The Hungarians believe that those who have been passive vampires in life become active vampires after death; that those whose blood has been sucked in life by vampires become themselves vampires after death. In many districts the belief also prevails that the only way to prevent this calamity happening is for the threatened victim to eat some earth from the grave of the attacking vampire, and to smear his own body with blood from the body of that vampire.

That the belief in vampirism is still current in Hungary was evidenced recently. The Daily Telegraph of February 15th, 1912, contained the following paragraph: “A Buda-Pesth telegram to the Messaggero reports a terrible instance of superstition. A boy of fourteen died some days ago in a small village. A farmer, in whose employment the boy had been, thought that the ghost of the latter appeared to him every night. In order to put a stop to these supposed visitations, the farmer, accompanied by some friends, went to the cemetery one night, stuffed three pieces of garlic and three stones in the mouth, and thrust a stake through the corpse, fixing it to the ground. This was to deliver themselves from the evil spirit, as the credulous farmer and his friends stated when they were arrested.”

In 1732, in a village in Hungary, in the space of three months, seventeen persons of different ages died of vampirism, some without being ill, and others after languishing two or three days. It is reported that a girl named Stanoska, daughter of the Heyduk Jotiutso, who went to bed in perfect health, awoke in the middle of the night trembling violently and uttering terrible shrieks, declaring that the son of the Heyduk Millo, who had been dead nine weeks, had nearly strangled her in her sleep. She fell into a languid state and died at the end of three days. Young Millo was exhumed and found to be a vampire.

Calmet, in his work The Phantom World, relates the following: “About fifteen years ago a soldier who was billeted at the house of a Haidamaque peasant, on the frontiers of Hungary, as he was one day sitting at table near his host, the master of the house, saw a person he did not know come in and sit down to table also with them. The master of the house was strangely frightened at this, as were the rest of the company. The soldier knew not what to think of it, being ignorant of the matter in question. But the master of the house being dead the very next day, the soldier inquired what it meant. They told him it was the body of the father of the host, who had been dead and buried for ten years, who had thus come to sit down next to him, and had announced and caused his death.

“The soldier informed the regiment of it in the first place, and the regiment gave notice of it to the general officers, who commissioned the Count de Cabreras, captain of the regiment of Alandetti infantry, to make information concerning this circumstance. Having gone to the place with some other officers, a surgeon and an auditor, they heard the depositions of all the people belonging to the house, who decided unanimously that the ghost was the father of the master of the house, and that all the soldier had said and reported was the exact truth, which was confirmed by all the inhabitants of the village.

“In consequence of this the corpse of the spectre was exhumed and found to be like that of a man who had just expired, and his blood like that of a living man. The Count de Cabreras had his head cut off and caused him to be laid again in the tomb. He also took information concerning other similar ghosts: among others, of a man dead more than thirty years who had come back three times to his house at meal-time. The first time he had sucked the blood from the neck of his own brother, the second time from one of his sons, and the third time from one of the servants in the house; and all three died of it instantly and on the spot. Upon this deposition the commissary had this man taken out of his grave, and finding that, like the first, his blood was in a fluidic state like that of a living person, he ordered them to run a large nail into his temple and then to lay him again in the grave.

“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.

“The officer and the divine having diligently examined into all the circumstances, the people, being fired with fresh indignation, and growing more fully persuaded that this carcase was the real cause of the death of their countrymen, ran immediately to fetch a sharp stake, which being driven into his breast, there issued from the wound, and also from his nose and mouth, a great quantity of fresh, ruddy blood; and something which indicated a sort of life, was observed to come from him. The peasants then laid the body upon a pile of wood, and burnt it to ashes.”

Calmet says he was told by M. de Vassimont, who was sent to Moravia by Leopold, first Duke of Lorraine, that he was informed by public report that it was common enough in that country to see men who had died some time before present themselves in a party and sit down to the table with persons of their acquaintance without saying anything, but that nodding to one of the party he would infallibly die some days afterwards. M. de Vassimont received confirmation of this story from several persons, amongst others an old curÉ who said he had seen more than one instance of it. The priest added that the inhabitants had been delivered from these troublesome spectres owing to the fact that their corpses had been taken up and burned or destroyed in some way or other.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century several vampire investigations were held at the instigation of the Bishop of Olmutz. The village of Liebava was particularly infested, and a Hungarian placed himself on the top of the church tower and just before midnight saw a well-known vampire issue from his tomb, and, leaving his winding-sheet behind him, proceed on his rounds. The Hungarian descended from the tower and took away the sheet and ascended the tower again. When the vampire returned he flew into a great fury because of the absence of the sheet. The Hungarian called to him to come up to the tower and fetch it. The vampire mounted the ladder, but just before he reached the top the Hungarian gave him a blow on the head which threw him down to the churchyard. His assailant then descended, cut off the vampire’s head with a hatchet, and from that time the vampire was no more heard of.

In 1672 there dwelt in the market town of Kring, in the Archduchy of Krain, a man named George Grando, who died, and was buried by Father George, a monk of St Paul, who, on returning to the widow’s house, saw Grando sitting behind the door. The monk and the neighbours fled. Soon stories began to circulate of a dark figure being seen to go about the streets by night, stopping now and then to tap at the door of a house, but never to wait for an answer. In a little while people began to die mysteriously in Kring, and it was noticed that the deaths occurred in the houses at which the spectred figure had tapped its signal. The widow Grando also complained that she was tormented by the spirit of her husband, who night after night threw her into a deep sleep with the object of sucking her blood. The Supan, or chief magistrate, of Kring decided to take the usual steps to ascertain whether Grando was a vampire. He called together some of the neighbours, fortified them with a plentiful supply of spirituous liquor, and they sallied off with torches and a crucifix.

