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I received this question by e-mail, but I'll just post the answer here:

I came across your blog while doing research on vampires, and I admire and appreciate your scholarly work -- the accuracy, detail, and depth that you give the subject. I also found your English translation and commentary of the report Visum et Repertum extremely helpful (thank you). You also mentioned that the original manuscript was stored in the archives in Vienna, and my questions are: are these archives available online (I did a search but couldn't find it)? And how did you manage to obtain a photo of the report?

I don't think you can find these manuscripts online. The archives storing some of the most important documents are located in Vienna: The Austrian State Archives which are located at two addresses in Vienna, one of which is shown in the accompanying photo.

The manuscript of the Visum et Repertum that I have shown some excerpts from, is a contemporary copy sent to a foreign government, not the original document.

Absence

I have been quiet for a while, but that is only because I have been in Vienna for a few days. Now I'm back and will probably post a few photos from Vienna and more.

News on From Demons to Dracula

Matthew Beresford, author of From Demons to Dracula that I have posted about here and here, informs me that the book is slightly delayed, but should be out within a week or so. In the meantime he has set up a web site with information on the book and his other activities.

Medvedja sources

He's been at it again, fellow blogger Nicolaus Equiamicus, this time compiling a number of sources on the Medvedja vampire case on his blog!

Awaiting Dracula

Someone on youtube has provided the portion of Hammer's Dracula that I recently referred to, so if anyone is unfamiliar with it, take a look at the video below. Do purchase the DVD, if you want to watch the whole movie :-)

The lumbering peasant

I recently quoted from a children's book about Dracula and vampires: 'The original Transilvanian vampires on the contrary were rough creatures with boastful voices and red faces covered with stuble.' The funny thing is that the book never says anything about these peasant revenants, so no explanation is provided why those original vampires look so different from the pale and thin vampires of fiction.

From the Medvedja vampire case we have the vivid description of the amazement with which the villagers observed the corpse of the 60 year old Miliza: 'Es haben sich bey der Secirung die umstehende sämtliche Heyducken über ihre Fette und vollkommenen Leib sehr verwundert, einhellig aussagend, daß sie das Weib von ihrer Jugend auf wohl gekannt, und Zeit ihres Lebens gantz mager und ausgedörrter ausgesehen und gewesen, mit nachdrücklicher Vermeldung, daß sie in dem Grab zu eben dieser Verwunderungs-würdigen Fettigkeit gelanget sey.' (In Paul Barber's translation: During her dissection, all the haiduks who were standing around marveled greatly at her plumpness and perfect body, uniformly stating that they had known the woman well, from her youth, and she had, throughout her life, looked and been very lean and dried up, and they emphasised that she had come to this surprising plumbness in the grave).

These various signs can be attributed to the effects of decomposition: The bloating and discolouring of the corpse, the contraction of skin that makes it look like nails and hair has grown post mortem, i.e. the 'red faces covered with stuble' and the plumb body of the peasant shown in the drawing. That those unfamiliar with the effects of decomposition believe that the discolouring and the fluids in dead bodies arise from blood sucking is quite another matter. The same goes for the sounds that corpses make because of bloating and insects.

Amsterdam

I was away for a few days over the weekend going to Brussels, Northern France, and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I had the pleasure of meeting the web master of the Shroudeater web site, Rob Brautigam. Not much else of relevance to this blog to report from that city, but I strolled past these two guys at Dam square.

Online text on Ranft's Traktat

Fellow blogger Nicolaus Equiamicus again refers to interesting material on vampires. This time it's a text by Bettina Meister on Michael Ranft's Traktat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern. Meister reviews the contents of the book and adds some comments on it. She says:

'Die große Leistung von Ranft besteht meiner Ansicht nach darin, sich in einer theologischen Welt im Umbruch mit philosophischen und intellektuellen Methoden der grassierenden Angst der Menschen vor dem Vampirismus genähert zu haben und Antworten zu bieten, die sich von Spekulationen und mystischen Annahmen entfernen.' (Ranft's great achievement in my opinion is that he in a theological world in upheaval has approached men's raging fear of vampirism with philosophical and intelluctal methods and has offered answers that are removed from speculation and mystical assumptions).

The article is published in an online magazine called Zauberspiegel.

The peasant and the count

(John Polidori's) '"The Vampyre" transformed the revenant of folklore from a lumbering peasant who returned from the grave to attack family and friends into a nobleman who frequented fashionable clubs and wandered the globe in search of suitable, nubile victims.' (Notes, p. 310).

While browsing Stoker's Notes, it occurred to me that you could say that my own primary interest in this subject is mainly intellectual, whereas the fascination that many people have for the subject is of a more emotional character. In a way, the above description - by the editors of the Notes - of the transformation of the vampire from revenant into fashionable and erotic aristocrat probably illustrates this very well. The fascination with the fictional vampire is more driven by frisson, the almost pleasurable sensation of fright, or perhaps romance - some would simply say: sex.

Some tales of revenants certainly do involve sexual encounters, like in the Kukljin vampire case where a dead haiduk returns to sleep with his wife ('und was noch abscheulicher, so ist ein gestern beerdigter Heyducke folgende Nacht zu seinem Weibe gekommen und solcher ordentlich beygewohnet, welche solches gleich Tages darauff dem Hadnack selbiges Orts angedeutet, mit Vermelden, daß er seine Sache so wohl, als bey Lebzeiten verrichtet, ausser daß der Saamen gantz kalt gewesen.'). The emphasis, however, is not on erotics. We aren't told that the wife hoped that her dead husband would visit her again and again, as would be the case in modern vampire fiction, where e.g. the female victim - if that is the correct word? - looks forward to be visited by the count in Hammer's 1958 Dracula.

So, even though the sexual aspect is apparent from some revenant tales as well as from demonological works, this is not the aspect that is of primary interest or concern. Not so with the vampire of fiction.

Another illustration of this is shown in the above illustration. Taken from a Danish translation of a children's book, In the Footsteps of Dracula by Jim Pipe, this page juxtaposes the revenant of a peasant and the vampire count: 'Stoker's count, however, is very different from traditional vampires. He is an elegant and civilized nobleman with a pale, handsome face. Apart from his moustache he is clean-shaven. The original Transilvanian vampires on the contrary were rough creatures with boastful voices and red faces covered with stuble.' (Click on the image to view it in more detail).

Obviously, this blog is more concerned with those inelegant peasants that don't lend themselves so well to novels and motion pictures. It is, however, fascinating that those peasants somehow inspired the aristocratic vampire that is so popular nowadays.

Biegas

I once mentioned the Polish artist Boleslas Biegas. There are some examples of his work in an October 2nd post on the Monster Brains blog.