The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.Calmet, Augustin
Religion
The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.
Calmet, Augustin
Apparitions; Demonology; Spirits
A relation of this same officer has written me word, the 17th of
October, 1746, that his brother, who has served during twenty years in
Hungary, and has very curiously examined into everything which is said
there concerning ghosts, acknowledges that the people of that country
are more credulous and superstitious than other nations, and they
attribute the maladies which happen to them to spells. That as soon as
they suspect a dead person of having sent them this illness, they
inform the magistrate of it, who, on the deposition of some witnesses,
causes the dead body to be exhumed. They cut off the head with a
spade, and if a drop of blood comes from it, they conclude that it is
the blood which he has sucked from the sick person. But the person who
writes appears to me very far from believing what is thought of these
things in that country.
At Warsaw, a priest having ordered a saddler to make him a bridle for
his horse, died before the bridle was made, and as he was one of those
whom they call vampires in Poland, he came out of his grave dressed as
the ecclesiastics usually are when inhumed, took his horse from the
stable, mounted it, and went in the sight of all Warsaw to the
saddler's shop, where at first he found only the saddler's wife, who
was frightened, and called her husband; he came, and the priest having
asked for his bridle, he replied, "But you are dead, Mr. Cure." To
which he answered, "I am going to show you I am not," and at the same
time struck him so hard that the poor saddler died a few days after,
and the priest returned to his grave.
The steward of Count Simon Labienski, starost of Posnania, being dead,
the Countess Dowager de Labienski wished, from gratitude for his
services, to have him inhumed in the vault of the lords of that
family. This was done; and some time after, the sexton, who had the
care of the vault, perceived that there was some derangement in the
place, and gave notice of it to the ________, who desired, according to
the received custom in Poland, that the steward's head might be cut
off, which was done in the presence of several persons, and amongst
others of the Sieur Jouvinski, a Polish officer, and governor of the
young Count Simon Labienski, who saw that when the sexton took this
corpse out of his tomb to cut off his head, he ground his teeth, and
the blood came from him as fluidly as that of a person who died a
violent death, which caused the hair of all those who were present to
stand on end; and they dipped a white pocket-handkerchief in the blood
of this corpse, and made all the family drink some of the blood, that
they might not be tormented.
CHAPTER XVI.
PRETENDED VESTIGES OF VAMPIRISM IN ANTIQUITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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