WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:22.719 You see, something's going to happen. What? What's going to happen? Help? What? Help? 2 00:00:24.719 --> 00:00:30.199 Welcome to the occult rejects in this episode. The point 3 00:00:30.199 --> 00:00:32.719 of this study is to show what we picture today. 4 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:38.240 A pale, erotic aristocrat who bites next and shun sunlight 5 00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:42.200 is a recent composite assembled from straits that were once 6 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:48.439 scattered across very different stories, rituals, and court files. If 7 00:00:48.439 --> 00:00:51.679 you follow the paper trail Dom Augustin Comet gathered in 8 00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:55.520 the seventeen forties. In the New England Testimonies George R. 9 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:59.399 Stetson recorded in the eighteen nineties, you don't find capes 10 00:00:59.399 --> 00:01:04.760 and castles. You find depositions, autopsies, prayers and kitchen remedies, 11 00:01:04.760 --> 00:01:09.319 and folk magic. You find villages arguing with magistrates about 12 00:01:09.319 --> 00:01:13.799 corpses that look suspiciously fresh, Priests negotiating what the church 13 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:17.079 will bless or forbid, families in rural Rhode Island opening 14 00:01:17.079 --> 00:01:20.200 graves during a tuberculosis outbreak, and burning a heart because 15 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:23.000 a dead relative is believed to be feeding on the living. 16 00:01:24.599 --> 00:01:28.439 This project is, at bottom, a history of how communities 17 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:33.040 try to name and manage misfortune, illness, sudden deaths. They 18 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:36.719 are unquiet dead, and how the label vampire keeps getting 19 00:01:36.760 --> 00:01:42.879 reused to make the misfortune actionable, acceptable, and maybe even profitable. 20 00:01:44.599 --> 00:01:49.799 Seen up close, vampire law often cuts against modern expectations. 21 00:01:50.879 --> 00:01:55.879 In COALNT sources from Hungary, Moravia and Serbia, the vampire 22 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:58.799 is not a suave seducer, but a case type, more 23 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:03.640 like a dead village, just suspected of rising, throttling sleepers 24 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:07.239 and leaving a chain of deaths, followed by an officially 25 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:12.919 sanctioned exhumation, a surgeon's inspection for signs supple limbs, fluid blood, 26 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:18.960 ruddy color, and then a remedy staking decapitation and burning. 27 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:23.599 In Greek and Roman antiquity, the nearest analogies le May 28 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:27.719 and Streege are night witches and child killers, not re 29 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:32.240 animated corpses. In East Asia, the yang shei feeds on 30 00:02:32.360 --> 00:02:36.599 she rather than blood. In Stetson's New England, the vampire 31 00:02:36.599 --> 00:02:40.919 doesn't even need a name. Consumption drains families. The solution 32 00:02:41.159 --> 00:02:43.639 is to burn the heart of the recently deceased and 33 00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:47.919 scatter the ashes. Old lore, in other words, is procedural 34 00:02:48.120 --> 00:02:51.159 and local. It's about what to do when a certain 35 00:02:51.199 --> 00:02:56.000 pattern of deaths appear. Modern lore is esthetic and individual. 36 00:02:56.479 --> 00:03:02.919 It's about who the monster is. Procedural spine is where religion, spirituality, 37 00:03:03.039 --> 00:03:08.199 and law intersect. Calmets dossier shows clergy and civil officers 38 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:13.919 treating vamporism as a juridicial problem. Witnesses are sworn, graves 39 00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:17.560 are opened by order, bodies are examined, and acts of 40 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:21.240 destruction are justified by a theology of preventing harm to 41 00:03:21.280 --> 00:03:27.000 the living. The same files expose spiritual cross currents, orthodox 42 00:03:27.039 --> 00:03:31.599 crosses and inscriptions. Jesus Christ conquers buried with the dead, 43 00:03:32.080 --> 00:03:38.800 Excommunication invoked to explain incorrupt corpses. Elsewhere, customary law bleeds 44 00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:43.080 into folk medicine, bread baked with blood from suspect corpses, 45 00:03:43.599 --> 00:03:47.639 garlic stakes, and decapitation as a kind of vernacular surgery. 