return as a vampire. Sometimes heavy stones were piled on the grave to keep the ghost within, a practice to which Frazer traces the origin of funeral cairns and tombstones. Two resolutions of the Sorbonne, passed between 1700 and 1710, prohibited the cutting off of the heads and the maiming of the bodies of persons supposed to be vampires.

In the German folk-tale known as Faithful John, the statue said to the king: “If you, with your own hand, cut off the heads of both your children and sprinkle[14] me with their blood, I shall be brought to life again.” According to primitive ideas, blood is life, and to receive blood is to receive life: the soul of the dead wants to live, and, consequently, loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus’s sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time. It is of the greatest importance that the soul should get what it desires, as, if not satisfied, it might come and attack the living. It is possible that the bodily mutilations which to this day accompany funerals among some peoples have their origin in the belief that the departed spirit is refreshed by the blood thus spilt. The Samoans called it an “offering of blood” for the dead when the mourners beat their heads till the blood ran.

The Australian native sorcerers are said to acquire their magical influence by eating human flesh, but this is done once only in a lifetime. According to Nider’s Formicarius, part of the ceremony of initiation into wizardry and witchcraft consisted in drinking in a church, before the commencement of Mass, from a flask filled with blood taken from the corpses of murdered infants.

[15]

The methods employed for the detection of vampires have varied according to the countries in which the belief in their existence was maintained. In some places it was held that, if there were discovered in a grave two or three or more holes about the size of a man’s finger, it would almost certainly follow that a body with all the marks of vampirism would be discovered within the grave. The Wallachians employed a rather elaborate method of divination. They were in the habit of choosing a boy young enough to make it certain that he was innocent of any impurity. He was then placed on an absolutely black and unmutilated horse which had never stumbled. The horse was then made to ride about the cemetery and pass over all the graves. If the horse refused to pass over any grave, even in spite of repeated blows, that grave was believed to shelter a vampire. Their records state that when such a grave was opened it was generally found to contain a corpse as fat and handsome as that of a full-blooded man quietly sleeping. The finest vermilion blood would flow from the throat when cut, and this was held to be the blood he had sucked[16] from the veins of living people. It is said that the attacks of the vampire generally ceased on this being done.

In the town of Perlepe, between Monastru and Kiuprili, there existed the extraordinary phenomenon of a number of families who were regarded as being the offspring of vrykolakas, and as possessing the power of laying the wandering spirits to which they were related. They are said to have kept their art very dark and to have practised it in secret, but their fame was so widely spread that persons in need of such deliverance were accustomed to send for them from other cities. In ordinary life and intercourse they were avoided by all the inhabitants.

Although some writers have contended that no vampire has yet been caught in the act of vampirism, and that, as no museum of natural history has secured a specimen, the whole of the stories concerning vampires may be regarded as mythical, others have held firmly to a belief in their existence and inimical power. Dr Pierart, in La Revue Spiritualiste (vol. iv. p. 104), wrote: “After a crowd of facts of vampirism so often proved, shall we say that[17] there are no more to be had, and that these never had a foundation? Nothing comes of nothing. Every belief, every custom, springs from facts and causes which give it birth. If one had never seen appear in the bosom of their families, in various countries, beings clothed in the appearance of departed ones known to them, sucking the blood of one or more persons, and if the deaths of the victims had not followed after such apparitions, the disinterment of corpses would not have taken place, and there would never have been the attestation of the otherwise incredible fact of persons buried for several years being found with the body soft and flexible, the eyes wide open, the complexion rosy, the mouth and nose full of blood, and the blood flowing fully when the body was struck or wounded or the head cut off.”

Bishop d’Avranches Huet wrote: “I will not examine whether the facts of vampirism, which are constantly being reported, are true, or the fruit of a popular error; but it is beyond doubt that they are testified to by so many able and trustworthy authors, and by so many eye-witnesses, that no one ought[18] to decide the question without a good deal of caution.”

Dr Pierart gave the following explanation of their existence: “Poor, dead cataleptics, buried as if really dead in cold and dry spots where morbid causes are incapable of effecting the destruction of their bodies, the astral spirit, enveloping itself with a fluidic ethereal body, is prompted to quit the precincts of its tomb and to exercise on living bodies acts peculiar to physical life, especially that of nutrition, the result of which, by a mysterious link between soul and body which spiritualistic science will some day explain, is forwarded to the material body lying still within its tomb, and the latter is thus helped to perpetuate its vital existence.”

Apart from the spectre vampire there is, of course, the vampire bat in the world of natural history, which is said to suck blood from a sleeping person, insinuating its tongue into a vein, but without inflicting pain. Captain Steadman, during his expedition to Surinam, awoke early one morning and was alarmed to find his hammock steeped almost through and himself weltering in blood, although he was[19] without pain. It was discovered that he had been bitten by a vampire bat. Pennant says that in some parts of America they destroyed all the cattle introduced by the missionaries.

CHAPTER II
EXCOMMUNICATION AND ITS POWER

The Greek Church at one time taught that the bodies of persons upon whom the ban of excommunication had been passed did not undergo decomposition after death until such sentence had been revoked by the pronouncement of absolution over the remains, and that, while the bodies remained in this uncorrupted condition, the spirits of the individuals wandered up and down the earth seeking sustenance from the blood of the living. The non-corruption of a body, however, was also held to be one of the proofs of sanctity; but, in this case, the body preserved its natural colour and gave an agreeable odour, whereas the bodies of the excommunicated generally turned black, swelled out like a drum, and emitted an offensive smell. Very frequently, however, when the graves of[21] suspected vampires were opened, the faces were found to be of ruddy complexion and the veins distended with blood, which, when opened with a lancet, yielded a supply of blood as plentiful, fresh, and free as that found in the veins of young and healthy living human beings. For many centuries in the history of Greek Christianity there was scarcely a village that had not its own local vampire stories which were related by the inhabitants and vouched for by them as having either occurred within their own knowledge or been related to them by their parents or relatives as having come within their personal observation or been verified by them.

The bodies of murderers and suicides were also held to be exempt from the law of dissolution of the mortal remains until the Church granted release from the curse entailed upon them by such act. The priests, by this assumption of power over the body as well as over the soul, made profitable use of this superstitious belief by preying upon the fears and credulity of the living. They also included in this ecclesiastical law of exemption from corruption after death those who in their lives[22] had been guilty of heinous sins, those who had tampered with the magic arts, and all who had been cursed during life by their parents. These were all said to become vampires. This belief spread to other branches of the Christian Church, and the story is related that St Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen, who died 4th January 1013, once excommunicated a gang of pirates, one of whom died shortly afterwards and was buried in Norway. Seventy years afterwards his body was found quite entire and uncorrupted, nor did it fall to ashes until it had received absolution from the Bishop Alvareda.

