vampires (1928)

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Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW : 1895 - 1930), Sunday 5 August 1928, page 16

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article122803736

VANISHED?:

Incredible Theories About Mankind s

Most Horrible belief

STAKE THROUGH THE HEART OF A GHOSTi

By DULCIE DEAMER)

Some of us may have read Bram Stoker s Dracula —

for the sake of a good, hearty, truly, gruesome thrill..

And, when we had read it,we tossed it aside, like any other

shudderspme mystery story.

Rut how would it have afTccled us. if we had thought

that such a sequence of events was even remotely possible?

VET from India to Ireland — from East

to West— tho story of the Vampire

was andstill is among the peasantry)

held to be awful truth.

The most hideous belief ever har

bored by the quailing mind of man — a

a belief so dire that all *-ales of witch

craft, black mngic. and of the Father

of Evilhimself, wane into insignificance

beside it — was not only assumed by num

berless generation s to be a remote pos

sibility, but threw whole villages into a

ptnte of abject panic, and necessitated

the intervention of officials and clergy,

and even, on ono occasion, the direct

action of au Emperor.

VAMPIRE S EMI IKE.

There are vampire stories current in

Ireland, England, Germany, Russia, Hun

gary, Greece, and the Balkan States.

Tho ghouls of Asia aro the same thing,

and India, in all its provinces, has been

familiar with tho horrible idea from

time rnmemorial.?

Tho universality of tho belief is not

more extraordinary than its uniformity :

it is everywhere tho same, scarcely vary

ing in its smallest details, from County

Cork to tho Bay of Bengal.

And what is tho substance of this

belief? It may be summarised thus:

after the death oi some known bad

character, usually by suicide or vio

lence, an apparition of tho dead is

seen— often, though not always, by

the person nearest to him during

life— and as it draws near the

watcher, the latter is paralysed,

much in the same way that a bird

much in the same way that a bird

is paralysed at tho approach of a

snake.

The vampiro then draws blood

from its victim — as a rule by bit

ing the neck ; tho person attacked

sometimes being killed outright, or

in other cases, grievously injured..

Afterthis has occurred once or

oftener, and when those round about

realise what is happening, the body

of the criminal or suicide is dis

interred, and is found to be like ihat

of a living person, undecayed. the

cheeks flushed, the limbs supple and

pliable, and sometimes the whole

coffin an inch or so ,deep in fresh

blood, so that the living dead lies

steeped, as it were, in a dreadful

bath.

SLEEP IN PEACE.

On finding theso signs, either the

head is cut off, or a stake is driven

through the heart, or the body is placed

upon faggots and burned — sometimes, ac

cording to the records, shrilly scream

ing as it is mutilated or consumed by

fire.

But when this has been done, the

vampire is laid, and the living can sleep

in peace, delivered from its visits.

One particularly dreadful feature of

the story is the supposed) liability of

a vampire s victims to become vampires

themselves, so that from a single ex

ample numbers were thus likely to mul

tiply and afflict a whole community.

INFECTIOUS BITE.

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.

For Instance, one Arnold Paul, of the

village of Madrciga, in Transylvauia,

died in 1727. after having been bitten

by a Turkish vampire. He. in turn,

bit anil killed tlieson of Heyducq

MljJo.

undi this last victim, after having been

buried for nine weeks, attacked a girl

called Stniioskn, who was almost

strangled, and died three days uftor

wurds. .

In another case, a man who had been

dead over thirty years,killed his brother,

his son, and a servant, each dying in

stantly ; and, on a general disinterment

of those recently dead in this village,

seventeen out of forty were discovered

to have the signs of vampirism.

Again, in another case, after ? nine

people had died, tho Emperor of Aus

tria sent an officer, who, together with

the local cure, deposes to tho facts.

The result of inquiry was the ex

humation and cremation of one, Peter

Plogojovitz, and, after this, tho village

was left in peace.

-At Waterford, in Ireland, there is a

littlo

graveynr.d under tho ruined churchnear Stronghow s Tower. Legend has

it that underneath there, lies a beautiful

femaicvampire, still ready to kill those

8b.p can luic thither.

A vampire story is told about an

old .Cumberland farmhouse, tho vie

-v.

tim being a girl, whose screams wcro

heard as she was bitten, and who

thus escaped with her life.

In this case, the monster .was tracked

to a vault in tho churchyard, forty or

fifty coffins being found open, and tlieir

contents mutilated and scattered. But

one coffin was untouched^ and on tho

lid bring raised, tho apparition was

recognised , and the body was burnt.

Oni method of identifying a vampiro

when itsravages had been discovered is

recorded by the learned Abbe Calmet. A

boy of great purity and innocence is

placed on a young horse, hitherto unrid

don, and led about the cemetery. The

horse will proceed freely until ho homes

to tho grave of tho vampire, which he

will refuse to cross. This being taken as

condusivo evidence of tho presence of

evil, the grave could then bo opened and

the body burned.

Alfred Fellows, writing some years

back in tho literary supplement of the

London Times, asks whether it is not

possible to discover .some residuum of

truth amid all these incrediblo horrors —

something which it would bo bettor for

mankind to know than not to know.

Even for thoso who are disposed to be

credulous in the matter of ghost stories,

the material here is certainly tough.

