11 - The Kiss of Death

In areas where belief in vampires was strongest, their very prevalence reduced them to the commonplace. People avoided vampires or sought to destroy them much as they would gather crops or go to war. But as cases developed beyond the boundaries of such lands as Transylvania, they created so much stir that detailed reports began to be demanded. One of the earliest of such documented accounts, was the case of the Vampire of Breslau, a suicide victim. The facts were given by a famous English philosopher, Dr. Henry More, in 1653.

Dr. More claimed that on September 20, 1591, a shoemaker living in Breslau, Germany, went out in the garden and cut his throat with his shoemaker's knife. Members of his family found the body and covered up the suicide by attributing his death to apoplexy. He was given an honorable funeral two days later, but during the succeeding weeks, whispers began to grow into loud rumors that the shoemaker had committed suicide.

Apparently, these rumors were started by people who thought that they had seen the shoemaker's ghost. The family boldly denied the suicide charge and there was no way of proving it except by exhuming the body, which they refused to allow. Subsequently, the specter began to appear in earnest, awakening some people with frightful visions of the dead shoemaker and attacking others in a bodily form that was equally recognizable. So violent were the actions of this incredible being, that men who became his targets began sitting up at nights in dining rooms, with candles lighted, seeking protection in one another's company.

Yet the living dead man even attacked members of such groups, as well as isolated individuals. In panic, people were deserting the houses where such things were reported and a wave of terror swept Breslau. As a result, the city fathers overrode the family's protests and disinterred the body on April 18, 1592. Seven months underground had actually improved its condition - it was entire, the joints and limbs were flexible, there was no ill odor except that of the grave clothes, which had gone musty. Close inspection disclosed the throat wound that the family had denied, but the body was far too robust for the amount of blood it must have lost.

The body was kept on view for the next week, but reports of the grim specter continued, so the authorities decided to lay the dead shoemaker's ghost along with his body by burying the latter beneath a gallows, but that remedy fell flat. The phantom resumed operations, and in true vampire fashion again bodily attacked people, but more violently than ever. This time, members of the dead man's family and their household were targets, and his widow personally begged the officials to take more stringent action, which they did.

On May 7, 1592, the body was again exhumed and found to have swollen surprisingly during the past two weeks. It was promptly dismembered and the heart, when removed, was found to be as fresh and entire as that of a newly-killed calf. The various parts were consigned to a funeral pyre and reduced to ashes that were scattered on the River Oder. With that, as was to be expected, the vampire visitations ended; but only so far as the suicide shoemaker was concerned.

In his family household was a maidservant who had been the object of one of the vampire's later and more violent attacks. She happened to die not long afterward and, eight days later, she reappeared in physical form and attacked another servant. On another appearance, this new vampire snatched a child from its cradle, but was driven off by a vigilant nurse. From then on, the vampire maid became more cunning, appearing and tormenting people not just in her own bodily form, but as a cat, a dog and a goat. Her body was duly exhumed and burned, putting an end to the new nuisance.

The indication here is that the maidservant was the only one of the vampire shoemaker's victims who died soon enough to become a vampire herself. Her rapidly acquired ability to transform herself into a variety of physical shapes was definite evidence that she belonged in the vampire category.

Another case from a small town near Breslau, also recorded by the industrious Dr. More, involved an alderman of a somewhat profane character and therefore good vampire timber. Added to that, the circumstances of his death were of a highly significant nature.

While fixing a shoe on a horse, the alderman received an unexpected kick that proved fatal. Such an accidental death was bad enough, but even worse, as he was gasping his last earthly breath in a fit of delirium, the casement window burst open and a huge black cat sprang in upon his bed and clawed at his face as though eager to carry him off as prey; then, just as suddenly, the cat was gone. On the day of the funeral, a great tempest arose, but abated as soon as the alderman's body was buried. That portent foretold further ill.

Soon, the whole town began to be disturbed by what seemed to be a fiend incarnate, which spoke to many frightened people in a voice they recognized as the deceased alderman's. He was heard to stride about houses that he had often entered during life, so forcibly that he shook the walls and made the windows flash with light. One troubled burgher going outdoors the next morning found hoof marks in the snow that were so unusual that they could have been the Devil's own.

The alderman's own house received a due share of such attention. The town watchman reported a great stir there every night, with horses kicking their stalls apart, breaking loose and biting one another. Both the local parson and his wife were attacked by the spectral alderman, and he was also recognized by their maid, whom he assaulted.

Dozens of other reported portentous events gave validity to the vampire rumors, including the appearance of blue lights about candle flames prior to the vampire's approach, the transforming of bowls of milk into blood and the uprooting of posts too heavy for two men to lift. Children were snatched from their cradles and old men were strangled. Most phenomenal of all, the alderman's own tombstone was tilted from place, revealing openings the size of mouse holes extending clear down to his coffin; and whenever people filled these, they were mysteriously reopened by the next morning.

