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Lumberwoods
U N N A T U R A L   H I S T O R Y   M U S E U M

“  V A M P I R E   R E C O R D S  
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there—a small mortar loaded with all sort of projectiles, and to whose trigger numerous wires were connected, inverging in all directions. In the night of the fifteenth of March the machine was heard to explode; and, next day, it was ascertained that a sergeant-major of infantery, named Francis Bertrand, had sought admittance into the Hospital of Val de Grace, having received some strange-looking wounds in the back. The vampire was caught!
    Bertrand was tried by a military court. He bore a good name in his regiment, and was accounted a man of gentle disposition and an excellent soldier. He was ignorant, having followed a course of studies in a seminary. Far from attempting to deny the charge brought against him, he confessed everything, with sincere candor and humility. When seized with his “frenzy,” he said, he would escape from the barracks and run to the cemetery, whose wall he would clear with one bound. He knew they had set up an infernal machine: he would run to it and kick it over without provoking an explosion. The dogs ran at him; but he marched upon them, and they slunk away, cowed and silent. He had reached that inexplicable superhuman power, not uncommon in certain nervosomental affections. His strength passed all that can be imagined. With nothing but his hands he would dig the grave open, break the coffin and tear to pieces the corpse, which he sometimes also hacked with his sword. Was this all? No; but there are acts so atrocious that the pen refuses to portray them.
    This demoniac, for he seemed more like a man possessed of an evil spirit, at certain hours, than a mad man having X
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rational spells, after committing these unaccountable atrocities would hasten away from the place he had desecrated, and, seeking shelter anywhere, in a ditch, on the margin of a river, exposed to the rain or the snow, fall into a cataleptic sleep, during which he retained the consciousness of what was going on around him. After these fits he felt “worn and bruised fur several days.” He was a monomaniac, obeying an irresistible impulse, and suffering, very likely, from larval epilepsy.
    The court sentenced him to one year’s imprisonment, the maximum of the penalty provided by the penal code. Bertrand, the Ghoul, is still alive; he is now perfectly cured of his hideous disease, and is cited as a model of gentleness, propriety and behavior.
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From— New Orleans Republican. (New Orleans, La), 28 June 1874. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
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