It is easy to see why this sensational report caused such a stir. Apparently a sincere and scientific report by a medical expert baffled by signs that made no natural sense, it hit the German-speaking, French-speaking and English-speaking societies with all the force of a sudden shock. But as Jan L. Perkowski writes, “The veracity and objectivity of the text are not beyond question”. (Perkowski, p. 30)

However it may be, the Flückinger inquest findings reached England with almost indecent haste, published in The London Journal on 4th March 1732. The term “vampire” entered the English language for the first time.

The Englightenment and Vampires

In 1746, Dom Augustin Calmet published 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 – it was an instant best-seller, reprinted in three editions in three years. The book was translated into English by M. Cooper in 1759, and then republished only a year later with the title The Phantom World. The work contains many examples of vampires in Slavic folklore, and was read and quoted extensively by philosophers, thinkers and members of the haut ton.

Such figures as Voltaire, Rousseau, the Marquis d’Agens, Van Swieten (Empress Maria Theresa's personal physician and adviser) and the Chevalier De Jaucourt (a prolific contributor to the great Encyclopædia) found themselves debating upon the subject of vampires. The entry by Voltaire for “Vampires” in his Dictionnaire Philosophique is so deliciously ironic that it is well worth quoting in full here.

“What! is it in our eighteenth century that vampires exist? Is it after the reigns of Locke, Shaftesbury, Trenchard, and Collins? Is it under those of d’Alembert, Diderot, St. Lambert, and Duclos that we believe in vampires, and that the reverend father Dom Calmet, Benedictine priest of the congregation of St. Vannes, and St. Hidulphe, abbé of Senon – an abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year, in the neighbourhood of two other abbeys of the same revenue – has printed and reprinted the history of vampires, with the approbation of the Sorbonne, signed Marcilli?

“These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer. We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.