46 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:52.360 Stetson's New England interviews add a secular coda. A doctor 47 00:03:52.400 --> 00:03:56.599 performs an autopsy before the family burns the heart. In 48 00:03:56.680 --> 00:04:01.000 each setting, the remedies stand at the crossing of church, courthouse, 49 00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:05.240 and kitchen, ritual actions that also function as public health 50 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:10.719 measures in absence or rejection of germ theory. From that 51 00:04:10.840 --> 00:04:15.280 vantage point, the modern vampire looks curated, hand picked attributes 52 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:20.560 stitched into a single charismatic figure. Nineteenth century fiction selects 53 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:25.600 immortality and bloodlust, drops the messi village. Epidemiology griffs on 54 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:30.560 sexual magnetism from romantic and decadent literature, and imports aristocratic 55 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:34.879 glamour to make the monster legible and drawing rooms. Twentieth 56 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:38.959 century films add sunlight, allergy, mirror tricks, and a tool 57 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:43.120 kit of weaknesses refolds away is just as telling the 58 00:04:43.199 --> 00:04:46.759 court records the priest's dilemma the family's calculus in a 59 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:51.319 winter of wasting disease. By returning to kamets Treaties on 60 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:55.480 the Apparition of Spirits and on Vampires and Stetson's animistic 61 00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:59.000 Vampire or New England recover the older landscape in which 62 00:04:59.079 --> 00:05:03.480 vampire was less a character than a diagnosis, a community's 63 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:06.879 name for a crisis, and a set of sanctioned acts 64 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:11.279 meant to stop it. That's the argument. This introduction invites 65 00:05:11.319 --> 00:05:15.079 the audience to hold today's vampire is a sleek anthology 66 00:05:15.079 --> 00:05:17.920 of motives, but the older creature lived in the junction 67 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:22.560 of belief, law and survival. Reading the eighteenth century treatise 68 00:05:22.639 --> 00:05:25.800 beside the nineteenth century field notes let us watch that 69 00:05:25.879 --> 00:05:30.240 shift happen in real time, from exhumation reports to Gothic romance, 70 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:35.040 from village remedies to pop icon, and asks a larger 71 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:40.079 question the sources keep pressing when people say vampires, what 72 00:05:40.319 --> 00:05:45.319 are they really trying to cure? The word we use now, 73 00:05:45.519 --> 00:05:51.079 vampire vampira entered Western print culture in the early eighteenth century, 74 00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:56.879 almost certainly via Austrian reports out of newly occupied Serbian districts. 75 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:01.879 The first widely circulated usage appears in the Vienna's official 76 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:06.040 newspaper on July twenty first, seventeen twenty five, in a 77 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:10.519 dispatch about the Kasolova case Peter Plogoduwitz, which we will 78 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:14.439 talk about later. The German text reproduces a field report 79 00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:19.199 that includes the term in Latinised form as vampirey, the 80 00:06:19.319 --> 00:06:23.079 name locals used for revenants that rise from their graves 81 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:26.560 to drain the living. Within a few years, the word 82 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:30.319 races through German and French, and by seventeen thirty two 83 00:06:30.439 --> 00:06:33.319 it lands in English, often as vampire with the y 84 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:37.920 in newspaper summaries of vampire epidemics in the Habsburg borderlands. 85 00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:43.360 Behind that sudden debut, though, lies a much older Slavic 86 00:06:43.439 --> 00:06:50.000 lexicon upire upir upyr at, tested in Old Russian sources 87 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:54.639 as early as ten forty seven. The eighteenth century word 88 00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:59.959 is new, the idea complex is not. When the habit 89 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:04.240 Bisburg's pushed the Ottoman frontier back in seventeen eighteen, the 90 00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:07.639 absorbed districts of what is now northern Serbia and Oltinia, 91 00:07:08.199 --> 00:07:13.480 military administrators and physicians soon found themselves adjudicating feverish village 92 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:17.879 disputes about the restless stead. One such complaint, followed by 93 00:07:17.879 --> 00:07:22.279 an imperial proviser named Ernst Frumbold, was copied into the 94 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:25.879 Darium on July twenty first, seventeen twenty five, under the 95 00:07:25.959 --> 00:07:29.800 dry headline copy of the writing from the Gradisca District 96 00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:33.680 and Hungary. The body of the notice, though, was anything 97 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:37.920 but dry. It described a corpse exhumed with fresh blood 98 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:41.920 and supple limbs, a