Vampirological Testimony

Leo Allaci reveals: “Such bodies do not like other corpses suffer decomposition after burial nor fall to dust, but having, so it seems, skin of extreme toughness become swollen and distended. … It is taken out of the grave, the priests recite the appointed prayers, and it is thrown on to a fiercely blazing pyre. Before the orisons are finished skin will desquamate and the members fall apart, when the whole body is utterly consumed to ashes.”

~ De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus, 1645.

John Heinrich Zopfius affirms: “Vampires issue forth from their graves in the night, attack people sleeping quietly in their beds, such out all their blood from their bodies and destroy them. … Those who are destroyed by them, after their death, become vampires. … Sometimes the body is dug out of the grave and burnt to ashes; upon which all disturbances cease.”

~ Dissertatio de Vampiris Serviensibus, 1733.

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort states: “The blood of the unfortunate person was abnormally scarlet, while yet others declared that the flesh was still warm, whence it was concluded that the deceased person was seriously wrong in not being properly dead.”

~ Relations d’un Voyage du Levant, 1741.

Augustin Dom Calmet reports: “The name given to these ghosts is Oupires, or Vampires, that is to say, bloodsuckers, and the particulars which are related of them are so singular, so detailed, accompanied with circumstances so probable and so likely, as well as with the most weighty and well-attested legal deposition, that it seems impossible not to subscribe to the belief which prevails in these countries that these apparitions do actually come forth from their graves and that they are able to produce the terrible effects which are so widely and so positively attributed to them.”

~ Traité sur les Apparitions des Espirits, et sur les Vampires, 1746.

Emily Gerard informs: “Every person killed by a vampire becomes likewise a vampire after death and will continue to suck the blood of innocent persons ‘til the spirit has been exorcised by opening the grave of the suspected person and driving a stake through the corpse.”

~ The Land Beyond the Forest, 1888.

Montague Summers suggests: “When the stake has been thrust with one drive through the vampire’s heart his head should be cut off, and this be done with the sharp edge of a sexton’s spade … [and] to burn the body … generally acknowledged to be by far the supremely efficacious method of ridding a district of this demoniacal pest.

~ The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, 1928.

James Frazer advises: “Cut off the head and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic; or … extract the heart and burn it, strewing the ashes over the grave.”

~ The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religions, 1934.

Peter Underwood recalls: “The oldest part of Highgate Cemetery has long been reputed to harbour a vampire. … Alleged sightings of a vampire-like creature ~ a grey spectre ~ lurking among the graves and tombstones have resulted in many ‘vampire hunts’; some of which landed those taking part in the hands of the police. In 1968, I heard first-hand of such a sighting … a dark figure flit among the catacombs and disappear[ed] into a huge vault … a trail of drops of blood stopped at an area of massive coffins which could have hidden a dozen vampires. … One man told me that he had seen ‘something’ emerge from a coffin inside a vault and then disappear and a moment later his companions, outside the vault, had seen a figure materialise.”

~ The Vampire’s Bedside Companion, 1975.

Jean Marigny observes: “Well before the 18^th century, the epoch when the word ‘vampire’ first appeared, people believed in Europe that the dead were able to rise from their graves to suck the blood of the living. … The oldest of these chronicles date from the 12^th and 13^th centuries and, contrary to what one might expect, are not set in remote parts of Europe, but in England and Scotland.”

~ La Tradition Legendaire du Vampire en Europe, 1987.

Elizabeth Wojdyla recounts: “[In early 1967] my friend and I were coming down from Highgate Village. … We were not talking, just walking. And we were walking down, having just passed the north gate, when we both saw this scene of graves directly in front of us. And the graves were opening up; and the people were rising.”

~ Quoted in The Highgate Vampire, editions 1985 & 1991.

Devendra P Varma warns: “Tales of a malignant spectre doomed to wander the cemetery precincts when dusk descends, started to circulate and merge with an earlier legend which pre-dated the graveyard. Something evil held sway in Highgate when on cloudy, windswept heights, the rustle in overhanging branches engendered fears of the shadowy unknown; when, in the eerie, haunted cemetery, near a huge vault, drops of blood were discovered. Reports of sinister and strange happenings accumulated.”

~ Foreword to The Highgate Vampire, 1991.

Seán Manchester confirms: “A nightmare in which the door between us and another world was almost ripped off its hinges. … I stepped forward and, with heart pounding, raised the massive lid. My torch instantly lit up in unnerving revelation the sleeping form that appeared to be dead; a form gorged and stinking with the life-blood of others, fresh clots of which still adhered to the edge of the mouth whose fetid breath made me sick to my stomach. The glazed eyes stared horribly … [and] under the parchment-like skin a faint bluish tinge could be detected … the mouth appeared to be set in a snarl, revealing long, sharp teeth where lodged gouts of discolouring blood. The others joined my horrified gaze and a deep shudder passed through us all.”

~ The Highgate Vampire, editions 1985 & 1991.

Seán Manchester recommends: “Impalation with a wooden stake through the heart, causing the organ which ingests blood to explode and thereby disrupt its function to invigorate the corporeal form, is the second most potent method of exorcism, next to cremation. The stake … must be driven through with one blow. … There is no stronger defence against the snares and onslaughts of this unspeakable evil that the Most Holy Sacrament, the Host, which should be handled by a person in holy orders where possible. The invocation of the Lord’s Most Holy Name disarms and crushes the devil. … The crucifix, properly blessed, is a means of protection against vampires. Holy relics, exposed with lights and all due ceremonies for veneration, are efficacious in the extreme. Holy water, too, can be employed as a protective measure.”

~ The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, 1997.

Nota Bene:

The Saxon law that was introduced for the disinterment of suspected vampire graves, allowing any such bloodsuckers discovered therein to be legitimately transfixed with a wooden stake, was repealed in England in 1823. The Vampire Research Society does not countenance impalements without legal authority in consecrated burial grounds. Hence when the VRS president discovered an undead in a mausoleum at a cemetery in 1970, having gained permission from the owners to enter and offer a spoken exorcism, he desisted from employing the traditional stake. When discovery was made in early 1974 of a vampire within the bowels of a derelict mansion, however, he impaled and cremated it.