After nearly six months of this, the grave was opened and the alderman's body was found fresher than at the time of his death. When it was dismembered for burning, the blood literally spurted from it and the funeral pyre required more than two hundred huge logs to complete the cremation. But it was worth it, for the vampire disturbances immediately ended.

Around 1720, the entire village of Haidam, Hungary, was subjected to a mass attack by vampires, all following a pattern so insidious that they might have spread indefinitely, but for the vigilance of a soldier who happened to be quartered at a farmhouse in the town. He became friendly with several persons who had their meals there and one night, as they were sitting down to dinner, an elderly stranger entered and took his place in a chair beside the farmer, whom he watched steadily and intently.

The stranger did not eat, which was not exactly surprising, for neither did anyone else, except the soldier. Nor did anyone talk, until the obviously unwanted visitor silently went on his way. Even then, conversation was hushed and any mention of the incident was avoided, so the soldier waited until morning to ask questions. By then, they were unnecessary. The farmer had been found dead in his bed and everyone was blurting out the horrendous fact that the singular guest was none other than the farmer's father, who had been dead some years and had come to warn his son that his own death was soon due.

To the soldier this was more than a mere ghostly visitation, for the stranger had looked as solid as everyone else around the table, and from the way they all recognized him, the soldier gathered that they had seen him on other occasions. So the soldier reported the case to some officers, who relayed it to the commanding general, who, in turn made a prompt investigation. All that the soldier had reported was confirmed; a notary took affidavits from the witnesses; and an army surgeon opened the grave of the farmer's father to make sure that the body was really there.

It not only was there, it was in fresh condition after all those years, looking exactly as the witnesses had described it. The case was classed a vampirism and the investigators began checking on how often and how far the vampire had roamed. To their astonishment, they began hearing more about vampires than victims, for it was an accepted routine around Haidam for dead relatives to appear in the flesh and throw a hush over a family, during an evening meal. Though well spaced, these cases ran into the dozens, usually bringing such baleful omens that each family kept its worry to itself.

One man who had been buried more than sixteen years had caused the death of two of his sons during his bloodthirsty forays. Another, who had been in the grave for thirty years, had appeared three times at the family board, attacking first his brother, the next time one of his sons, and finally a farm servant, departing with surprising speed after biting the victim's neck and draining his blood. All three had died almost immediately, but witnesses had been too horrified to report the cause of the deaths.

Whether the vampires were acting in concert, or simply following accepted vampire procedure, it was evident that an epidemic was in the making, so all suspected bodies were exhumed including those of victims who could have acquired the vampire taint. All those who had been seen most often after death were still ruddy, regardless of how long they had been entombed; so they, as well as some others, were given the spike and decapitation treatment. Vampirism was thus stamped out in Haidam and a full first-hand report was filed at the University of Fribourg, where it may still be available.

One unusual case where a vampire failed to return to its grave was reported from the Moravian village of Liebava, where the populace was so terrified by a bloodthirsty rover that they brought in a Hungarian investigator to curb the outrage. The vampire was supposedly a prominent, but unscrupulous citizen who had died a few years before and was now literally bleeding townsfolk in death as he had done financially in life. The investigator, perhaps to avoid complications with relatives of the deceased, stationed himself nightly in the high belfry of the church, so he could watch the graveyard from which the vampire reportedly came.

His vigil paid off handsomely. One night, he saw a figure stalk from the suspected tomb, but it lacked the shroud and winding sheet in which the corpse had been buried. So as soon as the ominous figure had moved off through the village, the investigator descended from his vantage spot and approached the tomb. Though the coffin was below ground, with no sign of the earth being disturbed, the gruesome garments were lying on the grave itself, having been left there by the vampire, so that he could roam in the guise of the living, rather than the dead.

The investigator carried this funereal evidence back up to the belltower and watched until the vampire returned. As he expected, the Undead prowler showed all the cunning of his ilk. Discovering that his grave clothes were gone, he sensed immediately where they had been taken and shouted up to the belfry, demanding their return. The investigator responded by flaunting the musty garments and challenging their owner to come and get them. The harangue brought witnesses to the scene, where they gazed in horror at the figure they recognized as a living dead man, ferociously climbing the steep tower steps to reclaim his stolen garb.

Note again how the lore and law of vampirism was evidencing itself in this case. This vampire, as with others just cited, was attracted to places it had known in life, such as the man's own home and other houses where he had been welcome. Nor was it difficult for it to be invited into other homesteads by unsuspecting persons. But it could never have invaded a totally unfamiliar place, least of all the tower of a church, without express command, which it gained in this instance.

