Vampires and Vampirism

by Dudley Wright

It was held possible to discover, by means of these signs, the crime for which, as well as the person on whom, the judgment had been pronounced. One horrible result of this ghastly superstition was the custom which was at one time prevalent among the Greeks of Salonica, as well as the Bulgarians in the centre of European Turkey, and other nations, of disinterring indiscriminately the bodies of the dead after they had been buried for twelve months, in order to ascertain from the condition of the remains whether the souls were in heaven or hell, or perambulating the neighbourhood as vampires.

This assumed ecclesiastical power acted occasionally, however, injuriously on the clergy themselves. There is on record one instance where a priest was killed in revenge for the death of a man whose illness was attributed to the sentence of excommunication that had been passed upon him. On another occasion a bishop of some diocese in Morea was robbed by a band of brigands as he was passing through a portion of the Maniate territory. When the deed was done the mountaineers bethought themselves that the bishop would, in all probability, excommunicate them as soon as he reached a place of safety. They saw no means of averting this, to them, dreadful calamity, except by the committal of a further and more heinous crime; and so they set out in pursuit of the unfortunate bishop, whom they eventually overtook and murdered.

Many years ago a Greek of Keramia complained to the Pasha of Khania that the papás of his village had excommunicated him and so been the indirect cause of his having been bewitched. The Pasha sent for the priest, threw him into prison, and only released him upon payment of a fine of 300 piastres.

During a local war a native of Theriso was taken ill: the cry went up: “It is an aphorismos.” The papás was accused, reviled, and threatened with murder unless the curse was removed; but the man continued to get worse, and eventually died. So firm was the belief of everyone in the neighbourhood that the ban had caused the man’s death that some of his companions regarded it as a duty to avenge his fate, and, in consequence, they sought out the priest and shot him.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Metropolitan of Larissa was informed that a papás had disinterred two bodies and thrown them into the Haliæmon on pretence of their being vrukólakas. Upon being summoned before the bishop the priest admitted the truth of the accusation, and justified his act by saying that a report had been current that a large animal, accompanied with flames, had been seen to issue from the grave in which these two bodies had been buried. The bishop fined the priest 250 piastres, and sent a proclamation throughout the diocese that, in future, similar offences would be punished with double that fine and be accompanied with loss of position.

Martin Crusius tells the following curious story. There were about the court of Mahomet II. a number of men learned in Greek and Arabic literature, who had investigated a variety of points connected with the Christian faith. They informed the Sultan that the bodies of persons excommunicated by the Greek clergy did not decompose, and when he inquired whether the effect of absolution was to dissolve them, he was answered in the affirmative. Upon this, he sent orders to Maximus, the Patriarch of that period, to produce a case by which the truth of the statement might be tested. The Patriarch convened his clergy in great trepidation, and after long deliberation they ascertained that a woman had been excommunicated by the previous Patriarch for the commission of grievous sins. They ascertained the whereabouts of her grave, and when they had opened it they found that the corpse was entire, but swollen out like a drum. When the news of this reached the Sultan, he despatched some of his officers to possess themselves of the body, which they did, and deposited it in a safe place. On an appointed day the liturgy was said over it and the Patriarch recited the absolution in the presence of the officials. As this was being done—wonderful to relate!—the bones were heard to rattle as they fell apart in the coffin, and at the same time, the narrator adds, the woman’s soul was also freed from the punishment to which it had been condemned. The courtiers at once ran and informed the Sultan, who was astonished at the miracle, and exclaimed: “Of a surety the Christian religion is true.” Calmet also relates this story, and adds that the body was found to be entirely black and much swollen; that it was placed in a chest under the Emperor’s seal, which chest was not opened until three days after the absolution had been pronounced, when the body was seen to be reduced to ashes.

During the long war between the Christians and Mohammedans in the island of Crete, it became a matter of astonishment that ravages caused by vampires were no longer the subject of conversation. “How can it be, when the number of deaths is so great, that none of those that die become katakhanás?” was the question asked, to be met with the answer: “No one ever becomes a katakhaná if he dies in time of war.”

Leo Allatius also relates that he was told by Athanasius, Metropolitan of Imbros, that, on one occasion, being earnestly entreated to pronounce the absolution over a number of corpses that had long remained undecomposed, he consented to do so, and before the recitation was concluded they all fell away into ashes.

Rycaut relates a similar occurrence, to which he appends the following remark: “This story I should not have judged worth relating, but that I heard it from the mouth of a grave person who says that his own eyes were witnesses thereof.”