“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…” (Neplach)

“… so as a precaution against the corpse a gold coin, Andrew Cross [Editor: type of coin] or cross heller [Editor: other coin] is stuck between the teeth, or a half-round cut out board put under the chin, so that the head and breast are fully separated. Above all one carefully tries to deter in closing the coffin the lips of the lips deceased from coming in contact with a piece of its burial garment… During the course of time, however, it turns out that one day the deceased has become a Doppelsauger, which becomes manifest by a rapid loss of weight by a family member, so that the relatives sneak to the cemetery in the still of the night, exhume the body, and knock off the back of its neck with a spade.” (Henning)

“Then they could not find out anything about him [the vampire] from his wife, and at midnight they had to dig up his grave and they had to open the coffin and cut off his head.” (Lorentz)

“[They] dug up the grave during the night. Then they opened the coffin and placed flax-seed and a fishing net in it… In such instances one resorts to drastic measures: the corpse’s head is cut off with a spade and then placed under an arm.” (Globus)

The Peter Plagojowitz Report

One of the most famous vampire cases, in which were stated the methods of dealing with a vampire, was reported by Dom Augustin Calmet in his Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons & des Esprits et sur les Revenans et Vampires, de Hongie, de Bohème, de Moravie, & de Silésie, published in 1746. The text, a report by the Imperial Provisor of Gradisk District in 1725, is as follows:

“After a subject by the name of Peter Plogojowitz had died, ten weeks past – he lived in the village of Kisilova, in the Rahm district [of Serbia] – and had been buried according to the Raetzin custom, it had been revealed that in this same village of Kisilova, within a week, nine people, both old and young, died also, after suffering a twenty-four hour illness. And they said publicly, while they were yet alive, but on their death-bed, that the above-mentioned Peter Plogojowitz, who had died ten weeks earlier, had come to them in their sleep, laid himself on them, so that they would have to give up the ghost. The other subjects were very distressed and strengthened even more in such beliefs by the fact that the dead Peter Plogojowitz’s wife, after saying her husband had come to her and demanded his opanki, or shoes, had left the village of Kisilova and gone to another. And since with such people (which they call vampires) various signs are to be seen that is, the body undecomposed, the skin, hair, beard, and nails growing – the subjects resolved unanimously to open the grave of Peter Plogojowitz and to see if such above-mentioned signs were really to be found on him.