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evil, and others to procure it, the first belong to the worship, and are derived from the power, of the good spirit; and the second are from the opposite source. It is to be concluded, then, that the superstition of Obi is no other than the practice of and belief in the worship of Obboney or Oboni, the evil deity of the Africans, the serpent of Africa and of Europe, and the old serpent and Satan of the Scriptures; and that the witchcraft of the negroes is evidently the same with our own. It might, indeed, be further shown that the latterhave their temporary transformations of men into alligators, wolves, and the like; as the French have their loups-garoux, the Germans their war-wolves, wolf-men, and the rest.Thaumaturgia, or Elucidations of the Marvellous.

VAMPIRES.

ACCOUNT OF A VAMPIRE, TAKEN FROM THE JEWISH LETTERS (LETTRES JUIVES), LETTER 137.

We have just had in this part of Hungary a scene of vampirism, which is duly attested by two officers of the tribunal of Belgrade, who went down to the places specified, and by an officer of the emperor's troops at Graditz, who was au ocular witness of the proceedings.

In the beginning of September there died in the village of Kisilova, three leagues from Graditz, an old man who was sixty-two years of age. Three days after he had been buried he appeared in the night to his son, and asked him for something to eat; the son having given him something, he ate and disappeared. The next day the son recounted to his neighbours what had happened. That night the father did not appear, but the following night he showed himself, and asked for something to eat. They know not whether the son gave him anything or not, but the next day he was found dead in his bed. On the same day five or six persons fell suddenly ill in the village, and died one after the other in a few days.

The officer or bailiff of the place, when informed of what had happened, sent an account of it to the tribunal of Bel

grade, which despatched to the village two of these officers and an executioner to examine into this affair. The imperial officer from whom we have this account repaired thither from Graditz, to be witness of a circumstance which he had so often heard spoken of.

They opened the graves of those who had been dead six weeks. When they came to that of the old man, they found him with his eyes open, having a fine colour, with natural respiration, nevertheless motionless as the dead; whence they concluded that he was most evidently a vampire. The executioner drove a stake into his heart; they then raised a pile and reduced the corpse to ashes. No mark of vampirism was found either on the corpse of the son, or on the others. Thanks be to God, we are by no means credulous. We avow that all the light which science can throw on this fact discovers none of the causes of it. Nevertheless, we cannot refuse to believe that to be true which is juridically attested, and by persons of probity. We will here relate what happened in 1732, and which is inserted in the Glaneur, No. XVIII.

OTHER INSTANCES OF GHOSTS-CONTINUATION OF THE

GLEANER.

In a certain canton of Hungary, named in Latin Oppida Heidanum, beyond the Tibisk, vulgo Theiss,-that is to say, between that river which waters the fortunate territory of Tokay and Transylvania, the people known by the name of Heyducs believe that certain dead persons, whom they call vampires, suck all the blood from the living, so that these become visibly attenuated, whilst the corpses, like leeches, fill themselves with blood in such abundance, that it is seen even oozing through the pores. This opinion has just been confirmed by several facts which cannot be doubted, from the rank of the witnesses who have certified them. We will here relate some of the most remarkable.

About five years ago, a certain Heyduc, inhabitant of Madreiga, named Arnald Paul, was crushed to death by the fall of a waggon-load of hay. Thirty days after his death four persons died suddenly, and in the same manner in which,

according to the tradition of the country, those die who are molested by vampires. They then remembered that this Arnald Paul had frequently related that, in the environs of Cassovia, and on the frontiers of Turkish Servia, he had often been tormented by a Turkish vampire; for they believe, also, that those who have been passive vampires during life become active ones after their death,-that is to say, that those who have been sucked suck also in their turn; but that he had found means to cure himself by eating earth from the grave of the vampire, and smearing himself with his blood, a precaution which, however, did not prevent him from becoming also a vampire after his death, since, on being exhumed forty days after his interment, they found on his corpse all the indications of an arch-vampire. His body was red, his hair, nails, and beard had all grown again, and his veins were replete with fluid blood, which flowed from all parts of his body upon the winding-sheet which encompassed him. The Hadnagi, or baillie of the village, in whose presence the exhumation took place, and who was skilled in vampirism, had, according to custom, a very sharp stake driven into the heart of the defunct Arnald Paul, and which pierced his body through and through, which made him, as they say, utter a frightful shriek, as if he had been alive: that done, they cut off his head and burnt the whole body. After that they performed the same on the corpses of the four other persons who died of vampirism, fearing that they in their turn might cause the death of others.