Leo Allatius, a Roman Catholic, describes a corpse which he found in an undecomposed condition. He implies that the Greeks connected the circumstance with the power invested in them by the text: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” and by which they hold that the soul is excluded from all hope of participation in future bliss so long as the body remains undecomposed. Poqueville, another writer, also states that whenever a bishop or priest excommunicated a person he added to the[23] general sentence of excommunication the words: “After death, let not thy body have power to dissolve.”

A manuscript was discovered many years ago in the Church of St Sophia at Thessalonica, which is an interesting commentary upon the power claimed by the Church over excommunicated bodies. The manuscript states that:

(1) Whoever has been laid under any curse or received any injunction from his deceased parents that he has not fulfilled, after his death the forepart of his body remains entire;

(2) Whoever has been the object of any anathema appears yellow after death, and the fingers are shrivelled;

(3) Whoever appears white has been excommunicated by the divine laws;

(4) Whoever appears black has been excommunicated by a bishop.

It was held possible to discover, by means of these signs, the crime for which, as well as the person on whom, the judgment had been pronounced. One horrible result of this ghastly superstition was the custom which was at one time prevalent among the Greeks of Salonica, as well as the Bulgarians in the centre of European[24] Turkey, and other nations, of disinterring indiscriminately the bodies of the dead after they had been buried for twelve months, in order to ascertain from the condition of the remains whether the souls were in heaven or hell, or perambulating the neighbourhood as vampires.

This assumed ecclesiastical power acted occasionally, however, injuriously on the clergy themselves. There is on record one instance where a priest was killed in revenge for the death of a man whose illness was attributed to the sentence of excommunication that had been passed upon him. On another occasion a bishop of some diocese in Morea was robbed by a band of brigands as he was passing through a portion of the Maniate territory. When the deed was done the mountaineers bethought themselves that the bishop would, in all probability, excommunicate them as soon as he reached a place of safety. They saw no means of averting this, to them, dreadful calamity, except by the committal of a further and more heinous crime; and so they set out in pursuit of the unfortunate bishop, whom they eventually overtook and murdered.

[25]

Many years ago a Greek of Keramia complained to the Pasha of Khania that the papás of his village had excommunicated him and so been the indirect cause of his having been bewitched. The Pasha sent for the priest, threw him into prison, and only released him upon payment of a fine of 300 piastres.

During a local war a native of Theriso was taken ill: the cry went up: “It is an aphorismos.” The papás was accused, reviled, and threatened with murder unless the curse was removed; but the man continued to get worse, and eventually died. So firm was the belief of everyone in the neighbourhood that the ban had caused the man’s death that some of his companions regarded it as a duty to avenge his fate, and, in consequence, they sought out the priest and shot him.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Metropolitan of Larissa was informed that a papás had disinterred two bodies and thrown them into the Haliæmon on pretence of their being vrukólakas. Upon being summoned before the bishop the priest admitted the truth of the accusation, and justified his act by saying that a report had[26] been current that a large animal, accompanied with flames, had been seen to issue from the grave in which these two bodies had been buried. The bishop fined the priest 250 piastres, and sent a proclamation throughout the diocese that, in future, similar offences would be punished with double that fine and be accompanied with loss of position.

Martin Crusius tells the following curious story. There were about the court of Mahomet II. a number of men learned in Greek and Arabic literature, who had investigated a variety of points connected with the Christian faith. They informed the Sultan that the bodies of persons excommunicated by the Greek clergy did not decompose, and when he inquired whether the effect of absolution was to dissolve them, he was answered in the affirmative. Upon this, he sent orders to Maximus, the Patriarch of that period, to produce a case by which the truth of the statement might be tested. The Patriarch convened his clergy in great trepidation, and after long deliberation they ascertained that a woman had been excommunicated by the previous Patriarch for the commission[27] of grievous sins. They ascertained the whereabouts of her grave, and when they had opened it they found that the corpse was entire, but swollen out like a drum. When the news of this reached the Sultan, he despatched some of his officers to possess themselves of the body, which they did, and deposited it in a safe place. On an appointed day the liturgy was said over it and the Patriarch recited the absolution in the presence of the officials. As this was being done—wonderful to relate!—the bones were heard to rattle as they fell apart in the coffin, and at the same time, the narrator adds, the woman’s soul was also freed from the punishment to which it had been condemned. The courtiers at once ran and informed the Sultan, who was astonished at the miracle, and exclaimed: “Of a surety the Christian religion is true.” Calmet also relates this story, and adds that the body was found to be entirely black and much swollen; that it was placed in a chest under the Emperor’s seal, which chest was not opened until three days after the absolution had been pronounced, when the body was seen to be reduced to ashes.

During the long war between the Christians[28] and Mohammedans in the island of Crete, it became a matter of astonishment that ravages caused by vampires were no longer the subject of conversation. “How can it be, when the number of deaths is so great, that none of those that die become katakhanás?” was the question asked, to be met with the answer: “No one ever becomes a katakhaná if he dies in time of war.”

Leo Allatius also relates that he was told by Athanasius, Metropolitan of Imbros, that, on one occasion, being earnestly entreated to pronounce the absolution over a number of corpses that had long remained undecomposed, he consented to do so, and before the recitation was concluded they all fell away into ashes.

Rycaut relates a similar occurrence, to which he appends the following remark: “This story I should not have judged worth relating, but that I heard it from the mouth of a grave person who says that his own eyes were witnesses thereof.”

The Hydhræans (or Hydhrioks) say there used to be a great number of vampires in Hydhra, and that their present freedom is to be attributed solely to the exertions[29] of their bishop, who banished them all to Santoréhe, where, on the desert isle, they now exist in great numbers, wandering about, rolling stones down the slope towards the sea, “as may be heard by anyone who passes near, in a kaík, during the night.”

At the second Council of Limoges, held in 1031, the Bishop of Cahors made the following statement: “A knight of my diocese being killed in a state of excommunication, I refused to comply with the request of his friends, who solicited me earnestly to give him absolution. My resolution was to make an example of him, in order to strike terror into others. Notwithstanding this, he was buried in a church dedicated to St Peter by some soldiers or knights without any ecclesiastical ceremony, without any leave, and without the assistance of any priest. The next morning his body was found out of the grave, perfectly entire, and without any token of its having been touched. The soldiers who buried him opened the grave and found nothing but the linen which had been wrapped about his body. They then buried him afresh and covered the grave with an enormous quantity of earth and stones. The next[30] day the corpse was found out of the grave again, and there were no symptoms of anyone having been at work. The same thing was repeated five times, and at last they buried him in unconsecrated ground, at a distance from the churchyard, when no further incident occurred.”

