VAMPIRISM.
Occasionally possession is not attributed to demons, but to deceased men who come by night from their graves, and suck the blood of their victims, whereupon the latter begin to decline and finally die a miserable death, while the buried man lives and thrives upon his ill-gotten food. This is vampirism, the name being derived from the once universal belief that there existed vampires, huge bats, who, whilst fanning sleeping men with their soft wings, feasted upon their life's blood and only left them when they had turned into corpses. Popular credulity added a number of horrid details to the general outline, and believed that the wretched victims of vampirism became themselves after death vampires, and thus forever continued the fearful curse. It was long thought that vampirism was known only to the nations of the Slavic race, but recent researches have discovered traces of it in the East Indies, and in Europe among the Magyars. Even the Sanscrit already appears to have had a term of its own for the vampires—Pysachas, "hostile beings, eager for the flesh and blood of living men, who gratify their cruel lust mainly at the expense of women when they are asleep, drunk, or insane."
Careful writers like Calmet and others have, it is true, always maintained that, while the existence of vampirism cannot be denied, the phenomena attending it are in all cases the creations of diseased minds only. On the other hand, it is a well-established fact that the bodies of so-called vampires, when exhumed, have been found free from corruption, while in all the corpses around them decomposition had long since begun. In the face of such facts vampirism cannot be dismissed as simply the product of heated and over-excited imaginations, although it must be admitted that its true nature is still to all intents and purposes a profound mystery. According to popular belief the unusual preservation of the corpses indicates that death has not yet obtained full dominion over the bodies, and that hence the soul has not yet departed to its eternal home. A kind of lower organic life, it is said, continues, and as long as this lasts, the soul wanders about, as in a dream, among the familiar scenes of its earthly life and makes itself known to the friends of its former existence. The life thus extended requires blood in order to sustain itself, and hence the minds of those who come in magic contact with the soul of a vampire, become filled with sanguinary thoughts, which present themselves to their imagination as the desire to suck blood and thus lead to the actual performance. The fact that vampirism is epidemic, like many similar mental diseases, has led to the belief that the living are brought into close connection with the dead and are infected by them, while in reality there is no bond between them but a common misfortune. Nor must it be forgotten that in this disease, as in the plague, the mere thought of being seized often suffices to cause death without any warning symptoms, and hence the great number of deaths in localities where vampirism has been thought to prevail. For very few of those who are attacked succeed in escaping, and if they survive they retain for life the marks left by their wounds. The penalty, moreover, is not always undeserved; vampirism rarely if ever attacks men of pure hearts and sober minds; it is found, on the contrary, exclusively among semi-barbarous nations and only in persons of rude, savage, and sinful disposition.
Traces of vampirism have been discovered in the most distant parts of the earth, and often without apparent connection. The "Bruholaks" of Greece, genuine vampires whose appearance was ascribed to the direct influence of the Evil One, may possibly have been imported by the numerous immigrants of Slavic origin (Huet, Penseés Diverses, Paris, 1722), but in Finland also the belief is, according to Castren, almost universal, that the spirits of the departed have the power to vex and torment persons in their sleep, and to afflict them with sorrow and disease. In the Sunda and Molucca islands genuine vampirism is well known, and the Dyaks of Borneo also believe in an evil spirit who sucks the blood of living persons till they expire.
Poland and Western Russia have, however, been for two centuries the stage on which most of these dread tragedies have occurred. Men and women were reported to have been seen in broad daylight sucking the blood of men and beasts, while in other cases dogs and even wolves were suspected of being upires or vampires, as blood-suckers are called in most Slavic dialects. The terror grew as these reports found their way into newspapers and journals, till fear drove men and women to resort to the familiar remedy of mixing blood with the meal used for their bread; they escaped not by any healing powers inherent in the horrid mixture, but thanks to the faith they had in the efficacy of the prescription and the moral courage exhibited in its application. To prevent the spreading of the epidemic the bodies of the vampires were disinterred, and when found bleeding, were decapitated or impaled or burned in public. In some parts of Hungary the disease appeared in the shape of a white spectre which pursued the patients; they declined visibly and died in a week or a fortnight. It was mainly in this country that physicians attending the disinterment of suspected bodies noticed the presence of more or less considerable quantities of blood, which was still fluid and actually caused the cheeks to look reddish. Some of the witnesses even thought they noticed an effort to breathe, faint pulsations, and a slight change of features; these were, however, evidently nothing more than the effects of currents of air which accompanied the opening of the coffin. It was here also that animals were first believed to have been attacked by vampires; cows were found early in the morning bleeding profusely from a wound at the neck, and horses standing in their stalls trembling, covered with white foam, and so thoroughly terrified as to become unfit for use.