classic list of signs, and used 99 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:47.920 the local name vampire for the supposed revenant. That newspaper 100 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:51.399 item is widely taken as the first popular Western print 101 00:07:51.519 --> 00:07:56.040 occurrence of the word in any spelling. It made enough 102 00:07:56.120 --> 00:07:59.800 noise that antiquarians and newswriters across Europe began repeating it 103 00:08:00.079 --> 00:08:04.959 and the term stock. Over the next seven years, vampire 104 00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:08.040 hardened into a technical label in German, French and English 105 00:08:08.120 --> 00:08:12.160 news prose. This second pillar was the seventeen thirty two 106 00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:17.600 Latin memorandum known as Visum et Ripertum, compiled by the 107 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:23.199 Austrian regimental surgeon Johannes Fluckinger after an inquest near Belgrad 108 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:27.519 the Arnold Pohl outbreak. Even though the report itself is 109 00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:31.279 in Latin, it was immediately abstracted in German, French, and 110 00:08:31.399 --> 00:08:36.440 English pamphlets and journals. German was vamp r, French was 111 00:08:36.559 --> 00:08:44.799 vamp ir, and English was vampyr or vampr. Modern etymologists 112 00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:49.000 and historians consistently pinpoint seventeen twenty five to seventeen thirty 113 00:08:49.039 --> 00:08:52.960 two as the exact window when the word naturalized in 114 00:08:53.039 --> 00:08:57.279 Western languages. If you read those seven twenties to seven 115 00:08:57.320 --> 00:09:00.519 thirties sources in context, you can see what the vampire 116 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:05.039 meant at first contact. It isn't yet a caped aristocrat, 117 00:09:05.159 --> 00:09:09.679 or even as standardized folk type. It's an administrative shorthand 118 00:09:09.799 --> 00:09:12.879 for a reverence of a particular kind, one that, according 119 00:09:12.919 --> 00:09:17.200 to witnesses, leaves the grave at night, assaults or throttles sleepers, 120 00:09:17.679 --> 00:09:20.519 causes a string of deaths within kin networks or neighborhoods, 121 00:09:20.879 --> 00:09:26.080 and leaves diagnostic traces in the grave cliant limbs, rubicund skin, 122 00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:29.840 fluid blood, sometimes blood at the mouth, and apparent hair 123 00:09:29.879 --> 00:09:36.799 and nail growth. The associated countermeasure exhumation, staking the heart, decapitation, 124 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:41.120 burning to ash a part of the same dossier already 125 00:09:41.120 --> 00:09:45.360 codified in the late seventeenth century periodicals like the Macure Gallant. 126 00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:49.720 They formalized in the Habsburg in quest paperwork that Kalmt reprinted. 127 00:09:50.120 --> 00:09:54.840 The word and the ritual kit arrived together, how convenient. 128 00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:01.360 In ancient Greece, creatures resembling Van Empires abounded. A myth 129 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:06.159 the Lamia from Greek Lemia was portrayed as a half woman, 130 00:10:06.559 --> 00:10:10.519 half serpent monster who preyed on the living. She ate children, 131 00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:13.480 and could transform into a beautiful woman in order to 132 00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:19.159 seduce young men and suck their blood. Likewise, the imposai 133 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:22.440 were female specters that fed on flesh and blood, and 134 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:25.240 the gallo were knight demons who slipped into houses to 135 00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:29.879 attack infants. Ancian sources even call these figures the ancient 136 00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:34.840 equivalent of vampires. Classical literature also names the Stricts, a 137 00:10:34.879 --> 00:10:38.919 monstrous owl demon of ill omen as feeding on human blood. 138 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.679 By Byzantine times and later, popular belief held that an 139 00:10:43.679 --> 00:10:46.639 improperly buried or an evil person could rise from the grave. 140 00:10:47.279 --> 00:10:51.559 Traditional law explains Greek vampire as arising when a person 141 00:10:51.679 --> 00:10:54.840 is not buried with the proper ritual or suffers a 142 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:58.279 cruel or unjust death, so that he comes back as 143 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:03.200 a vampire to get revenge. Mesopotamia myth provided some of 144 00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:07.480 the earliest vampire demons. The Lamashetu was a fearsome Babylonian 145 00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:12.919 demonesse first millennium BCE who preyed on pregnant women and infants. 