If these persons believe nothing of all that is related of the apparition, the return, and the actions of vampires, they lose their time very uselessly in proposing systems and forming arguments to explain what exists only in the imagination of certain prejudiced persons struck with an idea; but, if all that is related, or at least a part, is true, these systems and these arguments will not easily satisfy those minds which desire proofs far more weighty than those.
Let us see, then, if the system which asserts that these vampires are not really dead is well founded. It is certain that death consists in the separation of the soul from the body, and that neither the one nor the other perishes, nor is annihilated by death; that the soul is immortal, and that the body destitute of its soul, still remains entire, and becomes only in part corrupt, sometimes in a few days, and sometimes in a longer space of time; sometimes even it remains uncorrupted during many years or even ages, either by reason of a good constitution, as in Hector[[584]] and Alexander the Great, whose bodies remained several days undecayed;[[585]] or by means of the art of embalming; or lastly, owing to the nature of the earth in which they are interred, which has the power of drying up the radical humidity and the principles of corruption. I do not stop to prove all these things, which besides are very well known.
Sometimes the body, without being dead and forsaken by its reasonable soul, remains as if dead and motionless, or at least with so slow a motion and such feeble respiration, that it is almost imperceptible, as it happens in faintings, swoons, in certain disorders very common amongst women, in trances—as we remarked in the case of Pretextat, priest of Calame; we have also reported more than one instance, considered dead and buried as such; I may add that of the Abbé Salin, prior of St. Christopher,[[586]] who being in his coffin, and about to be interred, was resuscitated by some of his friends, who made him swallow a glass of champagne.
Several instances of the same kind are related.[[587]] In the "Causes Célèbres," they make mention of a girl who became enceinte during a long swoon; we have already noticed this. Pliny cites[[588]] a great number of instances of persons who have been thought dead, and who have come to life again, and lived for a long time. He mentions a young man, who having fallen asleep in a cavern, remained there forty years without waking. Our historians[[589]] speak of the seven sleepers, who slept for 150 years, from the year of Christ 253 to 403. It is said that the philosopher Epimenides slept in a cavern during fifty-seven years, or according to others, forty-seven, or only forty years; for the ancients do not agree concerning the number of years; they even affirm, that this philosopher had the power to detach his soul from his body, and recall it when he pleased. The same thing is related of Aristæus of Proconnesus. I am willing to allow that that is fabulous; but we cannot gainsay the truth of several other stories of persons who have come to life again, after having appeared dead for three, four, five, six, and seven days. Pliny acknowledges that there are several instances of dead people who have appeared after they were interred; but he will not mention them more particularly, because, he says, he relates only natural things and not prodigies—"Post sepulturam quoque visorum exempla sunt, nisi quod naturæ opera non prodigia sectamur." We believe that Enoch and Elijah are still living. Several have thought that St. John the Evangelist was not dead,[[590]] but that he is still alive in his tomb.
Plato and St. Clement of Alexandria[[591]] relate, that the son of Zoroaster was resuscitated twelve days after his (supposed) death, and when his body had been laid upon the funeral pyre. Phlegon says,[[592]] that a Syrian soldier in the army of Antiochus, after having been killed at Thermopylæ, appeared in open day in the Roman camp, and spoke to several. And Plutarch relates,[[593]] that a man named Thespesius, who had fallen from the roof of a house, came to himself the third day after he died (or seemed to die) of his fall.
St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians,[[594]] seems to suppose that sometimes the soul transported itself without the body, to repair to the spot where it is in mind or thought; for instance, he says, that he has been transported to the third heaven; but he adds that he knows not whether in the body, or only in spirit—"Sive in corpora, sive extra corpus, nescio, Deus scit." We have already cited St. Augustine,[[595]] who mentions a priest of Calamus, named Pretextat, who, at the sound of the voices of some persons who lamented their sins, fell into such an ecstasy of delight, that he no longer breathed or felt anything; and they might have cut and burnt his flesh without his perceiving it; his soul was absent, or really so occupied with these lamentations, that he was insensible to pain. In swoons and syncope, the soul no longer performs her ordinary functions. She is nevertheless in the body, and continues to animate it, but she perceives not her own action.
A curé of the Diocese of Constance, named Bayer, writes me word that in 1728, having been appointed to the curé of Rutheim, he was disturbed a month afterwards by a spectre, or an evil genius, in the form of a peasant, badly made, and ill-dressed, very ill-looking, and stinking insupportably, who came and knocked at the door in an insolent manner, and having entered his study told him that he had been sent by an official of the Prince of Constance, his bishop, upon a certain commission which was found to be absolutely false. He then asked for something to eat, and they placed before him meat, bread, and wine. He took up the meat with both hands, and devoured it bones and all, saying, "See how I eat both flesh and bone—do the same." Then he took up the wine-cup, and swallowed it at a draught, asking for another, which he drank off in the same fashion. After that he withdrew, without bidding the curé good-bye; and the servant who showed him to the door having asked his name, he replied, "I was born at Rutsingen, and my name is George Raulin," which was false. As he was going down stairs he said to the curé in German, in a menacing tone, "I will show you who I am."
He passed all the rest of the day in the village, showing himself to everybody. Towards midnight he returned to the curé's door, crying out three times in a terrible voice, "Monsieur Bayer!" and adding, "I will let you know who I am." In fact, during three years he returned every day towards four o'clock in the afternoon, and every night till dawn of day. He appeared in different forms, sometimes like a water-dog, sometimes as a lion, or some other terrible animal; sometimes in the shape of a man, or a girl, when the curé was at table, or in bed, enticing him to lasciviousness. Sometimes he made an uproar in the house, like a cooper putting hoops on his casks; then again you might have thought he wanted to throw the house down by the noise he made in it. To have witnesses to all this, the curé often sent for the beadle and other personages of the village to bear testimony to it. The spectre emitted, wherever he showed himself, an insupportable stench.
At last the curé had recourse to exorcisms, but they produced no effect. And as they despaired almost of being delivered from these vexations, he was advised, at the end of the third year, to provide himself with a holy branch on Palm Sunday, and also with a sword sprinkled with holy water, and to make use of it against the spectre. He did so once or twice, and from that time he was no more molested. This is attested by a Capuchin monk, witness of the greater part of these things, the 29th of August, 1749.
I will not guarantee the truth of all these circumstances; the judicious reader will make what induction he pleases from them. If they are true, here is a real ghost, who eats, drinks, and speaks, and gives tokens of his presence for three whole years, without any appearance of religion. Here follows another instance of a ghost who manifested himself by actions alone.