The first mentions of the living dead appeared in the culture of the Southeast Slavs in the early Middle Ages. By the 18th century, they were so widespread that, for example, in Poland, belief in vampires was equated with heresy. The stories of that time about the epidemic of vampirism throughout Eastern Europe further fueled the society's fascination with these mythical creatures. Historian David Keyworth attempts to explain the origins of the belief in vampires in an article published in Folklore magazine.
The stories of the living dead have inspired many scientists to research this topic. The most famous was the work of the Benedictine abbot Augustin Calmet, published in 1746. According to his observations, the concept of vampirism was not known in Western Europe until the end of the 17th century - before that, bloodsuckers who had risen from the dead remained an exclusively Slavic phenomenon. But is it really so?
Father Hamlet's Zombie
According to the 12th century chronicle Historia Rerum Anglicarum, compiled by William of Newburgh, his countrymen willingly believed in the living dead. For example, he talked about a certain walking corpse that appeared in the vicinity of the Anantis castle, whose breath infected the local residents with a fatal disease.
Two brothers, whose father died from this infection, decided to get rid of the monster. They dug up his grave in the cemetery and found a body filled with blood, "like it was a well-fed leech." The brothers carried the corpse outside the village and burned it at the stake, having previously cut out and destroyed its supposedly still beating heart. After that, the infection retreated from the village, and no one else saw the walking dead.
However, despite the colorful description, William of Newburgh does not mention that a living corpse ate human blood. On the contrary, he caused all misfortunes indirectly: people died because of the harmful breath of the walking dead, and not because of his actions.
American historian Jeffrey Burton Russell also mentions a similar case in his hagiography. Two peasants fled from Burton Abbey to a village owned by a knight who was at war with local monks. The monks offered prayers to one of the saints, after which the smerds died. Subsequently, they were seen on the roads carrying their coffins. There were also reports from local residents who said that the dead in the form of wild animals were beating at the doors of their houses at night and were calling the peasants to their place. Soon a plague epidemic broke out in the village.
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The villagers, having received permission from the clergy, opened the graves of the restless dead and found their bodies clean and fresh, while the faces and clothes of the deceased were covered in blood. Their heads were chopped off and their hearts were ripped out, which were subsequently burned. Despite the fact that after that the outbreak of the plague ended, the village was empty for a long time.
Jean Mistler "Vampire", engraving 1944. Image: Albert Decaris / Rob Brautigan collection
The English living dead strongly resemble draugr - walking corpses from medieval Scandinavian mythology. So, for example, in the sagas Trolf Inverted Leg is mentioned, who after his death caused a lot of trouble to his fellow tribesmen. After a while, they exhumed his remains and found his body black and swollen, after which they put it on fire. This is similar to the stories of the English walking dead, but nowhere is there even a hint that the draugrs drank human blood.
Despite the fact that some historians argue that by the end of the 12th century the British stopped believing in living corpses, they are mentioned in sources up to the 17th century. For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet there are lines showing that the "ghost" of the father of the Prince of Denmark was by no means incorporeal:
Restless jealous
It can be argued that in 17th century England, many of the stories about encounters with the undead were about the walking dead, not about spirits. The book of the famous Puritan theologian Richard Baxter "On the Certain Existence of the World of Spirits" contains the story of how a woman from Glamorgan woke up one day and found her dead husband on her bed, who intended to lie next to her.
According to Baxter, after the widow refused her ex-husband intimacy, he returned three nights later and brutally beat all the household members (which, according to the Scandinavian sagas, the draugrs did). The dead man was accompanied by the intolerable stench of a decaying body.
Richard Burton, in his book "Kingdom of Darkness", described a similar incident: the wife of a noble gentleman who cheated on her returned from the grave when he proposed to his mistress just a few days after the death of his wife. He did not heed this sign and did not cancel the wedding. Then the dead woman appeared to him again and said, "Why don't you come to me?" After that, the man fell ill and died. He was buried in the same grave as his wife.
There are many other accounts of the living dead in 17th century English sources. Often in these descriptions they have black skin and sunken eyes, sometimes they turn into animals.
