This thread will be for posting official sources ( church, governments, etc ) that have ever stated at any time that there exists a possibility of the 'vampire'. This should not include any sources that consider "serial killers" to be vampires.

Vampire lore has existed in numerous European countries for hundreds of years.

A warning. This thread isn't designed to refute the sources. It is created to be more of a compilation of sources.

Before we begin, do we want to cover older texts or only 1900 - present ?

all of them because youll mostly get old text.

I agree,all of the texts should be here and on everything.

Darkvamp6791

As far as I know, the catholic church officially recognises the existence of vampires and demons, doesn't it?

all source through out time should be used as the new is a mix of all older sources

nice thread sire I will have to look...now doees this include newspaper articales and such or just government...statings or church statings...I know that someone once said that cain was the first vampire

C'thulu.. I don't know about present-day, but just a hundred years or so, yes.
Lady Natalina.. I was thinking of ignoring the media (tv, newspaper) and going by officially recognized documents from church sources, governments, etc.

How do we find documents like that?

lol holdon let me hack in to government data bases

google ebay

Oh, you know...FBI, CIA, MIB, Vatican records you know? Everyday stuff.

Seriously, though, I'm interested to see what people come up with.

Ok,I did some digging, and the best I can come up with is that the vatican does acknowledge the existence of demons and demonic possession as facts. I don't unfortunately have any documents, but *shrugs* best I can do.
Nothing so concrete on vampires.

I've never seen any recognition of vampires by any official organisation.

There is of course the Bish here in Britain who claims to have offed one - not getting into that though in case I get into any more trouble than I already am!

Romania could still be a source I suppose as there still appears to be a certain amount of belief there if anyone has any access.

Are you basing that on literature/popular media? Or personal exploration?

A few hundred years ago, we can find numerous evidences in official documents by the Catholic Church as well as governments in the U.S. and in Europe, not to mention elsewhere like Greece and Russia, and Eastern Europe. These define the "undead" creature who walks and feeds upon the living.

Do we include those in our compilation or shoot for something after say the year 1900 ?

We could do both. I'm just really interested in the more recent ones myself.. because I already know about the older ones.

I doubt anything of a certain age can be taken to be proof of vampires' existence in much the same way you can no longer attribute Epilepsy to demonic manifestation, but anecdotal 'evidence' there is plenty, so let's start with Montague Summers, and a Catholic Perspective:

"Around the vampire have clustered the most sombre superstitions, for he is a thing which belongs to no world at all; he is not a demon, for the devils have a purely spiritual nature, they are beings without any body, angels, as is said in S. Matthew xxv. 41, "the devil and his angels."[1] And although S. Gregory writes of the word Angel, "nomen est officii, non naturae,"--the designation is that of an office not of a nature, it is clear that all angels were in the beginning created good in order to act as the divine messengers ({Greek a?'ggeloi}), and that afterwards the fallen angels lapsed from their original state. The authoritative teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III in 1215, dogmatically lays down: "Diabolus enim et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali." And it is also said, Job iv. 18: "Ecce qui seruiunt ei, non sunt stabiles, et in Angelis suis reperit prauitatem." (Behold they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness.)"

http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vkk/

I think it's important to include this because this is where a lot of Sean Manchester's ideas on 'modern vampires' come from.

A handful of anecdotal tales:

http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/leopards.shtml
Vampire leopards? there are other tales of Vampiric Cats

http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/pvamp03.htm
Vampires exist...unexplained animal killings

http://thomasslemen.tripod.com/lodgelane.html
Good tale, although unsubstantiated

Full text of 'Visum et Repertum' a historical document that is referred to in almost every vampire textbook out there:
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This could be classed as one of the most noteworthy instance’s of vampirism has to be the ones associated with Arnod Paole in which has left his mark in history in the early eighteenth century. Might be of some interest to read the article on him first.

About five years after the death of Arnod Paole, seventeen deaths accrued under three months of suspected vampire attacks in the same small village. So on December 12th 1731, the Austrian Emperor ordered that Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger should carry out an inquiry into this matter. It is difficult to discard the report due to the fact it was signed be five officers that where in the army of Charles VI, Emperor of Austria, and three of them where doctors. It was theoretical that Paole was the original cause of these later events.


