“Jahnke’s wife, who had joined [Mr Gehrke’s brothers and Jahnke], was of the opinion that it would not help, since the deceased had a strikingly red face and was indeed not dead yet, despite the fact that she had been buried four weeks earlier.” (Globus)

“… human bodies have been found not only incorrupt, flexible, and ruddy for a long time, but, moreover, the head, the mouth, the tongue, the eyes sometimes move. The winding-sheet in which they are wrapped is undone and parts of the body are devoured.” (Rzaczynski)

And below is yet another Slavic testimony:

“In Bohemia near Cadanus a league from a village called Blow, a certain shepherd called Myslata died. Rising every night he made the rounds of the villages and spoke to people, terrifying and killing them. And while he was being impaled with a stake, he said, ‘They injured me severely, when they gave me a stick with which to defend myself from dogs.’ And when he was being exhumed for cremation, he had swelled like an ox and bellowed in a dreadful manner. And when he was placed in the fire, someone, seizing a stake, drove it in him and immediately blood burst forth as from a vessel. Moreover, when he was exhumed and placed on a vehicle, he drew in his feet as if alive, and when he was cremated, all the evil ceased and before he was cremated, whomever he called by name at night died within eight days.”³⁵

The above testimony is given a date of 1336, but the earliest extant edition of this was in a compilation printed in 1882.

It’s already clear that what the peasants were looking for were: a red face; bloated body; apparent movement of limbs; “fresh” blood bursting forth from the corpse when impaled; blood in the coffin; groaning sound when impaled; flaccid limbs; the winding-sheet being partially unwound; partial consumption of the flesh to show that the vampire had eaten its own flesh in a desperate search for sustenance; apparently intact corpse; apparent new growth of nails and skin and hair; the corpse lying face down in its coffin or grave rather than supine.

Unearthing Decay

There are a few things that can instantly be identified as either hyperbole or a clinical nightmare – for instance, the speaking of a corpse to an individual (e.g., “They injured me severely, when they gave me a stick with which to defend myself from dogs”, since it is apparent from the testimonies that any such speech happens privately, probably during a “victim’s” sleep), and the report of a vampire having leapt out of its coffin, from the Dubrovnik Criminal Court vampire trial transcript (obviously a tall tale or hyperbole, designed to garner the co-operation of the sceptical listener to whom it was told.) Significantly, this is not the behaviour of vampires in actuality – no, the obliging corpses lie in their coffins or graves, awaiting without battle or argument the stake thrust through the navel and all other mutilations visited upon them. This is why villagers were able to gather their courage to confront the vampires they blamed for their misfortunes – they knew perfectly well the corpses would not leap out, or attack them.