146 00:11:13.720 --> 00:11:17.039 Texts and amulants describe her as snatching newborns and drinking 147 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:22.360 their blood or poisoned the milk. Similarly, the Lolito spirits 148 00:11:22.360 --> 00:11:26.759 of Sumer and a cod later Judaism's Lilith were vampiric 149 00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:32.240 female demons. In two thousand BCE, Gilgamus text, Lilith appears 150 00:11:32.279 --> 00:11:37.919 as shrieking vampiric demonestse terrorizing the forest. Over time, Lalitu 151 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:42.600 Lilith became associated with kidnapping children and killing mothers. Eventually 152 00:11:42.759 --> 00:11:47.759 fused with the Lamashtu's mythology. These Mesopotamian beliefs of night 153 00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:52.000 demons draining life from the vulnerable influenced later Hebrew and 154 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:56.799 Greek law. The Romans inherited the Greek law and edded 155 00:11:56.799 --> 00:12:00.879 their own demonic birds and monsters. Rome and naturalists and 156 00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:05.159 poets mentioned the Strictx, a nocturnal screech owl demon that 157 00:12:05.279 --> 00:12:08.720 fed on human flesh and blood. The Strix was feared 158 00:12:08.759 --> 00:12:13.120 as a child killer. Classical authors also preserved the Greek 159 00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:17.159 Lemea and Impusa stories. One ancient lexicon explains that the 160 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:21.360 LeMay assumed the form of handsome women, then sucked their 161 00:12:21.399 --> 00:12:26.120 blood like vampires and ate their flesh, effectively labeling them 162 00:12:26.519 --> 00:12:30.559 what the vampires are in modern legends. Thus, both Greek 163 00:12:30.639 --> 00:12:34.480 and Robin traditions spoke of shape changing female demons who 164 00:12:34.559 --> 00:12:39.120 drank life's blood. In later centuries, these were largely absorbed 165 00:12:39.159 --> 00:12:43.279 into Christian demonology emerged with Slavic vampire myths. As those 166 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:48.559 spread westward, Chinese folklore developed its own vampire archetype Yangshi 167 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:52.679 literally stiff corpse, which appears in the Qing era legend 168 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:57.919 and later Jiangxi is reanimated corpse drisen by residual chi 169 00:12:58.159 --> 00:13:03.279 life energy, usually hopping with outstretched arms. Vocalore says they 170 00:13:03.360 --> 00:13:05.720 rise at night and may devour the infants of people, 171 00:13:05.799 --> 00:13:09.559 but they do not typically suck blood. Instead, they drain 172 00:13:09.679 --> 00:13:15.399 the living's chi. Outside China, related beliefs spread through East Asia. 173 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:19.679 Buddhism hungry ghosts preda or famine plagued spirits driven by 174 00:13:19.759 --> 00:13:25.799 unfulfilled desire. These equi Chinese hungry ghosts were tormented by 175 00:13:25.799 --> 00:13:29.600 insatiable hunger for offerings, reflecting the idea of lost soul's 176 00:13:29.679 --> 00:13:33.960 craving life force. Festivals such as the Ghost Month include 177 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:37.720 making food and incense offering to appease these hungry shades. 178 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:43.879 Mesoamerican cultures had several vampire like spirits. In Aztec myth, 179 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:49.480 the Zitsumima were skeletal female star demons. At inauspicious times, 180 00:13:49.639 --> 00:13:52.320 they were believed to descend to Earth. If the sun's 181 00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:56.039 rebirth ritual failed, they would descend to devour the last 182 00:13:56.159 --> 00:14:01.240 of men. Likewise, the spirits of women who died in childbirth, 183 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:05.240 the Chiawa Tatio, were thought to walk on five special 184 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:10.480 nights each year. These fearsome of the night would haunt crossroads, 185 00:14:10.679 --> 00:14:14.679 kidnap children, and drain the vigor from men unless placated 186 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:20.240 with shrines. Human sacrifice in skull rack rituals and Aztec 187 00:14:20.279 --> 00:14:26.039 religion also symbolically fed gods with blood, reflecting life force exchange. 188 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:29.399 The Maya had the bat god and the jaguar demons, 189 00:14:29.480 --> 00:14:32.279 though sources do not emphasize blood sucking so much as 190 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:38.360 terror and decapitation in general. Pre Columbian beliefs framed vampiric 191 00:14:38.399 --> 00:14:43.679 imagery as a metaphor for violent death and supernatural penalty. Ritually, 192 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:47.879 potent mothers and warriors became restless spirits and nasty omens 193 00:14:47.879 --> 00:14:52.720 were said to steal souls or blood, similar to vampire motives. 