Visum et Repertum
Seen and Discovered
1732
After it had been reported that in the village of Medvegia the so-called vampires had killed some people by sucking their blood, I was, by high degree of a local Honorable Supreme Command, sent there to investigate the matter thoroughly along with officers detailed for that purpose and two subordinate medical officers, and therefore carried out and heard the present inquiry in the company of the captain of the Stallath Company of haiduks (a type of soldier), Gorschiz Hadnack, the standard-bearer and the oldest haiduk of the village, as follows: who unanimously recount that about five years ago a local haiduk by the name of Arnold Paole broke his neck in a fall from a haywagon. This man had during his lifetime often revealed that, near Gossowa in Turkish Serbia, he had been troubled by a vampire, wherefore he had eaten from the earth of the vampire's grave and had smeared himself with the vampire's blood, in order to be free from the veIation he had suffered.
In 20 or 30 days after his death some people complained that they were being bothered by this same Arnod Paole; and in fact four people were killed by him. In order to end this evil, they dug up this Arnold Paole 40 days after his death - this on the advice of a soldier, who had been present at such events before; and they found that he was quite complete and undecayed, and that fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; that the shirt, the covering, and the coffin were completely bloody; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen off, and that new ones had grown; and since they saw from this that he was a true vampire, they drove a stake through his heart, according to their custom, whereby he gave an audible groan and bled copiously, Thereupon they burned the body the same day to ashes and threw these into the grave. These people say further that all those who were tormented and killed by the vampire must themselves become vampires.
Therefore they disinterred the above-mentioned four people in the same way. Then they also add that this Arnod Paole attacked not only the people but also the cattle, and sucked out their blood. And since the people used the flesh of such cattle, it appears that some vampires are again present here, inasmuch as, in a period of three months, 17 young and old people died, among them some who, with no previous illness, died in two or at the most three days. In addition, the haiduk Jowiza reports that his step-daughter, by name of Stanacka, lay down to sleep 15 days ago, fresh and healthy, but at midnight she started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, fearful and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a haiduk by the name of Milloe, who had died nine weeks earlier, whereupon she had experienced a great pain in the chest and became worse hour by hour, until finally she died on the third day. At this we went the same afternoon to the graveyard, along with the often-mentioned oldest haiduks of the village, in order to cause the suspicious graves to be opened and to examine the bodies in them, whereby, after all of them had been dissected, there was found:

