vampires (1928)
TRANSCRIPT
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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.
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