194 00:14:53.960 --> 00:14:58.480 South American traditions have fewer explicit vampires, but do depict 195 00:14:58.600 --> 00:15:02.799 soul stealing deity and the blood offerings to underworld gods. 196 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:07.559 Hindu scriptures do not explicitly label vampires, but life draining 197 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:11.480 spirits play roles in the mythology. The most famous is 198 00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:15.600 the vatala, a corpse spirit of Hindu legend. A vitala 199 00:15:15.720 --> 00:15:18.799 is a ghoul like being that hangs in cremation grounds 200 00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:23.320 or forests and can possess the living folk. Beliefs describe 201 00:15:23.360 --> 00:15:26.000 the vitala as a dreaded being who takes the light 202 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:33.840 in sucking human blood, killing children, causing miscarriages. Similarly, rakasas 203 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:37.320 and epic lore or shape shifting demons, often depicted as 204 00:15:37.399 --> 00:15:40.919 man eaters with fangs and red eyes. Later folk tales 205 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:45.799 describe them desecrating graves and drinking blood from skulls. In 206 00:15:45.879 --> 00:15:50.159 Southern India, Tamil folklore speaks of the pay and pay 207 00:15:50.200 --> 00:15:54.360 Makety battlefield specters, who drain the blood of a soldier 208 00:15:54.480 --> 00:15:58.200 dying on a battlefield, even as a merciful deliver of 209 00:15:58.240 --> 00:16:02.080 a swift death. Many of these entities have parallels in 210 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:07.600 Buddhism and in Southeast Asian myths. Hindu and Buddhist cosmology 211 00:16:07.639 --> 00:16:11.960 also include the concept of preta or hungry ghost. A 212 00:16:12.039 --> 00:16:15.600 preta is a departed soul cursed with eternal hunger and thirst, 213 00:16:16.120 --> 00:16:20.200 often due to greed or violent death. They wander seeking 214 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:24.440 offerings of water and food. Neglecting one's ancestors in ritual 215 00:16:24.559 --> 00:16:28.679 might produce such a suffering spirit. In East Asia, this 216 00:16:28.799 --> 00:16:32.600 belief blossom into ghost festivals and rituals of preta donna 217 00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:36.600 offering alms to the hungry dead Like a vampire. A 218 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:40.639 preda is constantly hungry for life energy, though it usually 219 00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:45.960 cannot physically bite. Now I would like to start getting 220 00:16:45.960 --> 00:16:47.960 into the first of the two books I used for 221 00:16:48.039 --> 00:16:51.080 this work, and that I had mentioned earlier. Both compile 222 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:55.679 older accounts of vampires or the like. We have Dom 223 00:16:55.799 --> 00:16:59.960 Augustin Kalmet Treaties on the Apparitions of Spirits and arm 224 00:17:00.039 --> 00:17:04.960 on Vampires, or Revenants of Hungary, Morabia and more. Dom 225 00:17:05.039 --> 00:17:09.839 Augustine Kalmet was a French Benedictine monk, biblical exegute and 226 00:17:10.039 --> 00:17:14.160 historian whose scholarships straddled the worlds of rigorous Enlightenment inquiry 227 00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:18.359 and traditional Catholic learning. Best known in his own day 228 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:23.240 from massive methodical commentaries on scripture and a widely used 229 00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:31.079 historical critical Bible dictionary, Kalmens spent decades collating sources, weighing testimony, 230 00:17:31.359 --> 00:17:36.000 and pre facing interpretation with careful philological and historical work. 231 00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:40.720 Late in life, he turned that same scharlely toolkit on 232 00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:46.200 a sensational topic, then gripping europe apparitions, revenance, and the 233 00:17:46.279 --> 00:17:52.119 reports of vampires emerging from the Habsburg borderlands. His tool 234 00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:56.559 volume is the first sustained quasi academic survey of the 235 00:17:56.640 --> 00:18:02.359 vampire phenomenon in Western Europe. The Helmet compiles depositions, military 236 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:08.000 and ecclesiastical inquists, newspaper reports and letters about cases from Hungary, Moravia, 237 00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:13.079 Silesia and beyond. He catalog signs fresh blood at the mouth, 238 00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:20.400 pliant limbs, apparent hair and nail growth, community countermeasures, exhumation, staking, decapitation, 239 00:18:20.680 --> 00:18:27.160 creation and competing explanations, premature burial, natural post mortem changes, 240 00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:34.079 diabolic illusion, divine permission. Crucially, he neither embraces crudelity nor 241 00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:37.960 dismisses witnesses out of hand. His method is to present 242 00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:42.039 sources in full, compare variants, test them against theology and 243 00:18:42.160 --> 00:18:48.160 natural philosophy, end end in measured suspension of judgment. That posture, 244 00:18:48.680 --> 00:18:52.960 taking emic beliefs seriously while probing for ordinary causes made 245 00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:56.759 this book a lightning rod for contemporaries and a cornerstone 246 00:18:56.759 --> 00:19:00.720 for later folklore, anthropology, and the modern forensnsic reading of 247 00:19:00.839 --> 00:19:05.599 vampire reports. In short, Kalmut is the librarian and cross 248 00:19:05.640 --> 00:19:09.440 examiner of early vampirism, the monk who gathered the dossier. 