Grando’s grave was opened, and the body was found to be perfectly sound and not decomposed, the mouth being opened with a pleasant smile, and there was a rosy flush on the cheeks. The whole party were seized with terror and hurried back to Kring, with the exception of the Supan. The second visit was made in company with a priest, and the party also took a heavy stick of hawthorn sharpened to a point. The grave and body were found to be exactly as they had been left. The priest kneeled down solemnly and held the crucifix aloft: “O vampire, look at this,” he said; “here is Jesus Christ who loosed us from the pains of hell and died for us upon the tree!”

He went on to address the corpse, when it was seen that great tears were rolling down the vampire’s cheeks. A hawthorn stake was brought forward, and as often as they strove to drive it through the body the sharpened wood rebounded, and it was not until one of the number sprang into the grave and cut off the vampire’s head that the evil spirit departed with a loud shriek and a contortion of the limbs.

Similar stories to this were continually being circulated from the borders of Hungary to the Baltic.

At one time the spectre of a village herdsman near Kodom, in Bavaria, began to appear to several inhabitants of the place, and either in consequence of their fright or from some other cause, every person who had seen the apparition died during the week afterwards. Driven to despair, the peasants disinterred the corpse and pinned it to the ground with a long stake. The same night he appeared again, plunging people into convulsions of fright, and suffocated several of them. Then the village authorities handed the body over to the executioner, who caused it to be carried into a field adjoining the cemetery, where it was burned. The corpse howled like a madman, kicking and tearing as if it had been alive.

When it was run through again with sharp-pointed stakes, before the burning, it uttered piercing cries and vomited masses of crimson blood. The apparition of the spectre ceased only after the corpse had been reduced to ashes.

Fortis, in his Travels into Dalmatia, says that the Moslacks have no doubt as to the existence of vampires, and attribute to them, as in Transylvania, the sucking of the blood of infants. Therefore, when a man dies, and he is suspected of vampirism, or of being a vukodlak—the term they employ—they cut his hams and prick his whole body with pins, pretending that he will be unable to walk about after this operation has been performed. There are even instances of Moolacchi who, imagining that they may possibly thirst for human blood after death, particularly the blood of children, entreat their heirs, and sometimes even make them promise, to treat them in this manner directly after death.

Dr Henry More, in his Antidote against Atheism, argues for the reality of vampires, and relates the following stories.

“A shoemaker of Breslau, in Silesia, in 1591 terminated his life by cutting his throat. His family, however, spread abroad the report that he had died of apoplexy, which enabled them to bury him in the ordinary way and save the disgrace of his being interred as a suicide. Despite this, however, the rumour got abroad that the man had committed suicide. It was also reported that his ghost had been seen at the bedsides of several persons, and the rumours and reports spreading, it was decided by the authorities to disinter the body. It had been buried on September 22nd, 1591, and the grave was opened on April 18th, 1592. The body was found to be entire; it was not in any way putrid, the joints were flexible, there was no ill smell, the wound in the throat was visible and there was no corruption in it. There was also observed what was claimed to be a magical mark on the great toe of the right foot—an excrescence in the form of a rose. The body was kept above ground for six days, during which time the apparitions still appeared. It was then buried beneath the gallows, but the apparition still came to the bedsides of the alarmed inhabitants, pinching and suffocating people, and leaving marks of its fingers plainly visible on the flesh. A fortnight afterwards the body was again dug up, when it was observed to have sensibly increased its size since its last interment. Then the head, arms, and legs of the corpse were cut off; the heart, which was as fresh and entire as that in a freshly killed calf, was also taken out of the body. The whole body thus dismembered was consigned to the flames and the ashes thrown into the river. The apparition was never seen afterwards. A servant of the deceased man was also said to have acted in a similar manner after her death. Her remains were also dug up and burned, and then her apparition ceased to torment the inhabitants.”

“Johannes Cuntius, a citizen and alderman of Pentach, in Silesia, when about sixty years of age, died somewhat suddenly, as the result of a kick from his horse. At the moment of his death a black cat rushed into the room, jumped on to the bed, and scratched violently at his face. Both at the time of his death and that of his funeral a great tempest arose—the wind and snow ‘made men’s bodies quake and their teeth chatter in their heads.’ The storm is said to have ceased with startling suddenness as the body was placed under the ground. Immediately after the burial, however, stories began to circulate of the appearance of a phantom which spoke to people in the voice of Cuntius. Remarkable tales were told of the consumption of milk from jugs and bowls, of milk being turned into blood, of old men being strangled, children taken out of cradles, altar-cloths being soiled with blood, and poultry killed and eaten. Eventually it was decided to disinter the body. It was found that all the bodies buried above that of Cuntius had become putrefied and rotten, but his skin was tender and florid, his joints by no means stiff, and when a staff was put between his fingers they closed around it and held it fast in their grasp. He could open and shut his eyes, and when a vein in his leg was punctured the blood sprang out as fresh as that of a living person. This happened after the body had been in the grave for about six months. Great difficulty was experienced when the body was cut up and dismembered, by the order of the authorities, by reason of the resistance offered; but when the task was completed, and the remains consigned to the flames, the spectre ceased to molest the natives or interfere with their slumbers or health.”