Vampires Through the Ages

by Brian Righi

  Once the vampire was securely in his sights, the dhampir pulled a magic gun from his belt and fired it into the air, announcing with great fanfare that the vampire was now dead. Sometimes the dhampir followed this by pouring water, just for good measure, on the spot where the vampire met its end. Once the hunt was over, the dhampir was paid for his services and traveling expenses, and then quickly skedaddled before anyone was the wiser. Business was so good in fact that many dhampir claimed to have the ability to pass their powers on to their sons, making it a family business. One town was even famous for the large number of families descended from vrykolakas, or vampires, that lived there. These families were said to have the ability to slay those vampires they were related to, and although they were shunned in public they were often sought after in private.

  Similar to the dhampir were the Sabbatarians, who were called that because they were born on the Sabbath, which in the Orthodox faith falls on Saturday. Gifted from birth, these individuals not only had power over vampires but ghosts and other evil creatures as well, which, like the dhampir, only they could see. Stories claim that their powers were so great that vampires fled at the mere sight of them and that twin Sabbatarians were accompanied by a familiar in the form of a spectral dog, which they used to hunt their undead prey. Other odd traditions state that Gypsy Sabbatarians, for instance, wore their underwear inside out, which they swore acted as a potent vampire repellent.

  Another type of vampire hunter was found among the Croats in the form of a powerful shaman known as a kresnik, whose spirit left his body at night in the shape of a white animal and prowled the village hunting vampire spirits, or kudlaks, who appeared as black animals. When the two met, they battled until daybreak, at which time the vampire was forced to retreat back to its grave in defeat. In many villages the kresnik’s protective presence was essential for good harvests, long life, and general happiness.

  As we have seen in this chapter, the common villager was not at all defenseless against the vampire and armed himself with a deadly array of weaponry. This in turn gave rise to a number of strange and gruesome practices affecting many aspects of the average peasant’s life, from protective talismans and magic to how the body was prepared at death. In the midst of this turmoil, a professional class of undead exterminators stepped into the fray to fight the scourge of the vampire (and in the process lighten a few pockets as well) and helped color the image of the vampire hunter we have today.

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  Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.

  William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

  5

  Legends of Blood

  While the very name Dracula and the mystery that surrounds his grave at Snagov Monastery conjure up terrifying questions in our search for the real vampire, it is perhaps important that we pause for the moment and return to the “scene of the crime” to examine further evidence that promises to add yet another layer to this dark riddle. In the process we’ll explore more of the true history of Dracula, along with several other well-documented figures from the past accused of such atrocities against their fellow man that their names alone bring to mind images of cruelty, torture, sadism, and bloodlust. During their lifetimes these violent men and women were greatly feared by all who crossed their path, and when their bodies had finally disappeared back into the cold earth their memories were so lasting that they became infused into the folklore of the vampire and they themselves became legends of blood.

  In 1933, when the crypt at Snagov Monastery proved to be empty of all but a few bones and broken bits of pottery, it must have at first seemed to Dinu Rosetti and George Florescu that they had reached the end of their quest for the legendary grave of Dracula. Yet for these two intrepid archeologists, the work continued on, and as the days passed and further excavations progressed within the ancient chapel, additional finds added yet more clues to the mystery of the empty grave.

  Upon carefully examining the rest of the building’s interior, the team stumbled on a curious stone slab to the right of the chapel’s heavy wooden doors that closely resembled the one marking the empty grave they had previously uncovered. On removing the stone they discovered that it concealed a second crypt identical in both size and shape to the first. The only difference between it and the first was that, as the weighty cover stone was lifted from the grave, Rosetti and Florescu were elated to find this one was occupied.

  Deep within the cool recesses of its brick and mortar-lined interior lay a rotting coffin, and inside that the headless body of a man dressed in the red and yellow remnants of a nobleman’s garments. Over the body lay a tattered cloth of purple with gold embroidery and to one side a crown intricately shaped and fitted with stones of turquoise.

  Although most of the objects had long ago deteriorated beyond recognition, a battered cup, a belt buckle of gold, and other remains were removed to the City of Bucharest History Museum for further study. Also discovered sewn into the folds of the occupant’s cloak was a small jeweled ring resembling the type given by ladies of high status to favored knights victorious in tournament. For Rosetti and Florescu, who had studied surviving portraits and eyewitness accounts of the infamous prince, the clothing and objects found in the grave were a dead match for those belonging to Dracula. Dracula’s father, Vlad II Dracul, just happened to acquire such objects after successful bouts in a tournament of arms following his initiation into the Order of the Dragon at Nuremberg on November 8, 1431. Later he bequeathed these trophies, along with his prized Toledo sword, to his son Dracula, who was at the time a prisoner of the Turks.

  Yet while the archeologists were convinced they had discovered the true and final resting place of Vlad Dracula Tepes, others in the scientific community were still unsure about the find. After reviewing the evidence collected at Snagov Monastery, subsequent scholars and historians pointed out that although the corpse did indeed appear to be that of a nobleman from the middle of the fifteenth century, its location in the chapel was not in keeping with Orthodox traditions. Given its distance from the altar and the fact that there was no inscription upon the stone bearing the identity of its occupant, the lonely grave in the corner of the chapel did not seem a fitting place for a Wallachian prince who at one time was both the monastery’s patron and its protector.

  In response, the archeologists argued that the coffin may have in fact been originally placed in the first grave near the altar but then, for one reason or another, was secretly exhumed and moved to the second. One of the monastery’s abbots could have felt uneasy about having the body of such an evil man so close to the holy altar of God and therefore repositioned the coffin farther away near the door. In an added bit of poetic justice, by placing him near the chapel entrance it allowed the subjects he once crushed under his iron heel to now trample over his remains on their way to worship God.

  While his cruel and bloodthirsty reputation may have helped determine the fate of his burial, an even stronger factor could have been his decision to convert to Roman Catholicism shortly before his death. In the eyes of the Orthodox Church, such a move branded him a heretic—making it a violation of church law to inter his body at the altar’s base. This may also account for why the grave was unmarked or why no murals or icons of the monastery’s former patron existed in the chapel.

  Supporters of what we’ll call the “musical graves” theory surmise that the transfer occurred either when the monastery came under the control of Greek monks in the 1700s or by order of Metropolitan Filaret II, who headed the Romanian church in 1792. In either case neither the monks nor the patriarch himself bore any love for the memory of the oppressive tyrant. Others claim a third suspect might have been the monks who resided in the monastery in the 1800s and who moved the body to avoid looting by peasants from nearby villages just before the island was abandoned by the holy order.

  More than forty years after the initial discovery of the unknown nobleman
, a monk residing in the Snagov chapel told reporters in 1975 that he was convinced that Dracula’s remains still lay within the grave near the altar and that the original archeologists simply did not dig down far enough. Nobility and other important personalities, he noted, were generally buried very deep, and tricks such as false graves and other disguises were often used to foil grave robbers in search of loot.

  Following the release of the story, Raymond T. McNally, a professor of Russian and Eastern European history at Boston College, and Romanian academic Radu Florescu, the nephew of George Florescu, petitioned the Romanian government for permission to reopen the grave and investigate the monk’s claims. Unfortunately, their request, along with subsequent others, was denied by officials on the grounds that the chapel’s foundations were weakened by earthquakes in 1940 and 1977. To dig within the confines of the chapel at Snagov, the officials claimed, posed a serious threat to both the structural integrity of the ancient building and the safety of those undertaking the excavation. The search for definitive proof of Dracula’s resting place would have to wait.

  The question then remains as to what Rosetti and Florescu really found on that lonely island in 1933. Did they in fact lay to rest the mystery of the empty grave with the discovery of the headless corpse, or did the ever-elusive clues needed to identify the body only add new layers to the riddle of Dracula’s tomb? Who was really buried in the Snagov chapel, and did the spirit of Dracula still roam the lands he once ruled—moving through the ruins of his crumbling castles or lingering among lost battlefields where his sword once tasted the blood of his enemies?

  Son of the Dragon

  Here begins a very cruel, frightening story about a wild bloodthirsty man, Prince Dracula. How he impaled people and roasted them and boiled their heads in a kettle and skinned people and hacked them to pieces like cabbage. He also roasted the children of mothers and they had to eat the children themselves. And many other horrible things are written in this tract and in the land he ruled.

  —from the frontispiece of a pamphlet

  printed in nuremberg in 1499 by ambrosius huber

  Sultan Mehmed II reined his magnificent stallion to a halt with a swift flick of his wrist, just as he and his bodyguards of elite Janissaries (infantry units) topped the tree-lined ridge. Below him stretched a small valley and just beyond that another sloping ridge. He was only twenty-seven leagues north of Dracula’s fortified capital of Tirgoviste, which according to his spies was even now being frantically manned with troop and cannon in preparation for a siege against him.

  Turning his mount, the sultan looked back into the forested valleys from which he had just traveled and watched his army of over 100,000 men struggling through the dense trees and marshy ground. Like one long, serpentine beast, the great troop moved, comprised of Arabian calvary in white turbans, azab spearmen in robes of red and green, Janissary shock troops in long mail tunics, the beshlis with their deadly firearms, and slave soldiers known as sipahis who hoped to win their freedom if they survived the campaign. Struggling to keep up in the boggy ground, heavy cannon and supply wagons followed, mixed with the sick and wounded stragglers who had fallen behind.

  In 1453, only ten years before, the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II had, at the age of twenty-one, sacked the Christian city of Constantinople and broken the back of the Byzantine Empire for good, sending waves of panic throughout the Western world. Now his once-glorious army found themselves wearily trampling through a rugged landscape filled with dark forests and impenetrable marshes in order to punish the Wallachian prince Dracula and his boyar noblemen for raiding lands that belonged to the Ottoman Empire.