In England, they believed in their existence for a long time. The same can be said about the draugrs: evidence of meetings with them is found in Icelandic sources until the end of the 17th century.
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Silesia and Greece
Walking corpses were also found in Silesia, a region most of which is the territory of modern Poland. In his 1655 work "Antidote to Atheism," Henry More spoke of a certain shoemaker from Wroclaw, who cut his own throat in 1591, and six days later rose from the grave. Residents of the city claimed that he materialized in their beds and tried to strangle them.
"Soldiers Kill a Vampire", drawing from a private collection. Image: Rob Brautigan collection
City officials exhumed the shoemaker's body eight months after his death and put it on public display: he allegedly looked alive and did not exude an unpleasant odor. However, citizens continued to report the dead man's night visits. Six days later he was buried under the gallows, but this did not help either - soon the body had to be dug up again. Eyewitnesses noted that he "put on a lot of weight" - probably swollen.
To rid himself of the annoying living corpse forever, he was subjected to the already mentioned procedure: they cut off his head, legs and arms, opened his chest and took out his heart, which was “as fresh and untouched by decay as that of a freshly slaughtered calf”, and then burned remains.
In Greece, there are many stories about the so-called vrikolakas - walking corpses. For example, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a French botanist, talked about how he was present at the exhumation of such a dead man on the island of Mykonos. According to local peasants, this body once belonged to a fellow villager. After his death, he staggered at night and bullied the locals, so they decided to dismember his corpse and stop the atrocities.
Pitton wrote that at first the stomach was opened, not the chest, and then, having pierced the diaphragm, they finally reached his heart, which caused cheers in the crowd. The heart was burned, and the remains were buried again, but after a few days it turned out that this did not stop the dead man. His body was dug up again and now completely burned.
Age of vampires
All of these cases, however, do not describe vampires in the way in which they are entrenched in popular culture - as blood-sucking creatures. Stories about them appear only at the end of the 17th - 18th centuries.
In 1745, the book "The Journey of Three English Gentlemen" was published, which contained a description of the Eastern European vampires:
A detailed description of vampires is given in the Mercure Galent magazine for 1693. According to him, these creatures live in Poland and Russia, they are possessed by an irresistible thirst for someone else's blood. The publication notes that they are so full of the blood of their victims that it "flows from all the orifices of their body."
Shot from the movie "Nosferatu - the ghost of the night"
The most famous vampire in the 18th century was a certain Arnod Paole, who rose from the grave and gave birth to many other vampires who terrorized the Serbian village of Medvegia from 1727 to 1732. This case was investigated by local authorities. Subsequently, a report of this investigation was published under the title Spotted and Discovered.
According to the report, in 1727 Paole fell out of the carriage while she was moving and broke his neck. However, a month later he came to life and began to bully the local peasants, and after a while he killed four people. When the villagers exhumed Paola's body, they found his body undecomposed, with fresh blood flowing from the eyes, mouth and ears of the dead man. His old fingernails and toenails fell off and new ones grew in their place. The vampire's heart was pierced with a wooden stake, after which he issued a "distinct groan", and then the remains were burned and buried ashes.
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In the descriptions of such creatures in the 18th century, the incorruptibility of the body, bending limbs and an appearance indistinguishable from the state of a living person were almost always noted. In addition, it was mentioned that vampires are driven by an irresistible attraction to human blood, not mentioned in medieval sources. There are similar bloodsuckers in many sources of the 19th century. Thus, we can conclude that the vampire as a folklore character really took root in popular culture precisely in the 18th century.
Vampires in the legends of different peoples did not always eat only blood. Serbian gypsies put out saucers of milk, bread and cheese to ward off the creatures they called mullahs from their livestock and their families. Ukrainian ghouls were always hungry and eager for any food. The Bulgarian obur ate carrion and drank blood only when they ran out of their own. The synthesis of cultures and beliefs of different peoples gave rise to the modern image of a vampire, in which all the features of various beliefs in the living dead and walking corpses were combined.
Mikhail Karpov