for permission to exhume the body
of Peter Plogojovitz. The officer and the cure made much demur in
granting this permission, but the peasants declared that if they were
refused permission to disinter the body of this man, whom they had no
doubt was a true vampire (for so they called these revived corpses),
they should be obliged to forsake the village, and go where they
could.

The emperor's officer, who wrote this account, seeing he could hinder
them neither by threats nor promises, went with the cure of Gradiska
to the village of Kisolova, and having caused Peter Plogojovitz to be
exhumed, they found that his body exhaled no bad smell; that he looked
as when alive, except the tip of the nose; that his hair and beard had
grown, and instead of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had
come; that under his upper skin, which appeared whitish, there
appeared a new one, which looked healthy, and of a natural color; his
feet and hands were as whole as could be desired in a living man. They
remarked also in his mouth some fresh blood, which these people
believed that this vampire had sucked from the men whose death he had
occasioned.

The emperor's officer and the cure having diligently examined all
these things, and the people who were present feeling their
indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was
the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a
sharp-pointed stake, which they thrust into his breast, whence there
issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the nose
and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which
decency does not allow us to mention. After this the peasants placed
the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced to ashes.

M. Rauff,[581] from whom we have these particulars, cites several
authors who have written on the same subject, and have related
instances of dead people who have eaten in their tombs. He cites
particularly Gabril Rzaczincki in his history of the Natural
Curiosities of the Kingdom of Poland, printed at Sandomic in 1721.

Footnotes:

[580] Rauff, Art. xii. p. 15.

[581] Rauff, Art. xxi. p. 14.

CHAPTER XLVII.

REASONINGS ON THIS MATTER.

Those authors have reasoned a great deal on these events. 1. Some have
believed them to be miraculous. 2. Others have looked upon them simply
as the effect of a heated imagination, or a sort of prepossession. 3.
Others again have believed that ther