Moreover, once it had reached the top, the vampire, by dint of its superhuman strength, could have easily overpowered the man who had so recklessly challenged it. Hence the people below were sure that the investigator was doomed to become another victim of the vampire; but he fortunately knew the ways of such creatures - their line of attack was invariably direct. So, when the vampire arrived, he countered by flinging the winding sheet and other graveyard garb over its head and shoulders. While it was still entangled, he managed to trip it and send it plunging headlong to the bottom of the stairway, which was as steep as the average ladder.

The jolt was enough to immobilize even a body that was merely reanimated and therefore insensible to pain; at least long enough for the sexton to arrive with a sharp-bladed spade and sever the creature's neck. The body was identified as that of the suspected vampire; and the tomb, when opened, proved to be empty.

The fact that reports of vampires have lessened through the years does not necessarily mean that they can be shrugged off to imagination and superstition. It could well be that the stringent counter-measures taken in the days when they were really rampant was responsible for their sharp reduction in number.

One of the most remarkable of modern cases was the Vampire of Croglin Grange, described in detail by Augustus Hare, who wrote many European guide books during the Victorian Era and was a most unlikely person to indulge in fancy. Hare gained the account directly from the people most involved in it - a woman whom we will call Sylvia and her two brothers, members of a wealthy family that Hare purposely did not name, though he gave the locale of their adventure.

Sylvia and her brothers rented a staid old English mansion called Croglin Grange, that had a large veranda fronting on a terrace, and grounds sweeping downward to an ancient church in a hollow, with a fine view of the distant countryside beyond. They spent an enjoyable winter there and it was not until the following summer that a shocking experience occurred.

One very hot night, they dined on the veranda and afterward, Sylvia went to her room, which overlooked the terrace. From her bed, she studied a scene illuminated by the rising moon, until she noted two strange lights that flickered from a fringe of trees between the lawn and the churchyard. Soon, they emerged, surrounded by a dark shape that seemingly approached the house, for it steadily increased in size except when it was lost momentarily in some of the long, dark shadows that streaked the moonlit lawn.

Frightened as the thing loomed to human size, Sylvia was about to start for the door to the hallway, which was close to the window, intending to call her brothers, when the shape was at the window itself, glaring in at her with eyes that blazed from a horribly grotesque visage and scratching at the pane with clawlike hands. Fortunately, Sylvia had bolted the window as well as the door, so she darted back to bed, to get farther away from the menacing creature, thinking that once it found it could not enter, it would soon go away.

Instead, the scratching turned into a pecking sound and Sylvia suddenly realized that the monstrous menace was picking away the lead that held the window pane. Too scared to scream, she heard the glass drop loose and saw a bony claw come through and draw the bolt. The window was open and accompanied by a surge of the cool night air. In an instant, the creature was upon her, twisting her hair with its long-nailed claws and drawing her head over the side of the bed, so that her face met the gleam of those ruddy eyes. Even worse was the sight of the creature's mouth, spread in a lipless smile which accentuated the long, sharp teeth that glistened like fangs in the moonlight. Suddenly, those teeth were at Sylvia's throat, biting with a razorlike champ that roused her from her petrified state. The scream she gave was far more piercing than any the vampire itself might have uttered, even if it had paused in the midst of its gory feast.

Only it wouldn't have paused, if Sylvia's brothers hadn't heard her shrieks. They reached her door and beat it down with hammer, tongs and poker, while Sylvia was still howling for aid and the vampire was making the most of his gruesome opportunity.

By the time Sylvia's brothers broke into the room, the vampire was on its way out through the open window. While one brother looked after Sylvia the other chased the monster over the lawn, where it finally escaped by tremendous leaps that carried it past the trees into the churchyard, where it disappeared. The brothers sent for a doctor, who treated Sylvia's badly lacerated throat and decided that she must have been the victim of some local lunatic. But a check proved that nobody of that sort was loose, so Sylvia's brothers settled the problem by closing Croglin Grange and taking her to Switzerland for the rest of the year.

There, Sylvia insisted that they return to Croglin Grange, as they had a long term lease on the place. So they did and passed an uneventful, and therefore happy, winter, - probably because Sylvia's brothers slept constantly in an opposite room with loaded pistols beneath their pillows, ready for the menace only she and they believed was real.

On a night in March it returned. Scratches at the window awakened Sylvia and she saw the same glaring, monstrous face staring in at her. Her timely shrieks brought her brothers out to the veranda, to intercept the hideous creature's flight. One of their pistol shots clipped the monster in a leg, but it still managed to hobble across a wall beyond the trees and disappear into the churchyard.

The next day, Sylvia's brothers summoned all the neighbors, who willingly agreed to open a long forgotten vault, into which the monster could have gone. They found it full of coffins, all tossed about with horribly mangled skeletons - except for one. In that box, brown and withered, they found the hideous creature that had attacked Sylvia, bearing the mark of a bullet that her brother had fired. So they burned the mummified monster and ended the menace of Croglin Grange.