249 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:14.119 The rest of the field still argues with Calmet's taxonomy 250 00:19:14.200 --> 00:19:17.599 and his marshaling of case materials set the agenda for 251 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:23.720 two centuries of debate skeptical medical and folklore. Modern researchers 252 00:19:23.759 --> 00:19:27.440 still return to his case synopsises to track the diffusion 253 00:19:27.480 --> 00:19:31.720 of motives and state intervention. Here I will go over 254 00:19:31.799 --> 00:19:34.759 some of the chapters that include his research and findings. 255 00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:43.680 Chapter nine, on vampire corpses and identification. He opens the 256 00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:48.599 vampire section by describing how Hungarian villagers treated suspected vampires. 257 00:19:49.559 --> 00:19:53.240 He explains the grave examinations were usually conducted by civil 258 00:19:53.319 --> 00:19:58.200 and church authorities. Witnesses were summoned, dispositions taken, and the 259 00:19:58.240 --> 00:20:03.920 corpses inspected for common marks of vampirism. These signs included 260 00:20:04.359 --> 00:20:08.880 pliancy and flexibility of limbs, a fluidity of blood, and 261 00:20:09.119 --> 00:20:14.839 unputrefied flesh. These symptoms appeared the corpse was burned. Calmet 262 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:19.119 notes that even this did not always stop the specter's appearances. 263 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:25.319 He insists all procedure was formal. Witnesses are generally summoned, 264 00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:30.279 arguments on both sides are taken. In practice. Villagers first 265 00:20:30.359 --> 00:20:34.920 tried informal remedies, staking or pinning suspected vampires in place. 266 00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:38.319 Only afterwards did they seek a legal sanction to exhume 267 00:20:38.400 --> 00:20:42.200 the body. In a famous case, Comet records a man 268 00:20:42.279 --> 00:20:47.160 named Peter, often called Plogojuits, who I mentioned before, had 269 00:20:47.240 --> 00:20:49.920 died and been buried about ten weeks. When he began 270 00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:53.960 appearing at night two neighbors, he squeezed their throats in 271 00:20:54.079 --> 00:20:58.079 such a manner that they expired within twenty four hours. 272 00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:02.400 Nine people died in eight days. The dead man's widow 273 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:05.519 even reported a visit by his ghosts demanding his shoes, 274 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:10.279 which terrified her and she fled the village. These events 275 00:21:10.359 --> 00:21:13.759 spurred the villages to seek official permission to dig up 276 00:21:13.799 --> 00:21:18.519 and destroy the body. When the commanding officer and the 277 00:21:18.559 --> 00:21:23.240 minister inspected the corpse, they found it free from any 278 00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:27.160 bad smell, and perfectly sound, as if it had been alive. 279 00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:32.160 The nose was only slightly withered, but remarkably, the beard 280 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:35.039 and hair were grown afresh, and a new set of 281 00:21:35.119 --> 00:21:39.519 nails had sprung in place of the old ones. Under 282 00:21:39.559 --> 00:21:43.000 the old now pale skin, a new, fresh colored skin 283 00:21:43.160 --> 00:21:46.599 had formed, and the hands and feet were as entire 284 00:21:46.839 --> 00:21:51.480 as if they belonged to a person in perfect health. Crucially, 285 00:21:52.039 --> 00:21:56.400 the mouth was full of fresh blood, which villagers believed 286 00:21:56.400 --> 00:21:59.960 that the vampire had sucked from the persons he had killed. 287 00:22:01.319 --> 00:22:04.440 Convinced by these facts, the officials allowed the body to 288 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:10.759 be staked and then burned. Comat presents this Hungarian case neutrally, 289 00:22:11.559 --> 00:22:15.680 detailing each step in observation by courting the official report 290 00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:19.359 at length. He emphasizes the vivid evidence of the vampire's belief, 291 00:22:20.119 --> 00:22:23.799 fresh hair and nails, warm blood in the mouth, etc. 292 00:22:24.319 --> 00:22:29.279 Yet Comet does not endorse a supernatural interpretation. Later chapters, 293 00:22:29.279 --> 00:22:32.839 which we'll go into, he will crucially assess these signs. 294 00:22:33.920 --> 00:22:38.240 Here he simply records that villagers believed such marks identified 295 00:22:38.319 --> 00:22:41.319 vampires and that they followed local custom to burn the 296 00:22:41.359 --> 00:22:47.079 corpses once identified, and then we'll talk about chapter ten 297 00:22:47.720 --> 00:22:51.839 Corpses that suck the living. Here Commet leads with a 298 00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:57.480 formally investigated case from the Hungarian frontier. A soldier billeted 299 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:01.440 in a Haydemach household watches a rangers sit down to supper. 