1. A woman by the name of Stana, 20 years old, who had died in childbirth two months ago, after a three-day illness, and who had herself said, before her death, that she had painted herself with the blood of a vampire, wherefore both she and her child - which had died right after birth and because of a careless burial had been half eaten by the dogs- must also become vampires. She was quite complete and undecayed. After the opening of the body there was found in the cavitate pectoris a quantity of fresh extravascular blood. The vessels of the arteries and veins, like the ventriculis ortis, were not, as is usual, filled with coagulated blood, and the whole viscera, that is, the lung, liver, stomach, spleen, and intestines were quite fresh as they would be in a healthy person.
The uterus was however quite enlarged and very inflamed externally, for the placenta and lochia had remained in place, wherefore the same was in complete putredine. The skin on her hands and feet, along with the old nails, fell away on their own, but on the other hand completely new nails were evident, along with a fresh and vivid skin.
2. There was a woman by the name of Miliza (60 years old), who had died after a three-month sickness and had been buried 90-some days earlier. In the chest much liquid blood was found; and the other viscera were, like those mentioned before, in a good condition. During her dissection, all the haiduks who were standing around marveled greatly at her plumpness and perfect body, uniformly stating that they had known the woman well, from her youth, and that she had; throughout her life, looked and been very lean and dried up, and they emphasized that she had come to this surprising plumpness in the grave. They also said that it was she who started the vampires this time, because she had eaten of the flesh of those sheep that had been killed by the previous vampires.
3. There was an eight-day-old child which had lain in the grave for 90 days and was similarly in a condition of vampirism.
4. The son of a haiduk, 16 years old, was dug up, having lain in the earth for nine weeks, after he had died from a three-day illness, and was found like the other vampires.
5. Joachim, also the son of a haiduk, 17 years old; had died after a three-day illness. He had been buried eight weeks and four days and, on being dissected; was found in similar condition.
6. A woman by the name of Ruscha who had died after a ten-day illness and had been buried six weeks previous, in whom there was much fresh blood not only in the chest but also in fundo ventriculi. The same showed itself in her child, which was 18 days old and had died five weeks previously.
7. No less did a girl ten years of age, who had died two months previously, find herself in the above-mentioned condition, quite complete and undecayed; and had much fresh blood in her chest.
8. They caused the wife of the Hadnack to be dug up, along with her child. She had died seven weeks previously, her child - who was eight weeks old- 21 days previously, and it was found that both mother and child were completely decomposed, although earth and grave were like those of the vampires lying nearby.
9. A servant of the local corporal of the haiduks, by the name of Rhade, 21 years old, died after a three-month-long illness, and after a five week burial was found completely decomposed.
10. The wife of the local bariactar, along with her child, having died five weeks previously, were also completely decomposed.
11. With Stanche, a local haiduk, 60 years old; who had died six weeks previously, I noticed a profuse liquid blood, like the others, in the chest and stomach. The entire body was in the oft-named condition of vampirism.
12. Milloe, a haiduk, 25 years old; who had lain for six weeks in the earth, also was found in the condition of vampirism mentioned.
13. Stanoika, the wife of a haiduk, 20 years old, died after a three-day illness and had been buried 18 days previously. In the dissection I found that she was in her countenance quite red and of a vivid color, and, as was mentioned above, she had been throttled, at midnight, by Milloe, the son of the haiduk, and there was also to be seen, on the right side under the ear, a bloodshot blue mark, the length of a finger. As she was being taken out of the grave, a quantity of fresh blood flowed from her nose. With the dissection I found; as mentioned often already, a regular fragrant fresh bleeding, not only in the chest cavity, but also in ventriculo cordis.
All the viscera found themselves in a completely good and healthy condition. The hypodermis of the entire body, along with the fresh nails of hands and feet, was as though completely fresh. After the examination had taken place, the heads of the vampires were cut off by the local gypsies and burned along with the bodies, and then the ashes were thrown into the river Morava. The decomposed bodies, however, were laid back into their own graves.
Visum et Repertum
Seen and Discovered
1732
Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger
To the Emperor
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Sources:
http://www.theforsaken.co.uk/vampirismarch...visumetrepertum
http://www.dagonbytes.com/vampires/history/arnoldpaul.htm

I first heard this story through my grandfather...My family on my father's side comes from Schleswig-Holstein...http://www.shroudeater.com/cgottorf.htm



This seems however like most vampire stories to have been mostly passed on through folklore as you can imagine..Back in times when it was rare to be able to read and write there would have been little alternative.

okay here is an extremely long one but it is somewhat recent. so here you go.

Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire
By Jeff Belanger

"There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples," said Dr. Seward's diary in Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was Bram Stoker who took the vampire of folklore and made him beautiful, powerful, and sexy. There were cases of vampires all over the world before, during, and even after Dracula both seduced and frightened us -- one of these cases was Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island vampire.

Mercy Brown has the distinction of being the last of the North American vampires -- at least in the traditional sense. Mercy Lena Brown was a farmer's daughter and an upstanding member of rural Exeter, Rhode Island. She was only 19 years old when she died of consumption on January 17, 1892. On March 17, 1892, Mercy's body would be exhumed from the cemetery because members of the community suspected the vampire Mercy Brown was attacking her dying brother, Edwin.

For help with Mercy Brown and vampirism, I spoke with Dr. Michael Bell, a folklorist and author of Food for the Dead, a book that explores the folklore and history behind Mercy Brown as well as several other cases of New England vampires. Many people's understanding of what a vampire is comes mostly from Bram Stoker's work and Anne Rice novels, but the traditional vampire is actually quite different.

So what is a traditional vampire? "Paul Barber wrote a book called Vampires, Burial, and Death," Dr. Bell said. "He gives a forensic interpretation of vampire incidents. They're a natural phenomenon that wasn't understood by the people at the time because they didn't really know what happens to the bodies under different conditions. His definition is that a vampire is your classic scapegoat. I think his definition, if I can paraphrase it, is something like a vampire is a corpse that comes to the attention of a community during a time of crisis, and is taken for the cause of that crisis." Vampires of folklore were not the romantic characters of modern cinema -- they were the walking dead who literally drained the life out of their victims. Attacking vampires was a way for a community to physically embody and fight an evil that is plaguing them. In the case of Mercy Brown, that evil was consumption.

