What happened
In 1725, in the Serbian village of Kisilova, then in territory held by the Habsburgs, a peasant named Petar Blagojević (Peter Plogojowitz in German sources) died. Within eight days nine people died after brief illnesses, and the dying reportedly said the dead man had throttled them at night. His widow claimed he had come to her asking for his opanci shoes. The villagers demanded an exhumation and threatened to abandon the village unless the imperial provisor Frombald allowed it. Together with the parish priest of Veliko Gradište, the official examined the exhumed body: it was undecomposed, the hair and beard had grown, “new” skin showed beneath the peeling old skin, and there was fresh blood in the mouth. The villagers drove a stake through the corpse – blood gushed from its ears and mouth – and then burned it. Frombald ended his report by asking not to be blamed for what people “beside themselves with fear” had done.
Witnesses
Imperial provisor Frombald, the parish priest of Veliko Gradište and the villagers; Frombald's report was published by the Viennese newspaper “Wienerisches Diarium.”
Explanations and hypotheses
Frombald's report was one of the first official accounts of Serbian vampire belief, and, reprinted in Western Europe together with the Arnold Paole case, it set off the 18th-century vampire craze. Today the “signs of vampirism” it lists are recognised as typical features of decomposition: a body bloated with gases, peeling outer skin revealing the layer beneath, and blood-tinged fluid forced from the lungs into the mouth. As early as 1725 Michael Ranft explained the further deaths by fear and illness among the dead man's relatives.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Bericht des Kameralprovisors Frombald (1725), nach K. Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet – Paranormal.de
- Klaus Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet. Kommentierte Dokumentation zum Vampirismus 1689–1791 (Turia + Kant, 1992)
- Tamara Jurković, Balkan Vampire Myth: Urban Legends or a Publicity Tool? (Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brașov, Series IV, 2022)
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