Vampire

Vampires of Eastern Europe - The truth behind vampire myths

To those living in Silesia, Moravia, and along the southern frontier of Hungary the word "vampire" has a terrible significance, saavelers who scoff at these assertions have more than once had cause to change their minds owing to some tearful experience of their own. For the benefit of the reader we shall describe, first of all, just what a vampire is, according to those who are most familiar with this terrible being and his ways.


The 12th-century English historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants,though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant. These tales are similar to the later folklore widely reported from Eastern Europe in the 18th century, which were the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularised.


During this time in the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in Eastern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings taking place in order to identify and kill the potential revenants; even government officials were compelled into the hunting and staking of vampires.Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in vampires increased dramatically, resulting in what could only be called a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe.The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. 


Two famous vampire cases, which were the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole from Serbia. Plogojowitz was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Plogojowitz soon supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.


In the second case, Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was widely believed that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours.

About 200 years ago a learned priest, by name Augustine Calmet, published a work in two volumes, in which he critically examined a number of these stories of vampires. After narrating a number of them he goes on to say: "I lay down at first this principle -- that it may be that these are corpses which, although interred some days, shed fluid blood through the pores of their bodies." Although this is hardly the case, under certain peculiar conditions something akin to it may take place and thus give rise to the stories where fresh blood is found in the corpse.


As to the death of some of the persons who were attacked by vampires, Calmet says, "I add, moreover, that it is very easy for certain people to fancy themselves sucked by vampires, and that the fear caused by that fancy should make a revolution in their frame sufficiently violent to deprive them of life."


Had he lived in these days he would have put such cases down to the "influence of suggestion."


There are cases on record where the beard, hair, nails, etc. are found to have grown after death, and this was thought to be a sign of vampirism. But to this Calmet says:


"Experience teaches us that there are certain kinds of earth which reserve dead bodies perfectly fresh. ...As to the growth of the nails, the hair and the beard, it is often perceived in corpses. While there yet remains a good deal of moisture in the body, it is not surprising that sometimes we see some augmentation in those parts which do not demand a vital spirit.


As to the cry uttered by the vampires when the stake is driven through the heart, nothing is more natural; the air is there confined, and thus expelled by violence necessarily produces that noice in passing through the throat."


While much of Mr. Calmet's physiology is a little shaky, still he has grasped the main truth of the question. He saw that natural physical causes operating in the body produced, on occassion, those odd changes and influences which were thought to be proff of vampirism.