The bodies of vampires, when dug up, presented a perfectly natural appearance; and, even in those cases where the scarfskin peeled off, a new skin was found underneath, and new nails formed on the fingers. The vital blood was found in the heart, lungs, and viscera, exhibiting the conditions of perfect health. How the vampire got out of his grave, without scratching a hole, does not appear.
Thus we find, in modern vampirism, a strange compound of ancient superstition with well-known scientific truths. The vampire is the counterpart of the ancient ghoul, with the simple transfer of the habits of the vampire-bat to its identity. These are then connected with the fact, well known to the medical profession, that persons have been buried, supposed to be dead, who, in reality, had only fallen into what is called the death-trance; and who, had they been left above ground for a sufficient period, would have probably resuscitated of themselves. That they have done so after burial, is a familiar fact; since bodies exhumed, long after, have been found to have changed their position in the coffin. How long bodies, thus inconsiderately buried, retain a resemblance to the normal conditions of life, has not been fully ascertained.
We have here the historical origin of what is called vampirism; but there are certain phenomena of this fearful infection, closely resembling those which we have attributed to the Spiritual Vampire.
Vampirism is clearly a disease of the nervous system; it being first excited through the imagination of ignorance and superstition. The nerves, then affected through the odic medium, lose their balance, and the mind constantly playing within the circle of the one thought of horror, a rapid and premature decline is the immediate consequence.
The infection of which the victim died remaining still within the odic medium of the sphere it occupied, passes into the nerves of others, who die also; and thus the disease spreads like any other epidemic. But mark—whence the true origin of this superstition of the ghoul and the vampire, so universal in the world? Is it not that mankind, everywhere, has felt, with an unconscious shuddering, the presence of the spiritual vampire? The instincts of the masses have, in their superstitions, foreshadowed all the great discoveries of science. Has it not been, that they have felt the hideous incubus always; but not being able, through any connected series of observations, to discover the real cause of their dread and suffering, have given its nearly identical attributes a “local habitation and a name” among their superstitions?
What we have termed the Spiritual Vampire, is a scientific fact—we believe as much so as the bat-vampire; and that it feeds, not alone upon the living, but upon the spiritually dead; that originally, so far as its spiritual entity is concerned, it too comes forth from its sensual charnal to feed upon the soul-blood of mankind. This may seem a horrible picture, but we cannot consent to withdraw it. These records were made under a sense of duty to mankind; and if they should ever see the light, it must be as they have been written. We dare not reveal all that we know of this thing—we can only venture to say enough to arouse men in amazement, at the realisation of what they have always known and felt to exist, without having expressed it. No mortal mind could have conceived such possibilities, even in hell, much less in actual life.
Amidst the profound securities of the best-ordered households in the world, unless a strict eye be had to such facts and phenomena as we have adverted to and shall describe, the most insidious and fatal corruptions of the bodies and souls of your children, your wives, and your sisters, may creep in, while there is no dream of wrong or danger. If we shock you, it is to put you somewhat upon your guard against the many evils, concealed under the apparent harmless approaches of the viciously-purposed manipulator, or the covert practiser upon the odic or sympathetic vitality of the pure and unsuspecting.—We will abide the issue.
Milton clearly had vampirism in his thought when he wrote—
“Clotted by contagion,
Imbodied and imbruited, till quite lost