Read Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories for Free Online
Authors: Michael Sims
what I have seen with my own eyes on this subject.
Singular Instance of a Hungarian Ghost
T HE MOST REMARKABLE INSTANCE cited by Rauff is that of one Peter Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary, called Kisolova. This man appeared by night to some of the inhabitants of the village while they were asleep, and grasped their throat so tightly that in four-and-twenty hours it caused their death. Nine persons, young and old, perished thus in the course of eight days.
The widow of the same Plogojovitz declared that her husband since his death had come and asked her for his shoes, which frightened her so much that she left Kisolova to retire to some other spot.
From these circumstances the inhabitants of the village determined upon disinterring the body of Plogojovitz and burning it, to deliver themselves from these visitations. They applied to the emperor’s officer, who commanded in the territory of Gradiska, in Hungary, and even to the curé of the same place, for permission to exhume the body of Peter Plogojovitz. The officer and the curé made much demur in granting this permission, but the peasants declared that if they were refused permission to disinter the body of this man, whom they had no doubt was a true vampire (for so they called these revived corpses), they should be obliged to forsake the village, and go where they could.
The emperor’s officer, who wrote this account, seeing he could hinder them neither by threats nor promises, went with the curé of Gradiska to the village of Kisolova, and having caused Peter Plogojovitz to be exhumed, they found that his body exhaled no bad smell; that he looked as when alive, except the tip of the nose; that his hair and beard had grown, and instead of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had come; that under his upper skin, which appeared whitish, there appeared a new one, which looked healthy, and of a natural color; his feet and hands were as whole as could be desired in a living man. They remarked also in his mouth some fresh blood, which these people believed that this vampire had sucked from the men whose death he had occasioned.
The emperor’s officer and the curé having diligently examined all these things, and the people who were present feeling their indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a sharp-pointed stake, which they thrust into his breast, whence there issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the nose and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which decency does not allow us to mention. After this the peasants placed the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced to ashes.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
(1788–1824)
D ESPITE THE SUPERSTITIOUS MANIA recorded in Augustin Calmet’s Phantom World , Europe in the seventeenth century had slowly changed. Philosophers such as Francis Bacon and René Descartes formulated a new approach to what would come to be called science; the Royal Society encouraged attention to the world beyond illuminated manuscripts; Hobbes and Locke and company lay the groundwork for vast political change. In an influential swing of the Western cultural pendulum—the Romantic backlash against the Enlightenment—many people objected to evidence-based thinking as arid and godless, and worried that science was fumigating all the fun out of the world. Not that Romanticism was by any means a rejection of all things scientific; the schoolboy Shelley was notorious for his reckless experiments with electricity and magnetism. But the Romantics definitely tried to restore wonder and mystery to their world, and they enthusiastically welcomed vampire folklore into their moody writings.
In 1815, a volcano called Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Its crown exploded in the largest and most dramatic eruption in history, flinging countless tons of volcanic
Singular Instance of a Hungarian Ghost
T HE MOST REMARKABLE INSTANCE cited by Rauff is that of one Peter Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary, called Kisolova. This man appeared by night to some of the inhabitants of the village while they were asleep, and grasped their throat so tightly that in four-and-twenty hours it caused their death. Nine persons, young and old, perished thus in the course of eight days.
The widow of the same Plogojovitz declared that her husband since his death had come and asked her for his shoes, which frightened her so much that she left Kisolova to retire to some other spot.
From these circumstances the inhabitants of the village determined upon disinterring the body of Plogojovitz and burning it, to deliver themselves from these visitations. They applied to the emperor’s officer, who commanded in the territory of Gradiska, in Hungary, and even to the curé of the same place, for permission to exhume the body of Peter Plogojovitz. The officer and the curé made much demur in granting this permission, but the peasants declared that if they were refused permission to disinter the body of this man, whom they had no doubt was a true vampire (for so they called these revived corpses), they should be obliged to forsake the village, and go where they could.
The emperor’s officer, who wrote this account, seeing he could hinder them neither by threats nor promises, went with the curé of Gradiska to the village of Kisolova, and having caused Peter Plogojovitz to be exhumed, they found that his body exhaled no bad smell; that he looked as when alive, except the tip of the nose; that his hair and beard had grown, and instead of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had come; that under his upper skin, which appeared whitish, there appeared a new one, which looked healthy, and of a natural color; his feet and hands were as whole as could be desired in a living man. They remarked also in his mouth some fresh blood, which these people believed that this vampire had sucked from the men whose death he had occasioned.
The emperor’s officer and the curé having diligently examined all these things, and the people who were present feeling their indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a sharp-pointed stake, which they thrust into his breast, whence there issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the nose and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which decency does not allow us to mention. After this the peasants placed the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced to ashes.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
(1788–1824)
D ESPITE THE SUPERSTITIOUS MANIA recorded in Augustin Calmet’s Phantom World , Europe in the seventeenth century had slowly changed. Philosophers such as Francis Bacon and René Descartes formulated a new approach to what would come to be called science; the Royal Society encouraged attention to the world beyond illuminated manuscripts; Hobbes and Locke and company lay the groundwork for vast political change. In an influential swing of the Western cultural pendulum—the Romantic backlash against the Enlightenment—many people objected to evidence-based thinking as arid and godless, and worried that science was fumigating all the fun out of the world. Not that Romanticism was by any means a rejection of all things scientific; the schoolboy Shelley was notorious for his reckless experiments with electricity and magnetism. But the Romantics definitely tried to restore wonder and mystery to their world, and they enthusiastically welcomed vampire folklore into their moody writings.
In 1815, a volcano called Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Its crown exploded in the largest and most dramatic eruption in history, flinging countless tons of volcanic
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