Rycaut states that the following story was related to him with many asseverations of truth by a grave Candive Kalois called Sofronio, a preacher, and a person of no mean repute and learning at Smyrna.

“I knew,” he said, “a certain person who, for some misdemeanours committed in the Morea, fled over to the Isle of Milo, where, though he escaped the hand of justice, he could not avoid the sentence of excommunication, from which he could no more fly than from the conviction of his own conscience, or the guilt which ever attended him; for the fatal hour of his death being come, and the sentence of the Church not revoked, the body was carelessly and without solemnity interred in some retired and unfrequented place. In the meantime the relatives of the deceased were much afflicted and anxious for the sad estate of their dead friend, whilst the[31] peasants and islanders were every night affrighted and disturbed with strange and unusual apparitions, which they immediately concluded arose from the grave of the accursed excommunicant, which, according to their custom, they immediately opened, when they found the body uncorrupted, ruddy, and the veins replete with blood. The coffin was furnished with grapes, apples, and nuts, and such fruits as the season afforded. Whereupon, consultation being taken, the Kaloires resolved to make use of the common remedy in those cases, which was to cut and dismember the body into several parts and to boil it in wine, as the approved means of dislodging the evil spirit and disposing the body to a dissolution. But the friends of the deceased, being willing and desirous that the corpse should rest in peace and some ease given to the departed soul, obtained a reprieve from the clergy, and hoped that for a sum of money (they being persons of a competent estate) a release might be purchased from the excommunication under the hand of the Patriarch. In this manner the corpse was for a little while freed from dissection, and letters thereupon sent to Constantinople[32] with this direction, That in case the Patriarch should condescend to take off the excommunication, that the day, hour, and minute that he signed the remission should be inserted in the document. And now the corpse was taken into the church (the country people not being willing it should remain in the field), and prayers and masses were daily said for its dissolution and the pardon of the offender; when one day, after many prayers, supplications, and offerings (as this Sofrino attested to me with many protestations), and whilst he himself was heard performing divine service, on a sudden was heard a rumbling noise in the coffin of the dead party, to the fear and astonishment of all persons then present; which when they had opened they found the body consumed and dissolved as far into its first principles of earth as if it had been several years interred. The hour and minute of this dissolution was immediately noted and precisely observed, which being compared with the date of the Patriarch’s release when it was signed at Constantinople, it was found exactly to agree with that moment in which the body returned to its ashes.”

[33]

In most countries the vampire was regarded as a night-wanderer, but resting in its grave on Friday night, so that the ceremony of absolution had to be performed on that night or during Saturday, because, if the spirit was out on its rambles when the ceremony took place, it was unavailing.

The Sfakians generally believe that the ravages committed by these night-wanderers used in former times to be far more frequent than they are at the present day, and that they have become comparatively rare solely in consequence of the increased zeal and skill possessed by members of the sacerdotal order.

Tournefort relates an entertaining story of a vampire that woefully annoyed the inhabitants of Myconi. Prayers, processions, stabbing with swords, sprinklings of holy water, and even pouring the latter in large quantities down the throat of the refractory vroucolaca were all tried in vain. An Albanian who chanced to be at Myconi objected to two of these remedies. It was no wonder the devil continued in, he said, for how could he possibly come through the holy water? And as to swords, they were equally effectual in preventing his[34] exit, for their handles being crosses, he was so much terrified that he dare not pass them. To obviate the latter objection, he recommended that Turkish scymetars should be used. The scymetars were accordingly put in requisition, but the pertinacious devil still retained his hold of the corpse and played his pranks with as much vigour as ever. At length, when all the respectable inhabitants were packing up to take flight to Syra or Tinos, an effectual method of ousting the vroucolaca was fortunately suggested. The body was committed to the flames on January 1st, 1701, and the spirit being thus forcibly ejected from its abode, was rendered incapable of doing further mischief.

There is a story told of St Stanislaus raising to life a man who had been dead for three years, whom he called to life in order that he might give evidence on the saint’s behalf in a court of justice. After having given his evidence, the resuscitated man returned quietly to his grave.

CHAPTER III
THE VAMPIRE IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA, AND GREECE

The belief in the vampire and ghoul was prevalent even in Babylon and Assyria, where it was maintained that the dead could appear again upon earth and seek sustenance from the living. The belief is, in all probability, linked up with the almost universal theory that transfused blood is necessary for revivification. Baths of human blood were anciently prescribed as a possible remedy for leprosy.

Mr R. Campbell Thompson, in his work The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, states that the Ekimmu or departed spirit was the soul of the dead person unable to rest, which wandered as a spectre over the earth. “If it found a luckless man who had wandered far from his fellows into haunted places, it fastened upon him,[36] plaguing and tormenting him until such time as a priest should drive it away with exorcisms.”

Mr Thompson also gives the translation of the following two tablets, which, it will be seen, contain references to this belief:—

Greek Christianity, as already stated, has been credited by many with the origin of the vampire belief, but this contention is hardly borne out by facts. The belief was undoubtedly developed greatly under the influence of the Greek Church, and utilised by the Greek priests as an additional power which they possessed over the people. It did not become prominent in Greece until after the establishment of Christianity, and there are many remarkable[38] stories told of vampire apparitions among the Slavonic races bordering on Greece, as well as among the Arabians. In later times, Father Richard, a French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, went as a missionary to the Archipelago, and has left an account of the islands of Santerini in which he discourses at length upon the bucolacs or vampires of that district.

Some Greeks believe that the spectre which appears is not really the soul of the deceased, but an evil spirit which enters his body after the soul of the owner has been withdrawn. Thus Leo Allatius, in describing the belief, says: “The corpse is entered by a demon which is the source of ruin to unhappy men. For frequently emerging from the tomb in the form of that body and roaming about the city and other inhabited places, especially by night it betakes itself to any house it fancies, and, after knocking at the door, addresses one of the inmates in a loud tone. If the person answers he is done for: two days after that he dies. If he does not answer he is safe. In consequence of this, all the people in Chios, if anyone calls to them by night, never reply the first time; for if a second[39] call is given they know that it does not proceed from the vrykolaka but from someone else.”