During the 1800s, consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis, was credited with one out of four deaths. Consumption could kill you slowly over many years, or the disease could come quickly and end your life in a matter of weeks. The effects were devastating on families and communities. Dr. Bell explained that some of the symptoms of consumption are the gradual loss of strength and skin tone. The victim becomes pale, stops eating, and literally wastes away. At night, the condition worsens because the patient is lying on their back, and fluid and blood may collect in the lungs. During later stages, one might wake up to find blood on one's face, neck, and nightclothes, breathing is laborious, and the body is starved for oxygen.

Dr. Bell feels there is a direct connection between vampire cases and consumption. He said, "The way you look personally is the way vampires have always been portrayed in folklore -- like walking corpses, which is what you are, at least in the later stages of consumption. Skin and bones, fingernails are long and curved, you look like the vampire from Nosferatu."

Consumption took its first victim within the Brown family in December of 1883 when Mercy's mother, Mary Brown, died of the disease. Seven months later, the Browns' eldest daughter, Mary Olive, also died of consumption. The Browns' only son, Edwin, came down with consumption a few years after Mary Olive's death and was sent to live in the arid climate of Colorado to try and stop the disease. Late in 1891, Edwin returned home to Exeter because the disease was progressing -- he essentially came home to die. Mercy's battle with consumption was considerably shorter than her brother's. Mercy had the "galloping" variety of consumption -- her battle with the disease lasted only a few months. Mercy was laid to rest in Chestnut Hill Cemetery behind the Baptist church on Victory Highway.

After Mercy's funeral, her brother Edwin's condition worsened rapidly, and their father, George Brown, grew more frantic. Mr. Brown had lost his wife and two of his daughters, and now he was about to lose his only son. Science and medicine had no answers for George Brown, but folklore did. For centuries prior to Mercy Brown there have been vampires. The practice of slaying these "walking dead" began in Europe -- some of the ways people dealt with vampires was to exhume the body of the suspect, drive a stake through the heart, rearrange the skeletal remains, remove vital organs, or cremate the entire corpse. All of these rituals involve desecrating the mortal remains. The practice happened with enough regularity that the general population felt it could cure, or at the very least help, whatever evil was overwhelming them.

So much death had plagued the Brown family that poor George Brown probably felt he was cursed in some way. It wouldn't take too many chats with those empathizing with George's plight to come up with a radical idea to stop the death. Maybe the Brown family was under vampire attacks from beyond the grave. Was Mercy Brown the vampire, or was it Mercy's mother or sister? George Brown was willing to dig up the body of his recently deceased daughter, remove her heart, burn it, and feed the ashes to his son because he felt he had no other choice.

In Dr. Bell's book, Food for the Dead, he recounts an extensive interview he conducted with Everett Peck, a descendent of Mercy Brown and life-long resident of Exeter, Rhode Island. "Everett heard the story from people who had been there [at the exhumation of Mercy Brown] -- who were alive at the time," Dr. Bell said. "The newspaper [Providence Journal] says they exhumed all three bodies, that is, Mercy's mother, her sister who had died before her, and Mercy. Everett said they only dug up Mercy. He implied that there was some sign that Mercy was the one -- that's the supernatural creeping into his story. Everett said that after they had dug her up, [they saw that] she had turned over in the grave -- but there's no mention of that in the newspaper or the eyewitness accounts."

Mercy Brown died before embalming became a common practice. During decomposition, it is possible for bodies to sit up, jerk -- even sounds can emit from them because bloating can occur, and if wind escapes by passing over the vocal chords, there could be groans.

We don't know exactly what position her body was in on that day in March when George Brown, and some of his friends and family, came to examine Mercy's body. We do know that she looked "too well preserved."

"There's a suggestion in the newspaper that she wasn't actually interred in the ground," Dr. Bell said. "She was actually put in an above-ground crypt, because bodies were stored in the wintertime when the ground was frozen and they couldn't really dig. When the thaw came, they would bury them. So it's possible that she wasn't even really interred."

Her visual condition prompted the group to cut open her chest cavity and examine her innards. Dr. Bell said, "They examined her organs. The newspaper said her heart and liver had blood in it. It was liquid blood, which they interpreted as fresh blood." Bell explained how forensics can clarify how blood can coagulate and become liquid again, but at the time, the liquid was taken as evidence that Mercy was indeed a vampire and the one draining the life from Edwin and possibly other consumption victims in the community.

