Because of the fear of the Black Death infecting others, bodies were buried quickly, while still in a state of rigor mortis as a rule. Some were even buried prematurely – while still alive although appearing dead (perhaps in a catatonic stupor, or even a coma), they were confined to the grave. If the victim recovered consciousness while still alive and buried beneath the earth, a most gruesome death lay in store for them. One can only imagine the desperate attempts of escape by these unfortunates; any such attempts would only have reinforced the fear of vampires by watchers terrified by the signs of activity beneath the earth, or the horrid groaning emanating from the grave.

As more and more villagers would fall prey to the mysterious illness in the village, suspicion would centre upon the first one to die. This one, the living proclaimed, must be the vampire feeding upon the living – and that explained the spate of sudden deaths. Human beings need explanations – we crave them in order to make sense of what we experience. Even if an explanation in retrospect seems ridiculous, it was not so under the force of its in situ events and the chilling reality of a seemingly causeless outbreak of invisible, unstoppable deaths.

As has already been shown through the Slavic testimonies, tt was believed that the dead could become vampires – literally re-animated corpses. The spirit of the corpse, having been denied heaven or for some reason finding no haven beyond death, re-enters the corpse and animates it. The corpse is supposed to be capable of leaving its coffin in some way, and attacking first its family, then others who had lived nearby, and finally the entire village.

The pattern, of course, is obvious to us. Those living closest (even in the same house) were most likely to first show symptoms of the plague than those living further away. Thus the attacks upon wife, brothers, parents, and so on, were real indeed, although the culprit is not a reanimated corpse, but fleas carrying the Black Death plague.

The intermingling of pre-Christian beliefs, Bogomilism and Christianity gave rise to the folklore which proved a fertile ground for dark imaginings. From this hotch-potch of beliefs came the concept that vampires were animated by the powers of the Devil, and that they needed to be destroyed in certain specific ways. The desperation of the living to protect themselves from the dead was so intense that the most gruesome practices became the standard methods of vampire-killing.

Looking for Vampire Lairs

The first step was to find the vampire. In various instances, this was easy – the villagers had “seen” the vampire, or the widow of the dead man reported that her husband had come back as a corpse and was forcing sexual relations upon her during the night. Brothers, fathers and friends of the dead reported having seen the dead (usually a male) walk about the town and attack its inhabitants, even during the daylight. However, a vampire was not necessarily visible – it might be seen only to one person and not by others, or it might be invisible to all.