Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days' duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was found in the chest.

[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first necessary to cut the chest open.]

7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before. It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood in the chest.

8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely adjoining the others.

9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old; he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.

10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.

11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6 weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.

12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.

The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its general fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that, where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred, weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life has only recently departed.

What inference shall we draw from this fact?—that vampyrism is true in the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific force and vividness.

Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.

"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements, as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell, and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing, and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the grave was full of blood."

Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, if we dare.

Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes—that is its first stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment; its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down, he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some startling novelty! But, courage! again,—

The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were then alive.

But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring forward as favourable cases in point, the instances of frogs and toads that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true, you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred bodies proved, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in which, totally apart from vampyrism, bodies have been found turned over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?

But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?

It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or, like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only indicated and partially outlined.

What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation, let us imagine how the thing might come about.

The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart; a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some influence directly exerted upon it, and that this state of interrupted function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at the same time the consequences following which result from either of these changes, when they are primary. The heart, when not acting by order, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency. The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of consciousness beginning in the nervous system—a kind of fit which may, under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life, without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy, because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because every action is stilled within it.

But this must be a dull subject of speculation for you, and your mind is perhaps wandering thence to more practical views. It has struck you possibly, not without an uncomfortable misgiving, that this obscure, but unpleasant event may happen to yourself, and what on earth is there to prevent your being buried alive?

If you wish individually to be as safe as possible, leave by will to some eminent surgeon, not your habitual attendant, £50, and his railway expenses, &c., to be paid him for opening your body, when you are certainly dead; £25 if he opens you, finds you alive, and succeeds in sewing you up, and keeping you so; £200, on the contrary, to be expended in indicting him for manslaughter if you die under his hands. I do not venture to affirm that with all these precautions you would be perfectly safe. The eminent Vesalius, surgeon, and a favourite of the Emperor Charles V., with all his experience and knowledge, was unlucky enough to open a Spanish nobleman by mistake, while he was yet alive. The consequences, no doubt, were more serious than they would be now. Vesalius hardly escaped the claws of the Inquisition, and died during his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

If, more comprehensively, you should wish to save others, as well as yourself, from this awful risk, and have a friend in the legislature, urge him, or otherwise Mr Wakley, to move for the insertion in any convenient bill a clause to appoint in every district a qualified officer to license burials; he had better not be a practising doctor, but his office might embrace necroscopic inquiries for the coroner, and the registrarship of births and deaths.

In either case, I would recommend you to offer publicly a premium of £500, to be paid at the expiration of three years, for the best treatise upon the signs of death; the same being calculated to form a useful body of instruction, as yet wanting, either for your private surgeon, or the new officials.

In England, indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before decomposition has already commenced. That is death's certain seal; nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course excepted, is it right to consider life surely extinct, till the impress of that seal is perceptible to the senses.

On the Continent, generally, the interval observed before burial is far too short for safety. They calculate that in France from twenty to thirty are annually interred alive, computing from the number of those who, after supposed death, come to life before the funeral is completed. I cannot help imagining that this seeming death must be much less frequent in England than in some other countries; (is that owing to the more vigorous practice for which English medical men are celebrated, they either cure or kill?) In Germany, interment is forbidden by law for three days after death. And there is a curious and humane provision in the grave-houses attached to the cemeteries of some of the principal towns: Bodies which are brought too soon, not having performed the three days' quarantine, are received and lodged, being disposed upon tressles, with rings on their toes and fingers which are attached to bell-pulls. The corpse thus, on coming to itself, may have immediate attendance merely by ringing for it; some one is always there on the watch. But the humanity of this arrangement, though perfect as long as it lasts, is finite in duration. As soon as the seventy-two hours prescribed by law are expired, it is another thing. The body is then legally dead, and must comport itself accordingly. At any rate, it is at its own risk if it behaves otherwise than as a corpse, and gives itself any airs of vitality. This is appalling enough, and would certainly justify any body, if it could, in getting out at nights and turning vampyr.

And now, to return again to our inquiry. We have got thus far. The bodies found in the so-called vampyr state are alive. They are in a sort of fit, the possible duration of which is undetermined. The same fit may occur, and does occur continually, with no reference to the superstition of vampyrism. But where the belief in vampyrism is rife, these fits are more prevalent, and spread sometimes like an epidemic.

The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in these cases, propagated?

At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and proner to derangement?

Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of fits—in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits; and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits, and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.

We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing themselves into the state of seeming death, voluntarily. In Gooch's surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot, that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be this story true or false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted to have been possible—and this remark may be safely added: Whatever change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.

You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the marvellous and with the subject. What!—yet another question? Ay. How came this superstition to arise?

The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute, and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.

Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?—Well! it is nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man in the grave had something to do with spreading the disease, and that his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so. In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your supposition to be possible, you will excuse me if I profess to hold the solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.

Well! there is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers), John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case during the intermortem examination, an event he witnessed for the first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity, but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.

    I remain, dear Archy,
    Yours, &c.
    Mac Davus.

LETTER III

SPIRITS, GOBLINS, GHOSTS

Dear Archy.—On what subject shall I next address you? Elves, goblins, ghosts, real and unreal; dreams, witchcraft, second-sight? Bless me! the field of marvels seems more thronged, as I approach it closer. The spirits I have evoked begin to scare me with their numbers. How on earth shall I ever get them fairly laid? But some, I see, can now only limp along—they are scotched already; I will begin with finishing these. Yet they deserve gentle treatment. They sprang from our nature, which seems expressly made to procreate and rear them. Thick, within and around us, lie the rich veins of illusive suggestion from which they spring.

The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency, anthropomorphise spirit.

Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling, imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when this chord is touched.

Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of the legs of her work-table,—she blushes—her lively fancy has given them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them, besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement, and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the contest by breaking my shin.

To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living Greece no more"—in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and streams, and hills have their own vitality.

"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea."

You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt."

Amid the Alps—with glacier, torrent, forest around—you still evoke the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but

"To gaze upon her beauty—nothing more."

And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhœtus or Enceladus of the West, and

"over earth, air, wave,