What happened
According to the people of Medveđa, the hajduk Arnold Paole (perhaps Arnaut Pavle) used to say he had once been plagued by a vampire but had cured himself by eating earth from its grave. Around 1726 he fell from a hay wagon and broke his neck. Soon four people complained that he was tormenting them, and they died. Forty days later the villagers opened his grave: the body was said to be fresh, with blood in the mouth and new nails. They drove a stake through it – the corpse reportedly groaned – and burned it. In the winter of 1731 new deaths began: more than a dozen people died within weeks. First the physician Glaser arrived, and on 7 January 1732 a commission with the surgeon Johann Flückinger exhumed seventeen bodies. Twelve were declared to be in a “vampiric condition”; their heads were cut off, the bodies burned and the ashes thrown into the West Morava.
Witnesses
The contagion physician Glaser, the military surgeon Johann Flückinger, officers and surgeons of the commission from Belgrade, and the villagers. The report “Visum et Repertum” was signed in Belgrade on 26 January 1732.
Explanations and hypotheses
Signed by officers and doctors of the imperial army, the report was read across Europe as “proof” that vampires existed; Augustin Calmet and the authors of learned treatises wrote about it. Today we know the symptoms it describes – liquid blood, ruddy skin, bloating, “new” skin and nails – are normal stages of decomposition that depend on the season and the soil. Glaser himself blamed the deaths on malnutrition and strict fasting rather than on plague or revenants.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Johann Flückinger, Visum et Repertum (Belgrad, 26. Januar 1732), nach K. Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet – Paranormal.de
- Bericht des Contagions-Medicus Glaser (1731/1732), nach K. Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet – Paranormal.de
- Klaus Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet. Kommentierte Dokumentation zum Vampirismus 1689–1791 (Turia + Kant, 1992)
More: Wikipedia (en)