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The True Characteristics of
Vampires
By
Bobette Bryan
© 2004 Underworldtales.com
 Before
Vampires filled the pages of horror stories, vampires are said to have
plagued the rural European villages, especially in eastern Europe, including
Hungary, Romania, and, of course, Transylvania. Everyone thinks of vampires
as tall, dark deboniour, aristocrats, usually dressed in a black suit
with a long, flowing black cape. However, the original rumors and eyewitness
accounts of vampires are very different from that description. Far from
elegant, most vampires supposedly had foul breath, hideously long canine
teeth, nails that were long and crooked, and a complexion that was too
frighteningly pale.
Here's an eyewitness account about
Peter Plogojowitz, dating back to 1715. Supposedly, Peter had died ten
weeks earlier and had arisen to kill no less than ten people by visiting
them in their beds late at night, forcing them to "give up the ghost".
...I went to the village of Kisilova,
taking along the Gradisk pope, and viewed the body of Peter Plogojowitz,
just exhumed, finding, in accordance with thorough truthfulness, that first
of all I did not detect the slightest odor that is otherwise characteristic
of the dead, and the body, except for the nose, which was somewhat fallen
away, was completely fresh. The hair and the beard, even the nails of which
the old ones had fallen away--had grown on him; the old skin, which was
somewhat whitish, had peeled away, and a new one had emerged from it. The
face, hands, and feet and the whole body were so constituted that they
could not have been more complete in his lifetime. Not without astonishment,
I saw some fresh blood in his mouth, which according to the common observation,
he had sucked from the people killed by him. In short, all the indications
were present that such people (as remarked above) are said to have. After
both the pope and I had seen this spectacle, while people grew more outraged
than distressed, all the subjects with great speed, sharpened a stake--in
order to pierce the corpse of the deceased with it--and put this at his
heart, whereupon, as he was pierced, not only did much blood, completely
fresh, flow also through his ears and mouth, but still other wild signs
(which I pass by out of high respect) took place. Finally, according to
their usual practice, they burned the oftenmentioned body, in his casu,
to ashes of which I inform the most laudable Administration, and at the
same time would like to request, obediently and humbly, that iif a mistake
was made in this matter, such is to be attributed not to me, but to the
rabble who were beside themselves with fear.
--Vampires...The Complete Guide
to the World of the Undead by Manuela Dunn Mascetti
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