  As his army left Constantinople and pushed to cross the Danube River, his military advisors were confident that the sultan’s forces, which outnumbered those of Dracula’s more than four to one, would make quick work of the infidels and transform the vassal state of Wallachia into a new Turkish province. Yet from the beginning of the campaign the enemy refused to meet him in direct battle, choosing to rely instead on lightning-quick raids to the army’s flanks and rear. They had also adopted a scorched-earth tactic, burning crops, poisoning wells, and depopulating the countryside ahead of his advance for miles to come. Hunger and thirst now consumed them all, and while the sultan sent foragers farther afield to gather food, they increasingly fell prey to the prince’s forces.

  The worst of the fighting occurred just a few nights before while the Turkish army lay encamped. Mehmed remembered waking in the darkness of his tent to the sounds of clashing steel and the screams of dying men. Grabbing his scimitar, he rushed out only to be immediately surrounded by his personal guards. Flares lit the sky and tents blazed as his men battled against an attack force of knights, led by Dracula himself, who using the darkness made a desperate charge into the camp killing all in their path. If the enemy had not mistaken the tents of two of his viziers, Mahmud and Issac, for his own and concentrated their attack there, the sultan knew he might not be alive this day. While initially many of his troops fled in panic, screaming “the Kazıklı Voyvoda has come,” it was his beloved Janissaries who rallied and forced the attackers to retreat. Many of his men died that night under the sword and lance of his enemy, but now that they were in reach of Dracula’s capital it would all be over soon.

  An officer of the advance guard quickly galloped up the ridge towards the sultan’s position, breaking his thoughts.

  “Your highness …” he breathlessly exclaimed as he came to a stop and bowed low in his saddle. “The advance has stalled just over the next ridge … there’s something you must see, my lord.”

  There was terror in the man’s eyes, making Mehmed grip the hilt of his scimitar tightly.

  “Very well then, lead on,” the sultan barked, spurring his horse forward, and the armored troop descended into the valley and up the opposite slope. Upon cresting the rise, the whole party came to a stop as if they had crashed into an invisible barrier. The horses rose on hind legs and cried out in fear, and it took all the strength the riders possessed to keep them from pure blind panic.

  Before the sultan and his men lay a scene so horrific that even the most battle-hardened of his officers shuddered in dread amazement. Below them on a vast plain spread a forest of 20,000 stakes placed at various heights, each with the decaying carcass of a Turkish captive impaled upon it. The smell of rotting flesh filled the air as carrion birds circled, screeching and fighting over the ghastly feast. This was the work of the Impaler, and for the sultan it was too much to bear.

  “I cannot take the land of a man who could do such a thing,” he said almost to himself as the last of his resolve melted away. “It will be dark soon and we must camp, but tomorrow we return to our own lands and away from this accursed place.”

  That night the Turkish army dug a deep trench around their encampment to keep out the Impaler, and the next day the soldiers of the great Ottoman Empire began to retreat back across the Danube River.

  Vlad III Dracula was born in the heavily fortified town of Sighisoara, Transylvania, on a cold winter night in 1431—the same year Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for witchcraft. His father, Vlad II, was an exiled contender for the throne of Wallachia, a region bordering eastern Transylvania in what is now part of Romania, while his mother was the Princess Cneajna of Moldavia. That same year his father traveled to the city of Nuremberg, where he was initiated into the Order of the Dragon, founded in 1408 by the Hungarian King Sigismund to oppose the spread of the Turkish Ottoman Empire into Christian lands. To honor his new allegiance, Vlad II took the name Dracul, which in Romanian means both “dragon” and “devil.” His infant son, Vlad III, was therefore given the surname Dracula, which can be translated into “son of the dragon” or, more ominously, “son of the devil.”

  Five years later, in 1436, Vlad II Dracul ascended the throne of Wallachia over the bodies of his main rivals, the House of Danesti, who were aligned with Hungarian inter
ests. Dracula, like any young prince of the era, spent his days with Greek and Romanian tutors studying geography, mathematics, science, and languages, as well as the arts of warfare and combat. Yet even in these early days the young prince exhibited a dark fascination for the macabre, and it’s noted that he took great pleasure in watching criminals being led from their cells to his father’s castle courtyard to be hanged. When Dracula was twelve, his father shifted policies and allied himself with his sworn enemy, the Turks, against the greater threat of Hungarian aggression. In return for Turkish support, Vlad II Dracul consented to pay tribute to the sultan, part of which included sending his sons Dracula and Radu to the Ottoman court as royal hostages to ensure his loyalty.

  It was during his stay among the Turks from 1444 to 1448 that Dracula’s propensity for cruelty and bloodlust was further shaped and refined by the various methods of torture and execution he learned from his captors. One of his favorites was that of impalement, which he later used to such great effect that it earned him the title Kazıklı Voyvoda, “the Impaler prince,” among his enemies. A stout pole or stake was sharpened at one end and driven into the rectum or side of the condemned person, who was then hoisted into the air. Gravity and the victim’s own struggles forced the stake deeper into the body, slicing into organs and eventually working its way out through the sternum, mouth, or the top of the head in an excruciatingly painful process that could take days to kill the victim. In some cases the stakes were oiled to avoid piercing vital organs and to prolong the process, and even infants were sometimes impaled upon the very stakes that protruded from their mother’s dying breast.