The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  Two more investigators deserve a mention in this context: T.C. Lethbridge and F.W. Holiday. Lethbridge was a retired Cambridge don who became fascinated by dowsing, and the power of the pendulum to detect various substances under the earth. (I have spoken of him at length in my book Mysteries.) Towards the end of his life (he died in 1971), Lethbridge became interested in flying saucers, and in a book called Legend of the Sons of God (1972) suggested that UFOs may be associated with ancient standing stones – in fact, that such stones may have been set up in the remote past as “beacons” for ancient space craft. Lethbridge knew nothing of ley lines, but his own investigations led him to conclusions that are remarkably similar to Michell’s.

  F.W. Holiday was a naturalist and a fishing journalist who became fascinated by the mystery of the Loch Ness monster (qv) and wrote a book suggesting that it was a giant slug, or “worm” (using this word in its medieval sense of “dragon”). But after years of study of the phenomenon he found the Loch Ness monster and other lake monsters as elusive as ufologists have found flying saucers. He became increasingly convinced that both flying saucers and lake monsters belong to what he called “the phantom menagerie” (see chapter 19 on The Grey Man of Ben MacDhui). This view was expressed in his book The Dragon and the Disc, and in his posthumous work The Goblin Universe. Like Vallee, Holiday finally became convinced that the answer to the UFO enigma lies in “the psychic solution”. It must be acknowledged that there is a great deal of evidence that points in this direction. On the other hand, it would be premature to discount the possibility that they may be spacecraft from another planet or galaxy; this is a matter on which it would be foolish not to keep an open mind.

  58

  Vampires: Do They Exist?

  The problem of the vampire can be stated simply. Any rational person will agree that the notion that vampires actually exist has to be pure superstition. Blood-drinking supernatural beings do not and cannot exist. There has to be some simpler, more sensible, explanation. The objection to this view is that a number of early accounts of vampires have such an air of sobriety and authority that it is difficult to dismiss them as pure fantasy. Here, for example, is an eighteenth-century report known as Visum et Repertum (“Seen and Discovered”), signed by no fewer than five Austrian officers, three of them doctors:

  After it had been reported in the village of Medvegia [near Belgrade] that so-called vampires had killed some people by sucking their blood, I was, by high decree of a local Honorable Supreme Command, sent there to investigate the matter thoroughly, along with officers detailed for that purpose and two subordinate medical officers, and therefore carried out and heard the present enquiry in the company of the Captain of the Stallath company of haiduks [Balkan mercenaries and outlaws opposed to Turkish rule], Hadnack Gorschiz, the standard-bearer and the oldest haiduk of the village. [They reported], unanimously, as follows. About five years ago, a local haiduk called Arnod Paole broke his neck in a fall from a hay wagon. This man had, during his lifetime, often described how, near Gossova in Turkish Serbia, he had been troubled by a vampire, wherefore he had eaten from the earth of the vampire’s grave and had smeared himself with the vampire’s blood, in order to be free of the vexation he had suffered. In twenty or thirty days after his death, some people complained that they were being bothered by this same Arnod Paole; and in fact, four people were killed by him. In order to end this evil, they dug up Arnod Paole forty days after his death – this on the advice of their Hadnack, who had been present at such events before; and they found that he was quite complete and undecayed, and that fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; that the shirt, the covering, and the coffin were completely bloody; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen off, and that new ones had grown. And since they saw from this that he was a true vampire, they drove a stake through his heart – according to their custom – whereupon he gave an audible groan and bled copiously. Thereupon they burned the body to ashes the same day and threw these into the grave. These same people also say that all those who have been tormented and killed by vampires must themselves become vampires. Therefore they disinterred the above mentioned four people in the same way. Then they also add that this same Arnod Paole attacked not only people but cattle, and sucked out their blood. And since some people ate the flesh of such cattle, it would appear that [this is the reason that] some vampires are again present here, inasmuch as in a period of three months, seventeen young and old people died, among them some who, with no previous illness, died in two or at most three days. In addition, the haiduk Jovitsa reports that his stepdaughter, by name Stanacka, lay down to sleep fifteen days ago, fresh and healthy, but that at midnight she started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, fearful and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a haiduk by the name of Milloe [who had died nine weeks earlier], whereupon she had experienced a great pain in the chest, and become worse hour by hour, until finally she died on the third day. At this, we went the same afternoon to the graveyard, along with the aforementioned oldest haiduks of the village, in order to cause the suspicious graves to be opened, and to examine the bodies in them. Whereby, after all of them had been [exhumed and] dissected, the following was found:

