Vampires Through the Ages by Brian Righi Read Free Book Online Page A

that he had returned to her one night as well demanding his opanci , or shoes. Terrified by the encounter and the growing death toll, she soon packed her belongings and moved to another village.
    By now panic gripped the tiny hamlet, and the inhabitants turned to the imperial representative of the district, Provisor Frombald, for permission to exhume the body of Peter Plogojowitz and examine it for signs of vampirism. Initially the Provisor tried to stall, claiming that he first needed to inform the Austrian authorities in Belgrade, but the villagers would not be swayed and threatened to abandon the village if their demands were not met. After all, this was not the first time the village had been exterminated by vampires, which they claimed occurred once before while under Ottoman rule and they were not about to let it happen again. Fearing their growing anger, the stubborn Frombald was forced to consent and with the Gradisk parish priest accompanied the growing crowd of villagers to the town cemetery. To their surprise, once the body was brought to the surface and the burial wrappings torn away, the corpse appeared undecayed with new skin and nails growing under the old and with what resembled fresh blood around the mouth. In his report Frombald also mentions what he delicately termed “wild signs,” which out of respect for the reader he refused to elaborate on. Later commentators explained that it alluded to the corpse having an erection, a recurring element that may have later helped associate the vampire with its erotic elements.
    Given these and other curious signs, the people grew greatly distressed and drove a stake through the heart of the corpse—immediately sending a fountain of blood spraying upwards, which welled out of the mouth and ears as well. The body was then dragged from the grave and set on fire with torches. The Provisor finishes his story, as any good bureaucrat looking to keep his job would, by stating that although he was opposed to the actions of the villagers, they could not be stopped from the hysteria that swept them and that he should not be blamed.
    The Case of Arnod Paole
    A second account to find its way into the headlines of the day occurred in the year 1727 in yet another small Serbian village, this one named Medvegia. According to the story, a man named Arnod Paole settled in the village after many years of military service fighting the Turks. In 1725 he died from a fall off a hay wagon, breaking his neck, and was buried in the local cemetery in the provincial manner. Thirty days after his burial, residents of the village began to report that they were being haunted by his spirit at night. Soon after four of these witnesses died, the village began to clamor that Arnod Paole had returned from the dead as a vampire. Helping to fuel the growing suspicion, it was widely gossiped that while he was alive, Paole related to his wife that he was once attacked by a vampire while serving in the Turkish controlled town of Gossowa (perhaps Kosova). To avoid becoming one of the creatures himself, he exhumed the corpse of the vampire that attacked him and disposed of it in the accustomed manner for dealing with such things. Following the traditional remedy, he also smeared the blood of the corpse on his body and consumed some the grave dirt.
    As the nightly attacks by Paole continued, the villagers grew more frightened, not knowing who among them would become his next target. Finally, a Hadnack , a type of military administrator, who was well acquainted with the lore of the vampire, suggested to the village elders that the only way to combat the menace threatening their homes was to disinter the body of Arnod Paole and drive a stake through it. Fearing that if they did not act swiftly the entire village would be lost, a group of men nervously raised the body of Paole from the grave. Upon examining the corpse, they were shocked to find it undecayed and that “fresh blood had flowed from his