Voltaire was surprised that in the enlightened eighteenth century there should still be people found who believed in the reality of vampires, and that the doctors of the Sorbonne should give their imprimatur to a dissertation on these unpleasant creatures. Yet from 1730 to 1735 the subject of vampirism formed a principal topic of conversation, and may be said to have been a mania all over the world, with Europe as a particular centre. Pamphlets on the subject streamed from the press, the newspapers vied with one another in recording fresh achievements of the spectres, and though the philosophers scoffed at and ridiculed the belief, yet sovereigns sent officers and commissioners to report upon their misdeeds. The favourite scenes of their exploits were Hungary, Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, and in those countries a vampire haunted and tormented almost every village.

In some parts of Scandinavia a singular method was adopted for getting rid of vampires, viz. by instituting judicial proceedings against them. Inhabitants were regularly summoned to attend the inquest; a tribunal was constituted; charges were preferred with the usual legal formalities, accusing them of molesting the houses and introducing death among the inhabitants; and at the end of the proceedings judgment was proclaimed. The priest then entered with holy water, Mass was celebrated, and it was held that complete conquest had been gained over the goblins.

Sir Walter Scott, in his translation of Eyrbyggia Saga, relates a traditional story of several vampires who committed dreadful ravages in Iceland in the year 1000, so that in a household of thirty servants no less than eighteen died.

Saxo Grammaticus, the earliest chronicler and writer upon Danish history and folk-lore, in his Danish History (book i.), dealing with the origin of the Danes, relates the following story:—

One Mith-othin, who was famous for his juggling tricks, was quickened, as though by an inspiration from on High, to seize the opportunity of feigning to be a god; and, wrapping the minds of the barbarians in fresh darkness, he led them by the renown of his jugglings to pay holy observance to his name. He said that the wrath of the gods could never be appeased nor the outrage to their deity expiated by mixed and indiscriminate sacrifices, and, therefore, forbade that prayers for this end should be put up without distinction, appointing to each of those above his especial drink-offering. But when Odin was returning, he cast away all help of jugglings, went to Finland to hide himself, and was there attacked and slain by the inhabitants. Even in his death his abominations were made manifest, for those who came nigh his barrow were cut off by a kind of sudden death; and, after his end, he spread such pestilence that he seemed almost to leave a filthier record in his death than in his life; it was as though he would extort from the guilty a punishment for his slaughter. The inhabitants being in this trouble, took the body out of the mound, beheaded it, and impaled it through the breast with a sharp stake, and herein that people found relief.

In book ii. we have the story of Aswid and Asmund. Aswid died and was buried with horse and dog. Asmund died and was buried with his friend, food being put in for him to eat. Later on the grave opened, when Asmund appeared and said: “By some strange enterprise of the power of hell the spirit of Aswid was sent up from the nether world, and with cruel tooth eats the fleet-footed (horse) and has given his dog to his abominable jaws. Not sated with devouring the horse or hound, he soon turned his swift nails upon me, tearing my cheek and taking off my ear. Hence the hideous sight of my slashed countenance, the blood spurts in the ugly wound. Yet the bringer of horrors did it not unscathed; for soon I cut off his head with my steel, and impaled his guilty carcase with a stake.”

In Malaysia the vampires are mostly females, and are credited with a great fondness for fish. They are known as Langsuirs, and Skeat, in Malay Magic, gives the following charm for “laying” a Langsuir:—

Abercromby, in his work on the Finns, says that the Ceremis imagine that the spirits that cause illness, especially fever and ague, are continually recruited on the death of old maids, murderers, and those that die a violent death. Whenever anyone becomes dangerously ill, the Lapps feel sure that one of his deceased relatives wants his company in the region of the dead, either from affection or to punish him for some trespass. The Truks of Altai have a similar belief. The soul after death willingly lingers for some time in the house and leaves it unwillingly, and often takes with it some other members of the family or some of the cattle.

Codrington, in his descriptive work on the Melanesians, says that there is a belief in Banks Islands in the existence of a power like that of vampires. A man or a woman would obtain this power out of a morbid desire for communion with some ghost, and in order to gain it would steal and eat a morsel of a corpse. The ghost of the dead man would then join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by afflicting anyone against whom his ghostly power might be directed. The man so afflicted would feel that something was influencing his life, and would come to dread some particular person among his neighbours, who was, therefore, suspected of being a talamur. This name was also given to one whose soul was supposed to go out and eat the soul or lingering life of a freshly dead corpse. There was a woman, some years ago, of whom the story is told that she made no secret of doing this, and that once on the death of a neighbour she gave notice that she should go in the night and eat the corpse. The friends of the deceased therefore kept watch in the house where the corpse lay, and at dead of night heard a scratching at the door, followed by a rustling noise close by the corpse. One of them threw a stone and seemed to hit the unknown thing; and in the morning the talamur was found with a bruise on her arm, which she confessed was caused by a stone thrown at her while she was eating the corpse.