In the Menées des Grecs it is recorded that an ecclesiastic of Scheti, being excommunicated by his superior for some act of disobedience, quitted the desert and came to Alexandria, where he was apprehended by the governor of the city, stripped of his religious habit, and strongly solicited to sacrifice to the idols of the place. The man bravely resisted the temptation, and was tortured in several ways, till at last they cut off his head, and threw his body out of the city to be devoured by dogs. The next night it was carried away by the Christians, who, having embalmed it and wrapped it up in fine linen, interred it in an honourable part of the church with all the respect due to the remains of a martyr. But at the next celebration of the Mass, upon the deacons crying out aloud as usual, “Let the catechumens and all who do not communicate retire,” his grave instantly opened and the martyr retired into the church porch. When Mass was over he came again of his own accord into the grave. Not long afterwards it was revealed by an angel[40] to a holy person, who had continued three days in prayer, that the deceased ecclesiastic had been excommunicated by his superior, and would continue bound till that same superior had reversed the sentence. Upon this a messenger was despatched to the desert after the holy anchorite, who ordered the grave to be opened and absolved the deceased, who, after this, continued in his grave in peace.

Pitton de Tournefort, in his Voyage into the Levant, gives the following interesting account: “We were present at a very different scene and one very barbarous at Myconi. The man, whose story we are going to relate, was a peasant of Myconi, naturally ill-natured and quarrelsome; this is a circumstance to be taken notice of in such a case: he was murdered in the fields, nobody knew how or by whom. Two days after his being buried in a chapel in the town it was noised about that he was seen to walk about in the night with great haste, that he tumbled about other people’s goods, put out their lamps, gripped them behind, and played a dozen other monkey tricks. At first the story was received with laughter, but the thing was looked upon[41] seriously when the better sort of people began to complain of it: the papás themselves gave credit to the fact, and no doubt had their reasons for so doing; masses were duly said; but for all this the peasant drove his old trade and heeded nothing they could do. After divers meetings of the chief people of the city, of priests and monks, it was gravely concluded that it was necessary in consequence of some musty ceremonial to wait till the ninth day after the interment should be expired.

“On the tenth day they said one Mass in the chapel where the body was laid in order to drive out the demon which they imagined was got into it. After Mass they took up his body and got everything ready for blowing out his heart.... The corpse stunk so abominably that they were obliged to burn frankincense, but the smoke mixing with the exhalations from the carcase increased the stench; every person averred that the blood of the corpse was extremely red. The butcher swore that the body was still warm....”

Pitton concludes the story by ridiculing the theory that this was the body of a vampire or vroucolaca.

[42]

The practice of burning the body of a suspected or proved vampire does not appear to have found general favour in Greece, doubtless by reason of the fact that the Greeks possessed a religious horror of burning a body on which holy oil had been poured by the priest when performing the last rites upon the dying man.

Leake, whose Travels in Northern Greece were published in 1835, says in the fourth volume of that work: “It would be difficult now to meet with an example of the most barbarous of all these superstitions, the Vrukólaka. The name being Illyric, seems to acquit the Greeks of the invention, which was probably introduced into the country by the barbarians of Sclavonic race. Tournefort’s description is admitted to be correct. The Devil is supposed to enter the Vrukólaka, who, rising from his grave, torments first his nearest relatives and then others, causing their death or loss of health. The remedy is to dig up the body and if, after it has been exorcised by the priest, the demon still persists in annoying the living, to cut it into small pieces, or, if that be not sufficient, to burn it.”

[43]

In Crete the belief in vampires—or katalkanás, as the Cretans call them—and their existence and ill-deeds forms a general article of popular belief throughout the island, but is particularly strong in the mountains, and if anyone ventures to doubt it, undeniable facts are brought forward to silence the incredulous.

One of the stories told by the Cretans is as follows: “Once upon a time the village of Kalikráti, in the district of Sfakia, was haunted by a Katakhanás, and the people did not know what man he was or from what part he came. This Katakhanás destroyed both children and full-grown men, and desolated both that village and many others. They had buried him at the church of St George at Kalikráti, and in those times he was regarded as a man of note, and they had built an arch over his grave. Now a certain shepherd, believed to be his mutual Sýnteknos,[1] was tending his sheep and[44] goats near the church, and, on being caught in a shower, he went to the sepulchre that he might be protected from the rain. Afterwards he determined to sleep and pass the night there, and, after taking off his arms, he placed them by the stone which served him as his pillow, crosswise. And people might say that it was on this account that the Katakhanás was not permitted to leave his tomb. During the night, then, as he wished to go out again, that he might destroy men, he said to the shepherd: ‘Gossip, get up hence, for I have some business that requires me to come out.’ The shepherd answered him not, either the first time, or the second, or the third; further, he knew that the man had become a Katakhanás, and that it was he who had done all those evil deeds. On this account he said to him on the fourth time of his speaking: ‘I shall not get up hence, gossip, for I fear you are no better than you should be and may do me some mischief; but if I must get up, swear to me by your winding-sheet that you will not hurt me, and on that I will get up.’ And he did not pronounce the proposed words, but said other things; nevertheless, when the shepherd[45] did not suffer him to get up, he swore to him as he wished. On this he got up, and, taking his arms, removed them away from the monument, and the Katakhanás came forth, and, after greeting the shepherd, said to him: ‘Gossip, you must not go away, but sit down here; for I have some business which I must go after; but I shall return within the hour, for I have something to say to you.’ So the shepherd waited for him.

“And the Katakhanás went a distance of about ten miles, where there was a couple recently married, and he destroyed them. On his return the gossip saw that he was carrying some liver, his hands being moistened with blood; and, as he carried it, he blew into it, just as the butcher does, to increase the size of the liver. And he showed his gossip that it was cooked, as if it had been done on the fire. After this he said: ‘Let us sit down, gossip, that we may eat.’ And the shepherd pretended to eat it, but only swallowed dry bread, and kept dropping the liver into his bosom. Therefore, when the hour for their separation arrived, the Katakhanás said to the shepherd: ‘Gossip, this which you have seen,[46] you must not mention, for if you do, my twenty nails will be fixed in your children and yourself.’ Yet the shepherd lost no time, but gave information to the priests and others, and they went to the tomb, and there they found the Katakhanás, just as he had been buried. And all people became satisfied that it was he who had done all the evil deeds. On this account they collected a great deal of wood, and they cast him on it, and burnt him. His gossip was not present, but when the Katakhanás was already half-consumed, he, too, came forward in order that he might enjoy the ceremony. And the Katakhanás cast, as it were, a single spot of blood, and it fell on his foot, which wasted away, as if it had been roasted on a fire. On this account they sifted even the ashes, and found the little finger nail of the Katakhanás unburnt, and burnt it too.”

The 22nd formula of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, published by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Mr Edwin Norris in 1866, reads:—

CHAPTER IV
VAMPIRISM IN GREAT AND GREATER BRITAIN

William of Newbury, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, relates that in his time a man appeared corporeally in the county of Buckingham for three nights together, to his wife and, afterwards, to his other relatives. The way they took to defend themselves against his frightful visits was to stay up all night and make a noise when they observed that he was coming. Upon this he appeared to several people in broad day. Hereupon the Bishop of Lincoln summoned his council, and was informed that the thing was common in England, and that the only way to stop it which they knew of was to burn the spectre. The bishop did not relish this advice, as he thought the expedient a cruel one; but he wrote out a form of[49] absolution on a scrap of paper and ordered it to be laid on the body of the deceased, which was found to be as fresh and entire as if it had been dead only a day; and from that time the apparition was no more heard of. The author adds that these stories would be thought incredible if several instances of them had not happened in his time, attested by persons of undoubted credit.

The same author mentions a similar story, the locale of which was Berwick-on-Tweed, where the body was cut in pieces and burnt. Another vampire was burnt at Melrose Abbey. It was that of a very worldly priest who had been in his lifetime so fond of hunting that he was commonly called a hundeprest. A still more remarkable case occurred at a castle in the north of England, where the vampire so frightened all the people that no one ever ventured out of doors between sunset and sunrise. The sons of one of his supposed victims at length opened his grave and pierced his body, from which a great quantity of blood immediately flowed, which plainly proved that a large number of persons had been his victims.

[50]

At Waterford, in Ireland, there is a little graveyard under a ruined church near Strongbow’s Tower. Legend has it that underneath the ground at this spot there lies a beautiful female vampire still ready to kill those she can lure thither by her beauty.

A vampire story is also related concerning an old Cumberland farmhouse, the victim being a girl whose screams were heard as she was bitten, and who only escaped with her life by thus screaming. In this case the monster was tracked to a vault in the churchyard, where forty or fifty coffins were found open, their contents mutilated and scattered around. One coffin only was untouched, and on the lid being taken off the form was recognised as being that of the apparition which had been seen, and the body was accordingly burnt, when the manifestations ceased.

In vol. iii. of Borderland Dr Franz Hartmann gave particulars of some vampire cases which had come under his observation.

“A young lady of G—— had an admirer, who asked her in marriage; but as he was a drunkard she refused and married another.[51] Thereupon the lover shot himself, and soon after that event a vampire, assuming his form, visited her frequently at night, especially when her husband was absent. She could not see him, but felt his presence in a way that could leave no room for doubt. The medical faculty did not know what to make of the case; they called it ‘hysterics,’ and tried in vain every remedy in the pharmacopœia, until she at last had the spirit exorcised by a man of strong faith.”

Another case is that of a miller at D—— who had a healthy servant boy, who soon after entering his service began to fail in health. He had a ravenous appetite, but nevertheless grew daily more feeble. Being interrogated, he at last confessed that a thing which he could not see, but which he could plainly feel, came to him every night and sat upon his stomach, drawing all the life out of him, so that he became paralysed for the time being and could neither move nor cry out. Thereupon the miller agreed to share the bed with the boy, and proposed to him that he should give him a certain sign when the vampire arrived. This was done, and when the[52] sign was given the miller grasped the invisible but very tangible substance that rested upon the boy’s stomach, and although it struggled to escape, he grasped it firmly and threw it into the fire. After that the boy recovered his health and there was no repetition of the vampire’s visits.

Dr Hartmann adds to this last account: “Those who, like myself, have on innumerable occasions removed astral tumours and thereby cured physical tumours will find the above not incredible nor inexplicable. Moreover, the above accounts do not refer to events of the past, but to persons still living in this country.”

The following account is taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine of July 1851:—

“Singular Instance of Superstition, A.D. 1629

“The Case, or, rather, History of a Case that happened in the County of Hereford in the fourth Year of the Reign of King Charles the First, which was taken from a MS. of Serjeant Mainard, who writes thus:

“‘I write the evidence which was given, which I and many others heard, and I write it exactly according to what was deposed[53] at the Trial at the Bar in the King’s Bench. Johan Norkot, the wife of Arthur Norkot, being murdered, the question arose how she came by her death. The coroner’s inquest on view of the body and deposition of Mary Norkot, John Okeman and Agnes, his wife, inclined to find Joan Norkot felo de se: for they (i.e. the witnesses before mentioned) informed the coroner and the jury that she was found dead in the bed and her throat cut, the knife sticking in the floor of the room; that the night before she was so found she went to bed with her child (now plaintiff in this appeal), her husband being absent, and that no other person after such time as she was gone to bed came into the house, the examinants lying in the outer room, and they must needs have seen if any stranger had come in. Whereupon the jury gave up to the coroner their verdict that she was felo de se. But afterwards upon rumour in the neighbourhood, and the observation of divers circumstances that manifested she did not, nor according to these circumstances, possibly could, murder herself, thereupon the jury, whose verdict was not drawn into form by the coroner, desired the coroner that the body which[54] was buried might be taken up out of the grave, which the coroner assented to, and thirty days after her death she was taken up, in the presence of the jury and a great number of the people, whereupon the jury changed their verdict. The persons being tried at Hertford Assizes were acquitted, but so much against the evidence that the judge (Harvy) let fall his opinion that it were better an appeal were brought than so foul a murder should escape unpunished.

“‘Anno, paschæ termino, quarto Caroli, they were tried on the appeal which was brought by the young child against his father, the grandfather and aunt, and her husband Okeman. And because the evidence was so strange I took exact and particular notes of it, which was as followeth, of the matters above mentioned and related, an ancient and grave person, the minister of the parish where the fact was committed, being sworn to give evidence according to custom, deposed, that the body being taken out of the grave thirty days after the party’s death and lying on the grave and the four defendants present, they were required each of them to touch the dead body. O.’s wife fell on her knees and prayed God[55] to show token of their innocency, or to some such purpose, but her very words I forget. The appellers did touch the dead body, whereupon the brow of the dead, which was all a livid or carrion colour (that was the verbal expression in the terms of the witness) began to have a dew or gentle sweat, which reached down in drops on the face, and the brow turned and changed to a lively and fresh colour, and the dead opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was done three several times. She likewise thrust out the ring or marriage finger three times and pulled it in again, and the finger dropt blood from it on the grass.

“‘Hyde (Nicholas), Chief Justice, seeming to doubt the evidence, asked the witness: “Who saw this beside yourself?”

“‘Witness: “I cannot swear that others saw it; but, my lord,” said he, “I believe the whole company saw it, and if it had been thought a doubt, proof would have been made of it, and many would have attested with me.”

“‘Then the witness observing some admiration in the auditors, he spoke further,[56] “My lord, I am minister of the parish, long knew all the parties, but never had any occasion of displeasure against any of them, nor had to do with them, or they with me, but as their minister. The thing was wonderful to me, but I have no interest in the matter, but am called upon to testify the truth and that I have done.”

“‘This witness was a reverend person as I guess about seventy years of age. His testimony was delivered gravely and temperately, but to the good admiration of the auditor. Whereupon, applying himself to the Lord Chief Justice, he said, “My lord, my brother here present is minister of the next parish adjacent, and I am assured saw all done as I have affirmed,” whereupon that person was also sworn to give evidence, and he deposed the same in every point, viz., the sweat of the brow, the changes of its colour, the opening of the eye, the thrice motion of the finger and drawing it in again; only the first witness deposed that a man dipped his finger in the blood to examine it, and swore he believed it was real blood. I conferred afterwards with Sir Edmund Vowel, barrister at law, and others who concurred in this observation,[57] and for myself, if I were upon my oath, can depose that these depositions, especially of the first witness, are truly here reported in substance.

“‘The other evidence was given against the prisoners, viz., against the grandmother of the plaintiff and against Okeman and his wife, that they lay in the next room to the dead person that night, and that none came into the house till they found her dead next morning, therefore if she did not murther herself, they must be the murtherers, and to that end further proof was made. First she lay in a composed manner in her bed, the bed cloaths nothing at all disturbed, and her child by her in the bed. Secondly, her throat was cut from ear to ear and her neck broken, and if she first cut her throat, she could not break her neck in the bed, nor e contra. Thirdly, there was no blood in the bed, saving that there was a tincture of blood upon the bolster whereupon her head lay, but no other substance of blood at all. Fourthly, from the bed’s head on there was a stream of blood on the floor, till it ponded on the bending of the floor to a very great quantity and there was also another stream[58] of blood on the floor at the bed’s feet, which ponded also on the floor to another great quantity but no other communication of blood on either of these places, the one from the other, neither upon the bed, so that she bled in two places severely, and it was deposed that turning up the matte of the bed, there were clotes of congealed blood in the straw of the matte underneath. Fifthly, the bloody knife in the morning was found clinging in the floor a good distance from the bed, but the point of the knife as it stuck in the floor was towards the bed and the haft towards the door. Sixthly, lastly, there was the brand of a thumb and four fingers of a left hand on the dead person’s left hand.

“‘Hyde, Chief Justice: “How can you know the print of a left hand from the print of a right hand in such a case?”

“‘Witness: “My lord, it is hard to describe it, but if it please the honourable judge (i.e. the judge sitting on the bench beside the Chief Justice) to put his left hand on your left hand, you cannot possibly place your right hand in the same posture.”

“‘It being done, and appearing so, the[59] defendants had time to make their defence, but gave no evidence to that purpose.

“‘The jury departing from the bar and returning, acquitted Okeman and found the other three guilty; who, being severally demanded why judgment should not be pronounced, sayd nothing, but each of them said, “I did not do it.” “I did not do it.” Judgment was made and the grandmother and the husband executed, but the aunt had the privilege to be spared execution, being with child. I enquired if they confessed anything at execution, but did not as I was told.’

“Thus far the serjeant, afterwards Sir John Mainard, a person of great note and judgment in the law. The paper, of which this is a copy, was found amongst his papers since his death (1690) fair written with his own hand. Mr Hunt of the Temple took a copy of it, gave it me, which I have hereby transcribed.—H. S.”

It has been asserted by some writers that the vampire is not to be found in Indian lore and legend, and an attempt has been made to connect this supposititious absence of the blood-sucking demon with the Brahminical and Buddhistic vegetarian and[60] cremation customs. The Indian belief, however, in the existence of vampire spectres is as prevalent as it is in any other country, although the folk-lore and legends concerning them may, perhaps, be more scarce.

Fornari, in his History of Sorcerers, relates the following story: “In the beginning of the fifteenth century there lived at Bagdad an aged merchant who had grown wealthy in his business and who had an only son to whom he was tenderly attached. He resolved to marry him to the daughter of another merchant, a girl of considerable fortune, but without any personal attractions. Abul-Hassan, the merchant’s son, on being shown the portrait of the lady, requested his father to delay the marriage till he could reconcile his mind to it. Instead, however, of doing this he fell in love with another girl, the daughter of a sage, and he gave his father no peace till he consented to the marriage with the object of his affections. The old man stood out as long as he could, but finding that his son was bent on acquiring the hand of the fair Nadilla, and was equally resolute not to accept the rich and ugly lady, he did what[61] most fathers under such circumstances would do—he acquiesced.

“The wedding took place with great pomp and ceremony, and a happy honeymoon ensued, which might have been happier but for one little circumstance which led to very serious consequences.

“Abul-Hassan noticed that his bride quitted the nuptial couch as soon as she thought her husband was asleep, and did not return to it till an hour before dawn.

“Filled with curiosity, Hassan one night, feigning sleep, saw his wife rise and leave the room. He rose, followed cautiously, and saw her enter the cemetery. By the straggling moonbeams he saw her go into a tomb: he stepped in after her.

“The scene within was horrible. A party of ghouls were assembled with the spoils of the graves they had violated and were feasting on the flesh of the long-buried corpses. His own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, played a no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet.

“As soon as he could safely escape Abul-Hassan stole back to his bed.

“He said nothing to his bride till next[62] evening when supper was laid, and she declined to eat; then he insisted on her partaking, and when she positively refused he exclaimed roughly: ‘Oh yes, you keep your appetite for your feasts with the ghouls.’ Nadilla was silent; she turned pale and trembled, and without a word sought her bed. At midnight she rose, fell on her husband with her nails and teeth, tore his throat, and, having opened a vein, attempted to suck his blood; but Abul-Hassan, springing to his feet, threw her down and, with a blow, killed her. She was buried next day.

“Three days after at midnight she reappeared, attacked her husband again, and again attempted to suck his blood. He fled from her and on the morrow opened her tomb, burnt her to ashes and cast the ashes into the Tigris.”

There is a monstrous vampire which is said to delight in sucking the blood of children, and is known as a Pănangglan. It has also a liking for sucking the blood of women at childbirth; but, as it is also credited with a dread of thorns, the custom has arisen of placing thorns about the rooms of Indian houses on the occasions of births.