  1. A woman by the name of Stana, twenty years old, who had died in childbirth two months ago, after a three-day illness, and who had herself said before her death that she had painted herself with the blood of a vampire – wherefore both she and the child, which had died soon after birth and through careless burial had been half eaten by dogs – must also become vampires. She was quite complete and undecayed. After the opening of the body there was found in the cavitate pectoris a quantity of fresh extravascular blood. The vessels of the arteriae, like the ventriculis cordis, were not, as is usual, filled with coagulated blood; and the whole viscera – that is, the lung, liver, stomach, spleen, and intestines – were quite fresh, as they would be in a healthy person. The uterus was, however, quite enlarged and very inflamed externally, for the placenta and lochia had remained in place, wherefore the same was in complete putrefaction. The skin on her hands and feet, along with the old nails, fell away on their own, but on the other hand completely new nails were evident, along with a fresh and vivid skin.

  2. There was a woman by the name of Militsa, sixty years old, who had died after a three-month sickness and had been buried ninety or so days earlier. In the chest much liquid blood was found, and the other viscera were – like those mentioned above – in good condition. During her dissection, all the haiduks who were standing around marveled greatly at her plumpness and perfect body, uniformly stating that they had known the woman well from her youth and that she had throughout her life been very lean and dried up; they emphasized that she had come to such surprising plumpness in the grave. They also said that it was she who had started the vampires this time, because she had been eating of the flesh of those sheep who had been killed by previous vampires.

  3. There was an eight-day-old child which had lain in the grave for ninety days and which was also in a condition of vampirism.

  4. The son of a haiduk, sixteen years old, named Milloe, was dug up, having lain in the earth for nine weeks, after he had died from a three-day illness, and was found to be like the other vampires. [This is obviously the vampire who had attacked the stepdaughter of the haiduk Jovitsa.]

  5. Joachim, also the son of a haiduk, seventeen years old, had died after a three-day illness. He had been buried eight weeks and four days and, on being dissected, was found in similar condition.

  6. A woman by the name of Ruscha who had died after a ten-day illness and been buried six weeks earlier, in whom there was much fresh blood, not only in the chest but also in in fundo ventriculi. The same showed itself in her child, which was eighteen days old and had died five weeks earlier.

  7. No less did a girl of ten years of age, who had died two months previously, find herself in the above-mentioned condition, quite complete and un
decayed, and had much fresh blood in her chest.

  8. They caused the wife of the Hadnack to be dug up, along with her child. She had died seven weeks earlier, her child – who was eight weeks old – twenty-one days previously, and it was found that mother and child were completely decomposed, although earth and grave were like those of the vampires lying nearby.

  9. A servant of the local corporal of the haiduks, by the name of Rhade, twenty-three years old, died after a three-month illness, and after being buried five weeks, was found completely decomposed.

  10. The wife of the local standard-bearer, along with her child, were also completely decomposed.

  11. With Stanche, a haiduk, sixty years old, who had died six weeks previously, I noticed a profuse liquid blood, like the others, in the chest and stomach. The entire body was in the above-mentioned condition of vampirism.

  12. Milloe, a haiduk, twenty-five years old, who had lain for six weeks in the earth, was also found in a condition of vampirism.

  13. Stanoicka [earlier called Stanacka], the wife of a haiduk, twenty-three years old, died after a three-day illness and had been buried eighteen days earlier. In the dissection I found that her countenance was quite red and of a vivid colour, and as was mentioned above, she had been throttled at midnight, by Milloe, the son of a haiduk, and there was also to be seen, on the right side under the ear, a bloodshot blue mark [i.e., a bruise] the length of a finger [demonstrating that she had been throttled]. As she was being taken out of the grave, a quantity of fresh blood flowed from her nose. With the dissection I found – as so often mentioned already – a regular fragrant fresh bleeding, not only in the chest cavity but also in the heart ventricle. All the viscera were found in a completely good and healthy condition. The skin of the entire body, along with the nails on the hands and feet, were as though completely fresh.

  After the examination had taken place, the heads of the vampires were out off by the local gypsies and then burned along with the bodies, after which the ashes were thrown into the river Morava. The decomposed bodies, however, were laid back in their own graves. Which I attest along with those assistant medical officers provided for me. Actum ut supra:

  L.S. [signed] Johannes Fluchinger, Regimental Medical Officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honorable B. Furstenbusch.

  L.S. J.H. Siegel, Medical Officer of the Honorable Morall Regiment.

  L.S. Johann Friedrich Baumgarten, Medical Officer of the Foot Regiment of the Honorable B. Furstenbusch.

  The undersigned attest herewith that all which the Regiment Medical Officer of the Honorable Furstenbusch had observed in the matter of vampires – along with both medical officers who signed with him – is in every way truthful and has been undertaken, observed, and examined in our own presence. In confirmation thereof is our signature in our own hand, of our own making, Belgrade, 26 January 1732.