Baron von Haxthausen, in his work on Transcaucasia, tells us that there once dwelt in a cavern in Armenia a vampire called Dakhanavar, who could not endure anyone to penetrate into the mountains of Ulmish Altotem or count their valleys. Everyone who attempted this had in the night his blood sucked by the monster from the soles of his feet until he died. The vampire was, however, at last outwitted by two cunning fellows. They began to count the valleys, and when night came on they lay down to sleep—taking care to place themselves with the feet of the one under the head of the other. In the night the monster came, felt as usual, and found a head; then he felt at the other end and found a head there also. “Well,” cried he, “I have gone through the whole 366 valleys of these mountains, and have sucked the blood of people without end, but never yet did I come across anyone with two heads and no feet!” So saying, he ran away and was never more seen in that country, but ever after the people knew that the mountain has 366 valleys.

Even America is not free from the belief in the vampire. In one of the issues of the Norwich (U.S.A.) Courier for 1854, there is the account of an incident that occurred at Jewett, a city in that vicinity. About eight years previously, Horace Ray of Griswold had died of consumption. Afterwards, two of his children—grown-up sons—died of the same disease, the last one dying about 1852. Not long before the date of the newspaper the same fatal disease had seized another son, whereupon it was determined to exhume the bodies of the two brothers and burn them, because the dead were supposed to feed upon the living; and so long as the dead body in the grave remained undecomposed, either wholly or in part, the surviving members of the family must continue to furnish substance on which the dead body could feed. Acting under the influence of this strange superstition, the family and friends of the deceased proceeded to the burial-ground on June 8th, 1854, dug up the bodies of the deceased brothers, and burned them on the spot.

Dr Dyer, an eminent physician of Chicago, also reported in 1875 a case occurring within his own personal knowledge, where the body of a woman who had died of consumption was taken from her grave and her lungs burned, under the belief that she was drawing after her into the grave some of her surviving relatives. In 1874, according to the Providence Journal, in the village of Placedale, Rhode Island, Mr William Rose dug up the body of his own daughter and burned her heart, under the belief that she was wasting away the lives of other members of the family.

The vampire is not an unknown spectre in China, where the measures adopted for the riddance of the pest are generally the burning of the mortal remains of the corpse, or removing to a distance the lid of the coffin after the vampire has started on his nocturnal rounds. It is held that the air thus entering freely into the coffin will cause the contents to decay. Another Chinese cure for vampires is to watch any suspected coffin until the corpse has quitted it, and then strew rice, red peas, and bits of iron around it. The corpse, on returning, will find it impossible to pass over these things, and will thus fall an easy prey to his captors.

The following story of a Chinese vampire is related by Dr J. J. M. de Groot in his Religious System of China (vol. v. p. 747):—

“Liu N. N., a literary graduate of the lowest degree in Wukiang (in Kiangsu), was in charge of some pupils belonging to the Tsaing family in the Yuen-hwo district. In the season of Pure Brightness he returned home, some holidays being granted him to sweep his ancestral tombs. This duty performed, he returned to his post, and said to his wife: ‘To-morrow I must go; cook some food for me at an early hour.’ The woman said she would do so, and rose for the purpose at cockcrow. Their village lay on the hill behind their dwelling, facing a brook. The wife washed some rice at that brook, picked some vegetables in the garden, and had everything ready, but when it was light her husband did not rise. She went into his room to wake him up, but however often she called he gave no answer. So she opened the curtains and found him lying across the bed, headless, and not a trace of blood to be seen.

“Terror-stricken, she called the neighbours. All of them suspected her of adultery with a lover, and murder, and they warned the magistrate. This grandee came and held a preliminary inquest; he ordered the corpse to be coffined, had the woman put in fetters, and examined her; so he put her in gaol, and many months passed away without sentence being pronounced. Then a neighbour, coming uphill for some fuel, saw a neglected grave with a coffin lid bare; it was quite a sound coffin, strong and solid, and yet the lid was raised a little; so he naturally suspected that it had been opened by thieves. He summoned the people; they lifted the lid off and saw a corpse with features like a living person and a body covered with white hair. Between its arms it held the head of a man, which they recognised as that of Liu, the graduate. They reported the case to the magistrate; the coroners ordered the head to be taken away, but it was so firmly grasped in the arms of the corpse that the combined efforts of a number of men proved insufficient to draw it out. So the magistrate told them to chop off the arms of the kiangshi (corpse-spectre). Fresh blood gushed out of the wounds, but in Liu’s head there was not a drop left, it having been sucked dry by the monster. By magisterial order the corpse was burned, and the case ended with the release of the woman from gaol.”