All these performances, however, could not prevent the recommencement of similar fatal prodigies towards the end of last year (1732),—that is to say, five years after,-when several inhabitants of the same village perished miserably. In the space of three months seventeen persons of different sexes and different ages died of vampirism; some without being ill, and others after languishing two or three days. It is reported, amongst other things, that a girl named Stanoska, daughter of the Heyducq Jotiüsto, who went to bed. in perfect health, awoke in the middle of the night in a great trembling, uttering terrible shrieks, and saying that the son of Heyducq Millo, who had been dead nine weeks, had nearly strangled her in her sleep. She fell into a languid state from that moment, and at the end of three days she

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died. What this girl had said of Millo's son made him known at once for a vampire: he was exhumed, and found to be such. The principal people of the place, with the doctors and surgeons, examined how vampirism could have sprung up again after the precautions they had taken some years before.

They discovered at last, after much search, that the defunct Arnald Paul had killed not only the four persons of whom we have spoken, but also several oxen, of which the new vampires had eaten, and, amongst others, the son of Millo. Upon these indications they resolved to disinter all those who had died within a certain time, &c. Amongst forty, seventeen were found with all the most evident signs of vampirism; therefore they transfixed their hearts, and cut off their heads also, and then cast their ashes into the river. All the informations and executions we have just mentioned were made juridically, in proper form, and attested by several officers who were garrisoned in the country, by the chief surgeons of the regiments, and by the principal inhabitants of the place. The verbal process of it was sent, towards the end of last January, to the Imperial Council of War at Vienna, which had established a military commission to examine into the truth of all these circumstances.

Such was the declaration of the Hadnagi Barriarar and the ancient Heyducqs, and it was signed by Battuer, first lieutenant of the regiment of Alexander of Wurtemburg, Clickstenger, surgeon-in-chief of the regiment of Frustemburch, three other surgeons of the company, and Guoichitz, captain at Stallach.-Phantom World, Vol. ii.

AMULETS AND CHARMS.

Boyle, says the author of the Demonologia, is persuaded that some of these external medicaments answer; for that, being himself subject to a bleeding from the nose, and obliged to use several remedies to check this discharge, he found the moss of a dead man's skull, though only applied so as to touch the skin until the

moss became warm from being in contact with it, to be the most efficacious remedy. A remarkable instance of this nature was communicated to Zwelfer, by the chief physician to the states of Moravia, who, having prepared some troches, or lozenges of toads, after the manner of Van Helmont, not only found that, being worn as amulets, they preserved him, his domestics, and friends from the plague, but that, when applied to the carbuncles or buboes, a consequence of this disease, in others, they found themselves greatly relieved, and many even saved by them.

The learned Dr. Warburton is evidently wrong when he assigns the origin of these magical instruments to the age of the Ptolemies, which was not more than 300 years before Christ. For Galen tells us that the Egyptian king, Nechepsus, who lived 630 years before the Christian era, had written that a green jasper cut into the form of a dragon surrounded with rays, if applied externally, would strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion. We have, moreover, the authority of the Scriptures in support of this opinion; for what were the ear-rings which Jacob buried under the oak of Sechem, as related in Genesis, but amulets? And we are informed by Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (lib. viii. c. ii. v.), that Solomon discovered a plant efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a charm or spell for the purpose of assisting its virtues. The root of the herb was concealed in a ring, which was applied to the nostrils of the demoniac: and Josephus remarks that he himself saw a Jewish priest practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of Vespasian, his sons, and the tribunes of the Roman army. Nor were such means confided to the dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane, because he discovered that he wore an amulet about his neck; and in the declining era of the Roman Empire this superstitious custom was so general, that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordaining that no man should wear any superstitious amulets about his person.

Dr. Chamberlayne's anodyne necklace for a long time was the sine quá non of mothers and nurses, until its virtue was

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