Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein / With an Account of Mesmerism

by Herbert Mayo

In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager desire to learn, as you phrase it, “all about Vampyrs, if there ever were such things.” I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, although by so doing I interrupt the logical order of my communications. It is, perhaps, all the better. The proper place of this subject falls in the midst of a philosophical disquisition; and it would have been a pity not to present it to you in its pristine colouring. But how came your late tutor, Mr. H., to leave you in ignorance upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys much your juniors entertained decided opinions?

Were there ever such things as Vampyrs? Tantamne rem tam negligenter! I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings whose existence you have ventured to consider problematical.

“A Vampyr is a dead body which continues to live in the grave; which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition, instead of being decomposed like other dead bodies.”

Upon my word, you really deserve, since Mr. George Combe has clearly shown, in his admirable work on the Constitution of Man, and its adaptation to the surrounding world, that ignorance is a statutable crime before nature, and punished by the laws of Providence—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr. H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a Vampyr. Your skepticism will abate pretty considerably when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye—when you are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and nearer approach—when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision in your jugular, preparatory to his commencing his plain but nutritive repast.

You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all for the moment; for Fischer informs us that the bite of a Vampyr leaves in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, “it (the bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal,” unless the bitten person protect himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the Vampyr, and smearing himself with his blood. Unfortunately, indeed, these measures are seldom, if ever, of more than temporary use. Fischer adds, “if through these precautions the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he ends with becoming a Vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies and is buried, but continues to lead a Vampyr life in the grave, nourishing himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating Vampyrism.”

This is no romancer’s dream. It is a succinct account of a superstition which to this day services in the east of Europe, where little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that period Vampyrism spread like a pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing numerous deaths, and disturbing all the land with fear of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt himself secure.

Here is something like a good, solid, practical popular delusion. Do I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matter of history: the people died like rotted sheep; and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would still be worth examining. But there is more in it than that, as the following o’er true tale will convince you, the essential points of which are authenticated by documentary evidence.

In the spring of 1727, there returned from the Levant to the village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase a cottage and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he gave out that he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word. Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must have encountered the rough as well as the smooth of life, and have mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his naturally good disposition and honest principles had preserved him unscathed in the scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts expressed by his neighbours as they discussed his return and settlement among them in the Stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits and steady conduct, argue their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something occasionally noticeable in his ways—a look and tone that betrayed inward disquiet. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his pretty neighbour Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence, as you could have seen in all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and transparent spring of her thoughts. Why, then, did Arnod shrink from meeting her? He was young; had a little property; had health and industry; and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care? But he did so; yet less and less resolutely, for he felt the charm of her presence. Who could have done otherwise? And how could he long resist—he didn’t—the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who often sought to cheer his fits of depression?

And they were to be united—were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom would fitfully overcast his countenance, even in the sunshine of those hours.

“What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? It cannot be on my account, I know, for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that, I think,” (and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheeks,) “surely first made me notice you.”