Dudley Wright

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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upon whom the ban of excommunication had been passed did not undergo decomposition after death until such sentence had been revoked by the pronouncement of absolution over the remains, and that, while the bodies remained in this uncorrupted condition, the spirits of the individuals wandered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 ”

“ The vampire could not then enter the house till she counted every hair on its body.”
Calmet’s explanation of the spectres so much talked of in Hungary, Moravia, Poland, and elsewhere is that they are nothing but persons that are still alive in their graves, though without motion or respiration; and that the freshness and ruddy colour of their blood, the flexibility of their limbs, and their crying out when their hearts were run through with a stick, or their heads cut off, were demonstrative proofs of their being still alive. ”

“ If they are not really dead, why do they return to their graves again and not stay in the land of the living? Why do they suck the blood of their relations, and torment and pester persons that should naturally be true to them and never give them any offence? ”

“ The Kashoubes say that when a vieszcy, as they call a vampire, wakes from his sleep within the grave he begins to gnaw his hands and feet, and as he gnaws, first his relatives, and then his neighbours, sicken [110] and die. When he has finished his own store of flesh, he rises at midnight and destroys cattle or climbs a belfry and sounds the bell. All who hear the ill-omened tones will soon die. Generally he sucks the blood of sleepers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stranger takes a pail, places it near the youth, and strikes him on the back; immediately the back opens, and forth flows rosy blood. The stranger fills the pail full and drinks it dry. Then he fills another pail with blood from the old man, slakes his brutal thirst, and says to the peasant: ‘It begins to grow light! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ After handling it, the scarfskin came off, but below were new skin and new nails! How could they have come there but from this foul feeding? The case was clear enough: there lay before them the thing they dreaded—the vampire! So, without more ado, they simply drove a stake through poor Arnod’s chest, whereupon a quantity [102] of blood gushed forth, and the corpse uttered a dreadful groan.
“‘Murder! Murder!’ shrieked the drummer-boy, as he rushed wildly, with convulsed gestures, from the scene.”
The body of Arnod was then burnt to ashes, which were returned to the grave. ”

“ There is, however, the living vampire, distinct and separate from the dead species. In Epirus and Thessaly there is a belief in living vampires, who leave their shepherd dwellings by night and roam about, biting and tearing men and animals and sucking their blood. In Moldavia and in Wallachia, the murony are real, living men who become dogs at night, with the backbone prolonged to form a sort of tail. They roam through the villages, and their main delight is to kill cattle. ”

“ It is held that so long as the astral form is not entirely separated 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 astral body voluntarily re-enters the mortal frame, and then one of two things happens—either the unhappy victim will writhe in the agonising torture of suffocation, or if he has been grossly material he becomes a vampire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ VAMPIRISM IN HUNGARY, BAVARIA, AND SILESIA
The Hungarians believe that those who have been passive vampires in life become active vampires after death; that those whose blood has been sucked in life by vampires become themselves vampires after death. In many districts the belief also prevails that the only way to prevent this calamity happening is for the threatened victim to eat some earth from the grave of the attacking vampire, and to smear his own body with blood from the body of that vampire. ”

“ The Slavonic belief in vampires is one of the characteristic features of their creed.
The Little Russians hold that, if the vampire’s hands have grown numb from remaining long crossed in the grave, he makes use of his teeth, which are like steel. When he has gnawed his way with these through all obstacles, he first destroys the babies he finds in a house, and afterwards the older inmates. If fine salt be scattered on the floor of a room, the vampire’s footsteps may be traced to his grave, in which he will be found resting with rosy cheek and gory mouth. ”

“ If the suspicion that the individual was a wizard or witch was a correct one, a [113] mighty wind would arise one night about twelve o’clock, the iron bands of the coffin would give way with a terrible crash, the coffin-lid fall off, and the corpse leap forth and, uttering a terrible screech, rush at the watcher, who, if he had not taken the prescribed precautions, would fall a victim to the monster, and in the morning there would be nothing left of him but his bare bones. ”

“ In some countries the belief prevails that the soul of a living man, often of a sorcerer, leaves its proper body asleep and goes forth, perhaps in visible form of a straw or fluff of down, slips through the keyholes, and attacks its sleeping victim. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ A man or a woman would obtain this power out of a morbid desire for communion with some ghost, and in order to gain it would steal and eat a morsel of a corpse. The ghost of the dead man would then join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by afflicting anyone against whom his ghostly power might be directed. The man so afflicted would feel that something was influencing his life, and would come to dread some particular person among his neighbours, who was, therefore, suspected of being a talamur. ”

“ In Bulgaria one method of abolishing the vampire is said to be by bottling him. The sorcerer, armed with the picture of some saint, lies in ambush until he sees the vampire pass, when he pursues him with his picture. The vampire takes refuge in a tree or on the roof of a house, but his persecutor follows him up with the talisman, driving him away from all shelter in the direction of a bottle specially prepared, in which is placed some favourite food of the vampire. ”

“ In Bulgaria the vampire does not invariably seem to have the thirst for human blood, unless there happens to be a shortage in his human food—a distinction which marks him from the species found in other countries. ”

“ St Clair and Brophy, in their work on Bulgaria, state that in Bulgaria the vampire is no longer a dead body possessed by a demon, but a soul in revolt against the inevitable principle of corporeal death. He is detected by a hole in the tombstone which is placed over his grave, which hole is filled up by the medicine man with dirt mixed with poisonous herbs. ”

“ The apparition of the spectre ceased only after the corpse had been reduced to ashes.
Fortis, in his Travels into Dalmatia, says that the Moslacks have no doubt as to the existence of vampires, and attribute to them, as in Transylvania, the sucking of the blood of infants. Therefore, when a man dies, and he is suspected of vampirism, or of being a vukodlak—the term they employ—they cut his hams and prick his whole body with pins, pretending that he will be unable to walk about after this operation has been performed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The vampire is not an unknown spectre in China, where the measures adopted for the riddance of the pest are generally the burning of the mortal remains of the corpse, or removing to a distance the lid of the coffin after the vampire has started on his nocturnal rounds. It is held that the air thus entering freely into the coffin will [139] cause the contents to decay. Another Chinese cure for vampires is to watch any suspected coffin until the corpse has quitted it, and then strew rice, red peas, and bits of iron around it. ”

“ 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. ”