[63]

One of the Northern Indian witches—the Jigar-Khor or Liver-eater—is believed to be possessed of the power of being able to steal the liver of another by looks and incantations. A class of witches known as Bhúts are said to have an extraordinary fondness for fish, but also eat rice and all kinds of human food.

Hugh Clifford, in his interesting work In Court and Kampong, refers to the “Pĕnangal, that horrible wraith of a woman who has died in childbirth, and who comes to torment small children in the guise of a fearful face and bust with many feet of bloody, trailing entrails in her wake,” also of that “weird little white animal, the Mati-ânak, that makes beast noises round the graves of children; and of the familiar spirits that men raise up from the corpses of babes who have never seen the light, the tips of whose tongues they bite off and swallow, after the child has been brought back to life by magic agencies.”

In the Tamil dream of Harichándra, the frenzied Sandramáti says to the king: “I belong to the race of elves, for I killed thy child in order that I might feed on its delicate flesh.” The Vetala is said to feed[64] chiefly on corpses. The Bhúts and other dismal ravenous ghosts, who are dreaded at the moon-wane of the month Katik (October-November), were not supposed to devour men, but only their food.

Then there is the Hántu Sàburo, which chases men into the forest by means of his dogs, and if they are run down he drinks their blood. The Hántu Dondong resides in caves and crevices in rocks. He kills dogs and wild hogs with the sumpitan, and then drinks their blood. The Hántu Parl fastens on to the wound of an injured person and sucks the blood.

Barth, in his History of Religions (Hinduism), says that “Siva is identified with Mrityu, Death, and his old name Pacupati, Lord of herds, acquires the ominous meaning of Master of human cattle. He is chief of the mischievous spirits, of ghouls and vampires that frequent places of execution and those where the dead are buried, and he prowls about with them at nightfall.”

Other classes of demons are also known as the Rakshasas or the Pisâchâs, a word which literally means “flesh-eaters,” which Delongchamps has translated as “bloodthirsty[65] savages,” but other etymologists actually as “vampires.”

The vampire demon is no stranger to Australia. Bonwick, in his Daily Life of the Tasmanians, tells us that: “During the whole of the first night after the death of one of their tribe they will sit round the body, using rapidly a low, continuous recitative to prevent the evil spirit from taking it away. This evil spirit was the ghost of an enemy. Fires at night kept off these mischievous beings, which were like the vampires of Europe.”

CHAPTER V
VAMPIRISM IN GERMANY AND SURROUNDING COUNTRIES

Germany, the home of modern philosophy, is not free from the belief in the reality of the vampire apparition, although the more horrible forms of the superstition are not frequently encountered. Crosses are, however, frequently erected at the head, or by the side, of graves, even in Protestant cemeteries, in order that their presence may prevent the occupants from being controlled by any demon that might, but for the presence of such charm, take possession of a body; and the Nachzehrer is as much dreaded in many parts of Germany as the Vrykolaka is in Russia. In some parts of the Kaiser’s dominions, food is still buried with the corpse in order to assuage any pangs of hunger that may arise; and even when this is not done, a few grains[67] of corn or rice are scattered upon the grave as a survival of the ancient custom. In Diesdorf it is believed that if money is not placed in the mouth of a dead person at burial, or his name not cut from his shirt, he will, in all probability, become a Nachzehrer, and his ghost issue from the grave in the form of a pig. Another sure preventive of such a calamity is to break the neck of a dead body.

The following story was contributed by Dr Franz Hartmann to the Occult Review for September 1909, under the title of “An Authenticated Vampire Story”:—

“On June 10th, 1909, there appeared in a prominent Vienna paper (the Neues Wiener Journal) a notice saying that the castle of B—— had been burned by the populace, because there was a great mortality among the peasant children, and it was generally believed that this was due to the invasion of a vampire, supposed to be the last Count B——, who died and acquired that reputation. The castle was situated in a wild and desolate part of the Carpathian Mountains, and was formerly a fortification against the Turks. It was not inhabited, owing to its being believed[68] to be in the possession of ghosts; only a wing of it was used as a dwelling for the caretaker and his wife.

“Now it so happened that, when I read the above notice, I was sitting in a coffee-house at Vienna in company with an old friend of mine who is an experienced occultist and editor of a well-known journal, and who had spent several months in the neighbourhood of the castle. From him I obtained the following account, and it appears that the vampire in question was probably not the old Count, but his beautiful daughter, the Countess Elga, whose photograph, taken from the original painting, I obtained. My friend said: ‘Two years ago I was living at Hermannstadt, and being engaged in engineering a road through the hills, I often came within the vicinity of the old castle, where I made the acquaintance of the old castellan, or caretaker, and his wife, who occupied a part of the wing of the house, almost separate from the main body of the building. They were a quiet old couple and rather reticent in giving information or expressing an opinion in regard to the strange noises which were often heard at night in the deserted halls,[69] or of the apparitions which the Wallachian peasants claimed to have seen when they loitered in the surroundings after dark. All I could gather was that the old Count was a widower and had a beautiful daughter, who was one day killed by a fall from her horse, and that soon after the old man died in some mysterious manner, and the bodies were buried in a solitary graveyard belonging to a neighbouring village. Not long after their death an unusual mortality was noticed among the inhabitants of the village: several children and even some grown people died without any apparent illness; they merely wasted away; and thus a rumour was started that the old Count had become a vampire after his death. There is no doubt that he was not a saint, as he was addicted to drinking, and some shocking tales were in circulation about his conduct and that of his daughter; but whether there was any truth in them, I am not in a position to say.

“‘Afterwards the property came into the possession of ——, a distant relative of the family, who is a young man and officer in a cavalry regiment at Vienna. It appears that the heir enjoyed his life at the capital[70] and did not trouble himself much about the old castle in the wilderness; he did not even come to look at it, but gave his directions by letter to the janitor, telling him merely to keep things in order and to attend to repairs, if any were necessary. Thus the castellan was actually master of the house, and offered its hospitality to me and my friends.

“One evening I and my two assistants, Dr E——, a young lawyer, and Mr W——, a literary man, went to inspect the premises. First we went to the stables. There were no horses, as they had been sold; but what attracted our special attention was an old, queer-fashioned coach with gilded ornaments and bearing the emblems of the family. We then inspected the rooms, passing through some halls and gloomy corridors, such as may be found in any old castle. There was nothing remarkable about the furniture; but in one of the halls there hung in a frame an oil-painting, a portrait, representing a lady with a large hat and wearing a fur coat. We were all involuntarily startled on beholding this picture—not so much on account of the beauty of the lady, but on account of[71] the uncanny expression of her eyes; and Dr E——, after looking at the picture for a short time, suddenly exclaimed: ‘How strange! The picture closes its eyes and opens them again, and now it begins to smile!’