No doubt, if all vampires camo from

vaults like, tho fiendish .hero of Dra-

cula, or the monster of tho Cumberland

story, it might bo supposed that they

knew of some outlet. But most arc re

lated to have been placed in coffins buried

in the earth in tho usual way.

in the earth in tho usual way.

Now, a ghost which can pierce the

skin and transfuse blood from tho body

of a victim to its own, must bo at least

partily materialised ; and since by uo

knowu processcan either a solid body or

a fluid pass without alteration through

yards of earth, and tho walls of a coffin,

the evil spirits must have the power to

materialise above ground and the power

to de-materialise and re-materialiso its

ghastly food above and below ground re

spectively.

Also, it must bo assumed from the

beginning that it has power to return

to its dead body ; that the stolen blood

can give it the vitality it desires, and

that it deliberately elect to.lead this

horrible existence, even thoughit in

volves the murder of the living.

Turning to thoso who have entertained

such ideas, itmay be remarked

?

that

they were held no more incompatible

with Christianity than the even more

widely spread belief in,

witchcraft.

. And, of course, in modern davs.

many Theosophists nennpt tho

truth of tho vampiro story, identify

ing tho vampire himself us one who,

by a wicked life, has so become en

tangled in .his lower nature that

his immortal soul is lost, and ho

seeks to postpone his terrible fate

of the second death in thisway

But though we no longer bury suicides

with a stake driven through them — to

prevent the possibility of their return —

no evidence of vampirism appears to exist

to-day, and, in addition to suicides, many

thousands of people die suddenly every

year, by violence or otherwise, and at

least some

of thesemust

be sunk enoughin evil to qualify. Yet no one becomes

mysteriously anaemic during tho night,

with curious little blue punctures near the

veins of the neck.

Two answers have been given to this

objection ; the first, that tho combination

of circumstances that creates a vampire

have always been rare, and must become

rarer, and secondly, that some occult

knowledge of materialisation and demate

rialisation is necessary for the evil spirit,

and if this is not acquired during life,

it is

not likely to be learnt after death.

Thus, iu the days when men tampered

with black magic the possibility existed,

but now, in the West of Europe,it has

virtually disappeared.

These explanations may be received for

what they are worth, but perhaps the

most profitable lino the Speculation can

take will bo towards our own extreme ig

noranco of the great problems of life and

denth.

For example,let

a doctor be asked if,

when ho is watching by a death bed, he

can state the exact moment of death. He

may answer that he can, but probably

the older and more experienced he is,

the less confident will bo the reply.

FROM JAWS OK DEATH,

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FROM JAWS OK DEATH,

Again, let tho resuscitation of tho

apparently drowned be considered,

A body which has no breath in it,

and all the signs of death, is brought

from the water; but, perhaps, hours

afterwards, by the steady paticiico

of those practising artificial respira

tion — and it may bo the strength of

theirwills

also—wo

know very

little, tho life returns,-

very pain

fully, and tho rescue is complete.

For more research in tho same direc

tion, some of tho liternturo of the As-

social ion for the Prevention of Prematuro

Burial might bo found snegestive. Tales

of catalepsy, and of stirrfngs in coffins

being lowered iuto the ground; talcs even

moro gruesome, of bodies v^hich have

been buried, and have apparently moved

in theii coffins — stories, which, when they

como home, seem almost to touch the

limits of horror.

Not long ago the papers had o

frightful little paragraph concerning

au Englishwoman whose small son

thought ho heard a muffled knock

ing coming from her grave just after

the funeral.

At first ho was not believed, but finally

tho grave was opened, and the unfortu

nate woman was discovered— ^-dead, in

deed — but with her body twisted, her face

convulsed, and tho flesh gnawed from her

hands, evidences of tho paroxysm she

had undergone on realising her position.

The point is that tho body may be ap

parently dead, even to a skilled observer

there aro mnuj walking about with their

own death certificates, signed by a doc

tor) and yet tho soul may return.

And it has been said that tho only ab

solute criterion of death is the decom

position of tho larger organs— which, of

course, would plainly render tho body

uninhabitable.

In tho restoration of tho appar

ently drowned, tho compelling forco

is known, but is anyone wise enough

to know with certainty that other

and vastly different forces cannot act

to tho some end?

And, in particular, artificial breathing

is an impulse from this side, but what

do our orthodox teachers know of the

forces on tho other.

Is it so pastbelief, for example, that

the discarnate spirit of a suicide, appalled

at the frightful conditions ho had created

for himself, should seek refuge from

them, desperately, by an ineffectual at

tempt to retrievo his step?

Those who have studied the occult will

have le,ss difficulty than others in regard

ing the body us the clothes, or shell, and

the soul as the inhabitant — the dweller

in the innermost.

There may have been some foundation

of fact for mankind s most horrible belief

of fact for mankind s most horrible belief

— or there maynot. But certainly, the

more we know the less we find wo really

know — especially as regards tho prob

lems of life and death.

Perhaps the mediaeval clerics were

wise in their generation when they placed

an innocent boy on an unbroken white

colt, and led him backwards and for

wards across the village graveyard to dis

cover the bed of an accursed spirit.

But those days have passed forever,

and we can count one nightmare the less

among our fears.

7/27/2019 Vampires (1928)


vampires (1928)

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