  L.S. Buttener, Lieutenant Colonel of the Honorable Alexandrian Regiment.

  L.S. J.H. von Lindenfels, Officer of the Honorable Alexandrian Regiment.

  As we study this strange account (which is admittedly difficult to do without skipping), there is an obvious temptation to dismiss it as a farrago of peasant superstition. Yet this is no secondhand tale of absurd horrors; the three doctors were officers in the army of Charles VI, Emperor of Austria – that newly emerging power that was succeeding the Holy Roman Empire. They were thoroughly familiar with corpses, having been serving in the army that had fought the Turks since 1714 and that defeated them four years later.

  A brief sketch of the historical background may clarify the emergence of vampires in the first half of the eighteenth century. For more than four centuries the Turks had dominated eastern Europe, marching in and out of Transylvania, Walachia, and Hungary and even conquering Constantinople in 1453. Don John of Austria defeated them at the great sea battle of Lepanto (1571), but it was their failure to capture Vienna after a siege in 1683 that caused the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. During the earlier stages of this war between Europe and Turkey, the man whose name has become synonymous with vampirism – Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler – struck blow after blow against the Turks, until they killed and beheaded him in 1477.

  Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), king of Walachia (1456–62, 1476–77), was, as his nickname implies, a man of sadistic temperament whose greatest pleasure was to impale his enemies (which meant anyone against whom he had a grudge) on pointed stakes; the stake – driven into the ground – was inserted into the anus (or, in the case of women, the vagina), and the victim was allowed to impale himself slowly under his own weight. (Vlad often had the point blunted to make the agony last longer.) In his own time he was known as Dracula, which means “son of a dragon” or “son of the Devil”. It is estimated that Dracula had about one hundred thousand people impaled during the course of his lifetime. When he conquered Brasov, in Transylvania, he had all its inhabitants impaled on poles, then gave a feast among the corpses. When one nobleman held his nose at the stench, Vlad sent for a particularly long pole and had him impaled. When he was a prisoner in Hungary, Vlad was kept supplied with birds, rats, and toads, which he impaled on small stakes. A brave and fearless warrior, he was finally killed in battle – or possibly assassinated by his own soldiers – and his head sent to Constantinople. Four hundred and twenty years later, in 1897, he was immortalized by Bram Stoker as the sinister Count Dracula, no longer a sadistic maniac but a drinker of blood.

  By the time of the outbreak of vampirism in Medvegia in the early 1730s, Vlad’s hereditary enemies, the Turks, had been driven out of Serbia, and the Austrians were now in Belgrade – which had originally fallen to the troops of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1521. The Austrians soon became aware of a strange superstition among the peasantry; they dug up corpses and beheaded them, alleging that they were vampires, or upirs.

  Tales of the “living dead” had been current since the days of ancient Greece. The Greeks called the creature a lamia or empusa and seemed to identify it with a witch. Lamias were not blood drinkers but cannibals. The biographer Philostratus tells a story of the philosopher (and magician) Apollonius of Tyana, who instantly recognized the fiancée of his disciple Menippus as a lamia, and with a few magical words caused the whole wedding feast to disappear into thin air. The girl then admitted that it was her intention to make a meal of Menippus. (Keats sentimentalizes the story in his poem Lamia; unable to believe any evil of a pretty girl, he makes her a lovelorn snake and Apollonius the cold, rational philosopher who destroys their happiness.)

  Tales of the “undead” – known as vrykolakas – persisted in Greece down through the centuries, and on January 1, 1701, a French botanist named Pitton de Tornefort visited the island of Mykonos and was present at a gruesome scene of dissection. An unnamed peasant, of sullen and quarrelsome disposition, was murdered in the fields by persons unknown. Two days after his burial, his ghost was reported to be wandering around at night, overturning furniture and “playing a thousand roguish tricks”. Ten days after his burial, a mass was said to “drive out the demon” that was believed to be in the corpse, after which the body was disinterred and the local butcher given the task of tearing out the heart. His knowledge of anatomy seemed to be defective, and he tore open the stomach and rummaged around in the intestines, causing such a vile stench that incense had to be burned. In the smoke-filled church, people began shouting “vrykolakas” and alleging that some of the smoke poured out of the corpse itself. Even after the heart had been burned at the seashore, the ghost continued to cause havoc until the villagers finally burned the corpse on a pyre.

  De Tornefort took a highly superior attitude about all this, convinced that it was simply mass hysteria: “I have never viewed anything so pitiable as the state of this island. Everyone’s head was turned; the wisest people were stricken like the others”. Although the year was only 1701, de Tornefort’s attitude was that of a typical French rationalist of the eighteenth century.