Another period of excitement due to accounts of vampirism comprised the middle of last century, when all Europe was deeply agitated on the subject. The Emperor of Germany and other monarchs appointed committees of learned men to investigate the matter; theologians and skeptics, philosophers and physicians, took up the discussion, and hundreds of volumes were published on the mysterious question, but no satisfactory result was ever obtained. Many declared the whole a fable or merely the effect of diseased imaginations, others looked upon it as a malignant and epidemic disease, and not a few as the unmistakable work of the devil. Learned men searched the writings of antiquity, and soon found more traces of the fearful disease than they had expected. They discovered that in Thessaly, Epirus, and some parts of the Pieria, men were reported by ancient writers as wandering about at night and tearing all whom they met to pieces. The Lamiæ of the Greeks and the Strigæ of the Romans evidently belonged to the same category, while the later Tympanites of the Greeks were persons who had died while under the ban of the church and were therefore doomed to become vampires. The Slavic population of Moravia and Bohemia was in those days especially rich in instances of vampirism, and so many occurred in Hungary that the Emperor Charles IV. intrusted the investigation of the matter to a prince of Würtemberg, before whom a number of cases were fully authenticated. Men who had died years before, were seen to return to their former homes, some in the daytime, some at night, and the following morning those whom they had visited were found dead and weltering in their blood. In a single village seventeen persons died thus within three months, and in many instances, when bodies were disinterred, they were found looking quite alive. At this time the Sorbonne at Paris also took up the subject, but came to no conclusion, save that they disapproved of the practice of disinterring bodies, "because vampires, as cataleptics, might be restored to life by bleeding or magnetic treatment," according to the opinion of the learned Dr. Piérard. (Revue Spirit., iv.)
Here we come at last to the grain of truth around which this mass of popular superstition has gradually accumulated, and the ignorance of which has caused hundreds of innocent human beings to die a miserable death. There can be no doubt that cases of "suspended animation" or apparent death have alone given rise to the whole series of fearful tales of vampirism. The very words of a recital belonging to the times, and to the districts where vampirism was prevalent, prove the force of this supposition. Erasmus Francisci states that, in the duchy of Krain, a man was buried and then suspected of being a vampire. When disinterred his face was found rosy, and his features moved as if they attempted to smile; even his lips opened as if gasping for air. A crucifix was held before his eyes and a priest called out with a loud voice: "Peace! This is Jesus Christ who has rescued thy soul from the torment of hell, and suffered death for thee!" The sound seemed to penetrate to his ear, and slowly a few tears began to trickle down his cheeks. After a short prayer for his poor soul, his head was ordered to be cut off; a suppressed cry was heard, the body turned over as if still alive, and when the head was severed a quantity of blood ran into the grave. It was as clear a case of a living man who had been buried before death as has ever been authenticated. Nor are such cases as rare as is popularly believed. High authorities assure us that, for instance, after imperfect poisoning, in several kinds of suffocation, and in cases of new-born children who become suddenly chilled, a state of body is produced which presents all the symptoms of complete suspension of the functions of life. Such apparent death is, according to the same high medical authority, a period of complete rest, based upon a suspension of the activity of the heart, the lungs, and all spontaneous functions, extending frequently to the sense of touch, and the intellect even. At the same time the natural heat of the body sinks until it seems to have disappeared altogether. The duration of this exceptional state is uncertain, at times the patient awakes suddenly, and in full possession of all his faculties; in other cases external means have to be employed to restore life. Among many well-authenticated cases of this kind, two of special interest are mentioned by Dr. Mayo. Cardinal Espinosa, the minister of Philip II. of Spain, died after a short period of suffering. His rank required that he should be embalmed, and his body was opened for the purpose. At the moment when lung and heart were laid open to view, the surgeon observed that the latter was still beating, and the Cardinal, awaking, had actually strength enough to seize with his hand the knife of the operator. The other case is that of a well-known French writer, the Abbé Prévost, who fell down dead in the forest of Chantilly. His apparently lifeless body was found, and carried to a priest's house in the neighborhood. The surgeon ascribed his death to apoplexy; but the authorities ordered a kind of coroner's inquest, and the body was opened. During the operation the Abbé suddenly uttered a cry of anguish—but it was too late!
If a certain number of such cases of apparent death has really given rise to the faith in vampirism, then it is equally possible to suppose, that this kind of trance—for which there may exist a special predisposition in one or the other race—may become at times epidemic. Persons of peculiar nervousness will be ready to be affected, and a locality in which this has occurred may soon obtain an unenviable reputation. Even where the epidemic does not appear in full force, a disturbed state of the nervous system will be apt to lead to dreams by night, and to gossip in the daytime, on the fatally attractive subject, and the patient will soon dream, or really imagine, that a person who has died of the disease has appeared to him by night, and drawn his strength from him, or, in his excited fancy, sucked his life's blood. By such means even the popular way of speaking of nocturnal visits made by the "vampire's ghost" is not so entirely unfounded as would appear at first sight, and the superstition is easily shown to be not altogether absurd, but to be based upon a small substructure of actual truth.
It is remarkable, however, that the Germanic race has never furnished any instances of vampirism, although their ancient faith in a Walhalla, where their departed heroes feast sumptuously, and their custom to place food in the graves of their friends would have seemed most likely to reconcile them to the idea that men continue to live in their graves.
How sadly persistent, on the other hand, such superstitions are among the lower races, and in specially ignorant communities, may be gathered from the fact that, as late as 1861, two corpses were disinterred by the peasants of a village of Galicia, and decapitated. The people believed them to be vampires, and to have caused a long-protracted spell of bad weather!