Among American vampires, an outstanding case was reported in a small town north of San Francisco, late in November, 1891. Earlier that month, a family named Walsingham had moved into a farm house near a river and soon things began to happen in the place. The doorbell rang at odd hours, with no one about to ring it; doors themselves were slammed; and even some of the furniture was tossed about. Being newcomers, the Walsinghams assumed that they were simply victims of pranks and began watching for the perpetrators.

This continued for three weeks, during which the disturbances were amplified by horrible shrieks and wails that came from remote portions of the house and, on occasion, from outdoors. That only made Mr. and Mrs. Walsingham and their two daughters all the more determined to find the responsible parties; but every time they completed a futile search of the upstairs rooms, they were taunted by ghoulish, unearthly laughter.

Still, there was no direct physical threat, so the Walsinghams stayed on, as people often do in the face of poltergeist disturbances, which these appeared to be. But at the end of the third week, the action suddenly graduated to vampire status. One of the Walsingham daughters was seated in front of a mirror, arranging her hair, when she heard someone enter the room behind her and felt a hand laid lightly on her shoulder. She lowered her arms and tilted her head as she looked into the mirror, expecting to see her mother or her sister. Instead, the mirror showed only the reflection of the empty room behind her!

No sign of a face, nor even of the hand that right then was sliding from the girl's shoulder, down past her elbow, where it took a powerful clamp on her forearm. This time, she looked directly downward, instead of in the mirror, and to her horror she saw a man's brawny hand clutching her arm and digging its long, bony fingers into her flesh. She saw the man's arm as well, but not the rest of his figure nor his face, for by then, she was wrenching frantically in the other direction, trying to get free from the hideous embrace that she felt was coming next.

The girl's wild screams brought her mother and sister on the run. As she heard them coming, she either managed to disengage herself from the monster's grip, or for some reason, her attacker suddenly relinquished his hold. But as she reached the door to warn her mother and sister away from the menace, they greeted her with expressions of complete astonishment. Turning in the direction of their gaze, her fright turned to equal bewilderment. The room was empty!

Somehow the eerie visitor had gone as uncannily as it had come, but there was no doubt as to its reality. The girl's arm still hurt from the crushing grip and the marks of fingers and scratches from the nails were plainly visible. After hearing her story, the others decided that it was time to call in the neighbors, which they did; and all that night, they were alert in case the entity showed itself again, but nothing occurred.

The next evening, however, when the Walsinghams and some of their guests were seated around the dinner table, they heard a weird, moaning sound apparently coming from the room directly above. As they kept looking up, expecting it to recur, something dripped down from the ceiling and spattered on the tablecloth, where it gradually spread into a crimson blot, resembling blood. Mr. Walsingham and other men rushed to the upstairs room, but found it empty, with no clue to the source of the bloody drip.

Yet, while they searched, the drip continued in the room below and when it finally ceased, it was still as much a mystery as when it started. The next day, the authorities were summoned and the huge stain on the tablecloth was analyzed by chemists who pronounced it to be human blood. That was enough for the Walsinghams; they packed up and left that same day.

Note how these indications of a modern vampire fitted with the accepted lore. A physical form was finally present, as is always the case with vampires; but its reflection could not be seen in the mirror - another sure sign; and the dripping blood was equally significant. Furthermore, there was a sequel to this case that helped to corroborate the evidence of vampirism.

Among the hundreds of curiousity seekers who came to see the Walsingham house was one man who decided to stay there overnight and see what happened. He brought a lamp with him and started a fire in the fireplace; but almost immediately, weird noises began and the fire was smothered and its embers scattered by unseen hands, while the lamp was extinguished and broken. While the man was trying to find his way out in the dark, powerful hands seized him and choked and battered him until he blacked out.

In the morning, the self-appointed investigator was found unconscious, with finger marks and scratches on his neck and throat, duplicating the experience of Walsingham's daughter, only worse. This man was hospitalized for weeks, apparently having suffered a great loss of blood, though his body showed no gashes or other severe wounds, except those throat scratches, which could have covered incisions from a vampire's teeth.

According to report, the deserted house later burned down. There was no mention of arson, but if it happened to be suspected, there was still a question whether the fire was set by human or inhuman hands. Whether or not the vampire burned up with it was also unanswered.

Perhaps these weird occurrences can best be summed in the words of the famous actor, Bela Lugosi, who appeared in the role of the granddaddy of all vampires, Count Dracula, on the stage, and later, in films. Always, after the final curtain, he returned on stage, still in his Dracula makeup, to tell the audience that after all, it was just a play and to wish them all a pleasant goodnight; to which he added in sepulchral tones:

"But remember - such things do happen!"