Dr. Bell said, "They cut her heart out, and as Everett said, they burned it on a nearby rock. Then according to the newspaper, they fed them [the ashes of the heart] to Edwin." The folklore said that destroying the heart of a vampire would kill it, and by consuming the remains of the vampire's heart -- the spell would be broken and the victim would get well.

The community's vampire slaying had failed to save Edwin -- he died two months later, but maybe it helped others in the community? Dr. Bell's view on Mercy Brown is that she was the scapegoat author Paul Barber discussed. Dr. Bell said, "She basically absorbs the ignorance, the fears, and in some cases the guilt that people have because their neighbors, friends, and family are dying, and they don't understand why and they can't stop it."

Mercy Brown is arguably North America's most famous vampire because she is also the most recent. The event caused such a stir in 1892 because newspapers like the Providence Journal editorialized that the idea of exhuming a body to burn the heart is completely barbaric in those modern times.

As Dr. Bell said, "Folklore always has an answer -- it may not be the scientifically valid answer, but sometimes it's better to have any answer than none at all."

Here's a site that I think might be helpful:

www.shroudeater.com

Here is the introduction to the site, copyrighted by Rob Brautigam 2000:

Almost all the other vampire sites are dealing with fictional vampires, the type of vampire that can be found in vampire films and vampire novels and stories. Or they may find their inspiration in the fairly recent phenomenon of people who call themselves vampires, who are playing at being vampires, and who - in certain cases - even consider themselves to be genuine vampires. Interesting as all that may seem, it is not "our kind of vampire".

Our interest is in the old traditional vampire of the European mainland. Unlike fictional vampires like Dracula or Lestat, there is nothing glamorous or romantic about these vampires. Our kind of vampire is a corpse. In most cases - according to the descriptions - it is reasonably well preserved, considering the fact that it has been dead for some time. This corpse is suspected and accused of draining the blood, health, or vital energy from the living. Its victims usually are friends or relatives that were known to the vampire during its life. In the end it is tracked down to its grave where its existence is ended by impalement or cremation. This (with the odd exception) is the kind of vampire that you will find on our site.

It is our hope that these pages will help to stimulate new interest in an old kind of vampire that seems to have been largely forgotten by most members of the present vampire scene. We would be delighted if we could manage to inspire one or two others to get an interest and start doing their own little bits of research into this fascinating subject. It is always interesting to read about vampires. But it is infinitely more rewarding to pick out one particular case and try to learn as much about it as you possibly can. I have been doing that sort of thing for more than three decades. My fascination with the subject has taken me to weird and far off places that otherwise I would never have seen. It has brought me into contact with lots of people that otherwise I would never have met. I would not have missed it for the world.

Had this site been meant to attract the kind of visitors who like to stay in their chair and merely read about vampires, then we might have presented them with the complete files about a large number of cases. But, as stated, it is our hope that we will manage to stimulate new interest in vampire research. We want to encourage others to pick up a case and do their own bit of research. Therefore, the cases that you will find on our site are far from completed. In most cases all that we have done is try to give you sufficient information to help you get started. For every case that you can find here, there is much more information to be found. You are not going to get it from us, at least not on this site. Just have a look through the cases that are here. And if you see a case that seems interesting, or a case that has happened close to where you live, why don't you go do your own bit of vampire research ?

This site, in its present state, is far from finished. There is a number of further cases that we want to put online. We also want to add more entries and more comments to our lists of books and to our lists of vampire names. And of course - no need to tell us - there still is a large number of countries in our Country Portal for which I have not had the chance to take a proper photo yet. I am traveling around all over Europe whenever I can, but there are no less than 50 countries in our Portal. Obviously, it is going to take me some time before I will have had the pleasure of visiting each and every one of them.

Anyway, these are all minor things that can be solved. Just give us some time and we will do our best and work hard to sort things out. In the meantime, all help, advice and suggestions on how to make this a better site will be more than welcome. Furthermore, any contributions in the shape of articles, photos, links or other relevant information will be highly appreciated. And of course we always welcome intelligent criticism. If you have something interesting to say on the subject of traditional European vampires, then we will be more than happy to put it online for you.

Good luck in everyone's research! :fpope: