We’re left, then, with the unfortunate corpses of humans that have not fully decomposed, and which may be in the second, third or fourth stages of decomposition.
Readers are cautioned that the following information is rather graphic, and they should exercise caution in reading.
The process of decomposition involves bacteria and enzyme without the body beginning to break it down (from within), and flies laying eggs within any open areas of the body… then fluids and gases building up inside the body. This process bloats the body, and causes fluids to be forced out of cells and vessels, into the body cavity. Maggots move throughout the body – often giving an impression of body movement which is actually maggot movement. More insects and flies are attracted to the decaying body.
Shifting of the body may occur with the bloating of the body, or collapse of the bloated body in the fourth stage (black putrefaction). The release of the build-up gases of putrefaction certainly sounds like groans, and can be emitted from the mouth or through lower body cavities, where the release sounds like a rude noise. Certainly when a bloated corpse is impaled, the corpse will groan, and movement will occur as the pressure within the corpse is released with the escaping gases. The vilest of stenches will pollute the air, and foul matter will be released through any mutilation of the corpse in this stage of decomposition.
The nails can appear to have regrown, as a result of the skin around the nails having been sloughed off, and previously unexposed raw areas of skin and nail beds appeared. Hair appears longer because the epidermis flakes away from the dermis in a process called skin slippage, and the skin, shrinking back after death, exposes more of the hair to view.
The blood itself coagulates, then may liquefy, and this liquid state of blood must be what contemporary reports call “fresh blood”. Certainly no chemical analysis of the blood could have been carried out to ascertain whether or not it was fresh – the freshness is implied from its liquidity. This is no strange and supernatural phenomenon, but a perfectly explicable natural process.
Pooling of the body’s blood in the capillaries imparts a ruddiness to the skin during decomposition. The chalk-white pallor associated with corpses in folklore and fiction does not properly describe a corpse in the process of decomposition. The sanguine appearance of corpses accused of vampirism is simply an expected phenomenon, not a sign that the dead being has just fed on the living.
Interestingly, any corpse lying face down rather than face up was considered a vampire. “It is believed that a dead person turns into a vampire (βρυκολακαςει), first, if at the unearthing of the body the latter is found undecayed and turned face downwards” (Abbott) – this is interesting because one of the effects of a body lying face down rather than supine is that the face shows livor mortis or lividity (the dark coloration that results from the body’s tissues being gorged with blood). When we read of vampires having a “red face”, this is clearly what has occurred.36