the members. It is said that vampires have their eyes opened in side of their tombs, and that their hair and nails grow as if they were alive. Some are known by the noise they make in their graves, gnawing everything about them, and sometimes even their own bodies.
The apparitions of these phantasms cease when the body having been exhumed is divided from the head and burned. The best means of freeing oneself from a vampire, is to anoint the body, and particularly the part which it has attacked, with the blood from its veins, mixed with earth from the tomb of the vampire. The wounds are known by a small rosette, blue or red, like the sear left by the leech.
The following are stories of vampires :
In the beginning of the month of September, in the year there died in the village of Kisilavia, three leagues from Gradisch, an old man of sixty-two years. Three days after his burial, he presented himself before his son, and asked him for food. On the following day, the case was related to the neighbors. That night, the dead man did not appear, but on the next, he came as on the first. It not known whether the son gave him to eat or not, but it is certain he was found in his bed a corpse. The same day, five or six persons fell sick very suddenly, and died in a few hours.
The bailiff having learned what had occurred gave information to the tribunal of Belgrade, who sent two civil officers with the public headsman, to investigate the affair. The imperial officer went to Gradisch, to be witness of a deed of which he had so frequently heard. The tombs of all
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persons who had died during the month past, were opened. When they came to that of the old man, he was found with his eyes open and his face flushed, and breathing naturally, but nevertheless immovable as a corpse. The executioner pierced the heart with his sword. A pyre was immediately formed, and the body having been quartered, was cast upon it. After this, no signs of vampirism were found on the bodies of the son or of the neighbors.
Several years since, an inhabitant of Medriga, named Paul Arnold, was crushed to death beneath the wheels of a wagon. Thirty days utter his death, four persons died, who it was said by the other citizens, were victims of the vampires. Rumor went that Arnold had been tormented by a Turkish vampire in the vicinity of Casowa, on the frontier of Servia, and that he had tried to cure himself by anointing his body with earth taken from to vampire’s grave, a precaution that availed him nothing, being himself converted into a vampire at his death. It is believed that those who in life have been passive vampires, become active vampires when dead.
He was disinterred forty days after his death, and the indications of an arch-vampire were discovered in him. His body was as sound as in life; his hair, his nails and beard had grown in the tomb, and his veins contained a sanguinary fluid that circulated throughout his body.
The bailiff or haduaji, before whom the exhumation took place—a man learned in vampirism, ordered the heart of the defunct Arnold to be pierced. A loud cry followed the
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