“He caused a third to be burned who had been buried more than sixteen
years and had sucked the blood and caused the death of two of his sons.
The commissary having made his report to the general officers, was
deputed to the Emperor, who commanded that some officers both of war and
of justice, some physicians and surgeons and some learned men should be
sent to examine the causes of these extraordinary events. The person who
related these particulars to us had heard them from the Count de Cabreras
at Fribourg in 1730.”
Raufft tells the story of a man named “Peter Plogojowitz, an inhabitant
of a village in Hungary called Kisolova, who, after he had been buried
more than ten years, appeared by night to several persons in the village,
while they were asleep, and squeezed their throats in such a manner
that they expired within twenty-four hours. There died in this way no
less than nine persons in eight days; and the widow of this Plogojowitz
deposed that she herself had been visited by him since his death, and
that his errand was to demand his shoes; which frightened her so much
that she at once left Kisolova and went to live somewhere else.
“These circumstances determined the inhabitants of the village to dig
up the body of Plogojowitz and burn it, in order to put a stop to such
troublesome visits. Accordingly they applied to the commanding officer
of the Emperor’s troops in the district of Gradisca, in the kingdom of
Hungary, and to the incumbent of the place, for leave to dig up the
corpse. They both made a great many scruples about granting it; but the
peasants declared plainly that if they were not permitted to dig up this
accursed carcase, which they were fully convinced was a vampire, they
would be forced to leave the village and settle where they could.
“The officer who gave this account, seeing that there was no hindering
them either by fair means or foul, came in person, accompanied by the
minister of Gradisca, to Kisolova, and they were both present at the
digging up of the corpse, which they found to be free from any bad smell,
and perfectly sound, as if it had been alive, except that the tip of
the nose was a little dry and withered. The beard and hair were grown
fresh and a new set of nails had sprung up in the room of the old ones
that had fallen off. Under the former skin, which looked pale and dead,
there appeared a new one, of a natural fresh colour; and the hands and
feet were as entire as if they belonged to a person in perfect health.
They observed also that the mouth of the vampire was full of fresh blood,
which the people were persuaded had been sucked by him from the persons
he had killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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