300 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:06.440 The host recognizes the intruder as his dead father and 301 00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:10.599 dies the next day. The matter is escalated through the 302 00:23:10.640 --> 00:23:15.119 regiment to the general staff, who dispatched Count d Cabreras 303 00:23:15.160 --> 00:23:18.640 with fellow officers, a surgeon and an orditor to take 304 00:23:18.799 --> 00:23:24.079 sworn testimony. On eccumation. The corpse is found like that 305 00:23:24.319 --> 00:23:27.839 of a man who has just expired, in his blood, 306 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:33.119 like that of a living man, so Cabrera's orders decapitation 307 00:23:33.559 --> 00:23:37.920 and re intimate. Calmut adds two more depositions gathered at 308 00:23:37.920 --> 00:23:41.960 the same time. One corpse, dead for thirty plus years, 309 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:44.759 had returned three times, sucking the blood of a brother, 310 00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:48.240 a son, and a servant, each of whom died of 311 00:23:48.279 --> 00:23:51.920 it instantly, after which officials found the blood fluid and 312 00:23:52.039 --> 00:23:56.000 drove a large nail into the temple. The third revenant, 313 00:23:56.359 --> 00:24:01.039 dead sixteen years, was burned. The corpse of this specter 314 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:04.640 was exhumed and found to be like that of a 315 00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:08.079 man who has just expired in his blood, like that 316 00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:12.920 of a living man. He had come back three times, 317 00:24:13.559 --> 00:24:16.640 sucked the blood, and all three died of it instantly. 318 00:24:18.359 --> 00:24:23.519 Calmut reproduces the most famous Habsburg Serbian dossier, the Arnold 319 00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:27.720 Pale Affair, from the Hayduke district near the Atizza, to 320 00:24:27.880 --> 00:24:32.759 show how local theory and practice hang together. He summarizes 321 00:24:32.799 --> 00:24:38.200 the folk epidemiology the Haydukes believe certain dead persons, whom 322 00:24:38.200 --> 00:24:41.759 they call vampires, drained the living so that the kin 323 00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:47.440 visibly attenuate, while the corpses swells like leeches with blood 324 00:24:47.559 --> 00:24:51.480 which oozes through pores and conduits, noses, and ears, even 325 00:24:51.599 --> 00:24:56.480 soaking the shroud. He repeats the contagion logic, those who 326 00:24:56.519 --> 00:25:00.079 were sucked in life become active vampires after death. In 327 00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:07.680 the countermeasures exhumation, inspect for signs, and destruction, stake, decapitation, burning. 328 00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:11.799 This set piece is the colonel that the eighteenth century 329 00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:15.680 medical and legal writers debated for decades and count. It 330 00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:20.319 is the arch compiler who places the official memos, surgeons notes, 331 00:25:20.599 --> 00:25:25.119 and village testimonies side by side without forcing a single explanation. 332 00:25:26.359 --> 00:25:30.960 The people believe that certain dead persons, whom they call vampires, 333 00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:34.839 suck all the blood from the living, so that these 334 00:25:34.920 --> 00:25:40.359 become visibly attenuated, whilst the corpses fill themselves with blood 335 00:25:40.799 --> 00:25:44.160 seemed to come by the conduits and even oozing through 336 00:25:44.160 --> 00:25:49.519 the pores. They remembered that Arnold Pohl had become tormented 337 00:25:49.599 --> 00:25:52.920 by a Turkish vampire, and that those who have been 338 00:25:53.039 --> 00:25:58.279 sucked suck also in their turn. What this chapter is 339 00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:04.039 doing analytically, I think procedure over sensationalism. Comet stresses that 340 00:26:04.119 --> 00:26:09.599 authorities hear the depositions, bring surgeons, and verify marks bliant limbs, 341 00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:16.240 fluid blood, uncorrupted flesh before authorizing execution, steak, decapitation, cremation. 342 00:26:17.079 --> 00:26:20.160 Even in this chapter dense with lurid details, he keeps 343 00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:25.480 the spotlight on process and testimony, not just marvels, common 344 00:26:25.559 --> 00:26:31.599 signs and remedies across cases. The diagnostics are consistent fresh color, 345 00:26:31.880 --> 00:26:36.079 open eyes, fluid blood, supple limbs, blood at the mouth 346 00:26:36.119 --> 00:26:40.400 of pores, sometimes apparent growth of hair and nails. The 347 00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:46.319 remedies are the now conical triad steak, decapitate, burn to ash, 348 00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:53.480 sometimes with heart removal and then reburial. Comet's compilation is 349 00:26:53.519 --> 00:26:56.920 why these protocols look so standardized, and later forensic and 350 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:02.640 folklore summaries to spend a judgment. Even here, comment neither 351 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:07.640 declares miracle nor cries fraud. He records that some observers 352 00:27:07.759 --> 00:27:12.519 appeal to natural philosophy, yet refuse to dismiss them outright. 