“Now Dr E—— is a very sensitive person, and has more than once had some experience in spiritism, and we made up our minds to form a circle for the purpose of investigating this phenomenon. Accordingly, on the same evening we sat around a table in an adjoining room, forming a magnetic chain with our hands. Soon the table began to move and the name Elga was spelled. We asked who this Elga was, and the answer was rapped out: ‘The lady whose picture you have seen.’

“‘Is the lady living?’ asked Mr W——. This question was not answered; but instead it was rapped out: ‘If W—— desires it, I will appear to him bodily to-night at two o’clock.’ W—— consented, and now the table seemed to be endowed with life and manifested a great affection for W——; it rose on two legs and pressed against his breast, as if it intended to embrace him.

[72]

“We inquired of the castellan whom the picture represented; but to our surprise he did not know. He said that it was the copy of a picture painted by the celebrated painter Hans Markart of Vienna, and had been bought by the old Count because its demoniacal look pleased him so much.

“We left the castle, and W—— retired to his room at an inn a half-hour’s journey distant from that place. He was of a somewhat sceptical turn of mind, being neither a firm believer in ghosts and apparitions nor ready to deny their possibility. He was not afraid, but anxious to see what would come of his agreement, and for the purpose of keeping himself awake he sat down and began to write an article for a journal.

“Towards two o’clock he heard steps on the stairs and the door of the hall opened; there was the rustling of a silk dress and the sound of the feet of a lady walking to and fro in the corridor.

“It may be imagined that he was somewhat startled; but taking courage, he said to himself: ‘If this is Elga, let her come in.’ Then the door of the room opened and Elga entered. She was most elegantly[73] dressed, and appeared still more youthful and seductive than the picture. There was a lounge on the other side of the table where W—— was writing, and there she silently posted herself. She did not speak, but her looks and gestures left no doubt in regard to her desires and intentions.

“Mr W—— resisted the temptation and remained firm. It is not known whether he did so out of principle or timidity or fear. Be this as it may, he kept on writing, looking from time to time at his visitor and silently wishing that she would leave. At last, after half an hour, which seemed to him much longer, the lady departed in the same manner in which she came.

“This adventure left W—— no peace, and we consequently arranged several sittings at the old castle, where a variety of uncanny phenomena took place. Thus, for instance, once the servant-girl was about to light a fire in the stove, when the door of the apartment opened and Elga stood there. The girl, frightened out of her wits, rushed from the room, tumbling down the stairs in terror with the lamp in her hand, which broke, and came very near to setting her clothes on fire. Lighted lamps and[74] candles went out when brought near the picture, and many other ‘manifestations’ took place which it would be tedious to describe; but the following incident ought not to be omitted.

“Mr W—— was at that time desirous of obtaining the position as co-editor of a certain journal, and a few days after the above-narrated adventure he received a letter in which a noble lady of high position offered him her patronage for that purpose. The writer requested him to come to a certain place the same evening, where he would meet a gentleman who would give him further particulars. He went, and was met by an unknown stranger, who told him that he was requested by the Countess Elga to invite Mr W—— to a carriage drive, and that she would await him at midnight at a certain crossing of two roads, not far from the village. The stranger then suddenly disappeared.

“Now it seems that Mr W—— had some misgivings about the meeting and drive, and he hired a policeman as detective to go at midnight to the appointed place, to see what would happen. The policeman went and reported next morning that[75] he had seen nothing but the well-known, old-fashioned carriage from the castle, with two black horses, standing there as if waiting for somebody, and that as he had no occasion to interfere, he merely waited until the carriage moved on. When the castellan of the castle was asked, he swore that the carriage had not been out that night, and in fact it could not have been out, as there were no horses to draw it.

“But that is not all, for on the following day I met a friend who is a great sceptic and disbeliever in ghosts, and always used to laugh at such things. Now, however, he seemed to be very serious and said: ‘Last night something very strange happened to me. At about one o’clock this morning I returned from a late visit, and as I happened to pass the graveyard of the village, I saw a carriage with gilded ornaments standing at the entrance. I wondered about this taking place at such an unusual hour, and being curious to see what would happen, I waited. Two elegantly dressed ladies issued from the carriage. One of these was young and pretty, but threw at me a devilish and scornful look as they both passed by and entered[76] the cemetery. There they were met by a well-dressed man, who saluted the ladies and spoke to the younger one, saying: “Why, Miss Elga! Are you returned so soon?” Such a queer feeling came over me that I abruptly left and hurried home.’

“This matter has not been explained; but certain experiments which we subsequently made with the picture of Elga brought out some curious facts.

“To look at the picture for a certain time caused me to feel a very disagreeable sensation in the region of the solar plexus. I began to dislike the portrait and proposed to destroy it. We held a sitting in the adjoining room; the table manifested a great aversion to my presence. It was rapped out that I should leave the circle, and that the picture must not be destroyed. I ordered a Bible to be brought in, and read the beginning of the first chapter of St John, whereupon the above-mentioned Mr E—— (the medium) and another man present claimed that they saw the picture distorting its face. I turned the frame and pricked the back of the picture with my penknife in different places, and Mr E——, as well as the other man,[77] felt all the pricks, although they had retired to the corridor.

“I made the sign of the pentagram over the picture, and again the two gentlemen claimed that the picture was horribly distorting its face.

“Soon afterwards we were called away and left that country. Of Elga I heard nothing more.”

Thus far goes the account of my friend the editor.

Siegbert’s Chronicle for the year 858 has the following story: “There appeared this year in the diocese of Mentz a spirit which discovered himself at first by throwing stones and beating against the walls of houses, as if it had been with a great mallet. He then proceeded to speak and reveal secrets, and discovered the authors of several thefts and other matters likely to breed disturbances in the neighbourhood. At last he vented his malice upon one particular person, whom he was industrious in persecuting and making odious to all the neighbours by representing him as the cause of God’s anger against the whole village. The spirit never forsook the poor man, but tormented him without intermission,[78] burnt all his corn in the barns, and set every place on fire where he came. The priests attempted to frighten him away by exorcisms, prayers, and holy water; but the spectre answered them with a volley of stones which wounded several of them. When the priests were gone he was heard to bemoan himself and say that he was forced to take refuge in the cowl of one of the priests, who had injured the daughter of a man of consequence in the village. He continued in this manner to infest the village for three years together, and never gave over till he had set every house in it on fire.”