353 00:27:13.640 --> 00:27:18.039 Coum It will praise naturalistic versus pre natural explanations in 354 00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:21.960 subsequent chapters, but this unit's job is to lay down 355 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:25.720 the facts who said, what, what was seeing on exhumation 356 00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:32.039 and what was done? Now we'll move on to chapter eleven, 357 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:38.680 The Jewish Letters Vampire story from seventeen thirty two, and 358 00:27:38.759 --> 00:27:43.039 basically what this chapter argues two ways to erase belief. 359 00:27:43.440 --> 00:27:48.799 The author chooses hard skepticism. The Leitrice Jewey's writer opens 360 00:27:48.839 --> 00:27:53.440 by saying there are only two viable strategies. Either explain 361 00:27:53.599 --> 00:27:57.279 vampire reports by natural or physical causes, or deny the 362 00:27:57.319 --> 00:27:59.960 story's outright, and he thinks the second is the sure 363 00:28:00.400 --> 00:28:05.079 and the wisest. Even while favoring outright denial, he concedes 364 00:28:05.160 --> 00:28:10.079 certain appearances can occur. Some recently buried corpses may shed 365 00:28:10.119 --> 00:28:13.960 fluid blood, and terrified people may literally sicken or die 366 00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:19.480 from fear and imagination. So vampirism can be psychosomatic contagion 367 00:28:19.799 --> 00:28:24.279 amplified by rumor and night terrors. There are corpses which 368 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:28.079 shed fluid blood. End it is very easy for certain 369 00:28:28.119 --> 00:28:32.519 people to fancy themselves sucked, and that fear should deprive 370 00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.640 them of life. He adds that being haunted by such 371 00:28:36.759 --> 00:28:40.920 ideas by day, sleepers are naturally struck by them at night. 372 00:28:41.720 --> 00:28:45.640 It is very extraordinary that during their sleep the ideas 373 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:51.319 of these phantoms should cause them such violent terror. He 374 00:28:51.359 --> 00:28:55.720 also adds a contemporary rationalist ally to show he's not alone. 375 00:28:55.799 --> 00:29:00.160 The author cites Johann Christoff Hemmerberg's book on Vampires from 376 00:29:00.200 --> 00:29:04.880 seventeen thirty three. Hemmenberg, he notes, argues that vampire debts 377 00:29:04.920 --> 00:29:07.720 are not caused by revenance at all, but by the 378 00:29:07.799 --> 00:29:12.400 troubled fancy of the invalids, and he underscores how imagination 379 00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:16.559 can derange the body. He also observes that in Slavonia, 380 00:29:16.599 --> 00:29:19.920 the same stake through the heart punishment used for murderers 381 00:29:20.119 --> 00:29:25.599 was repurposed for alleged vampires, suggesting continuity of legal ritual 382 00:29:25.759 --> 00:29:30.079 not proof of monsters. And he adds dead who eat, 383 00:29:31.160 --> 00:29:35.599 anticipating the claim that ancient customs prove post mortem agency 384 00:29:36.119 --> 00:29:40.720 and thus lend plausibility to vampires. He rehearses texts on 385 00:29:40.920 --> 00:29:44.519 food for the dead to Turullian on pagan offerings and 386 00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:50.519 Augustine on Christian funerary meals. In their eventual suppression, the 387 00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:55.319 point is historiographical. Even if ancients behaved as though the 388 00:29:55.440 --> 00:30:00.400 dead fed, that does invalidate corpse activity in graves. He 389 00:30:00.519 --> 00:30:04.359 concludes bluntly all that is said of dead men who 390 00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:09.160 eat is chimerical and beyond all likelihood. I shall always 391 00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:15.079 say that the return of the vampires is unmaintainable and impracticable. 392 00:30:16.519 --> 00:30:20.400 And then we'll move on to Chapter twelve. Other recorded 393 00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:25.680 vampire incidents come. It opens with local ethnography. The hay 394 00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:29.960 Dukes believe certain dead whom they call vampires, prey upon 395 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:34.599 kin who become visibly attenuated, while the corpses, like leeches, 396 00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:38.640 fills with blood, sometimes seen at the mouth, pours or 397 00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:45.680 seeping into the shroud. Again, we're back to Arnold Paul, operak, sequence, signs, 398 00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:51.440 and remedies. Arnold Paul dies in an incident. Within thirty 399 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:54.559 to forty days, four neighbors die in the same manner, 400 00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:01.440 associated locally with vampire molestation. Had earlier claimed he was 401 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:05.359