hest.

[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first
necessary to _cut_ the chest open.]

7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before.
It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood
in the chest.

8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that
of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a
state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely
adjoining the others.

9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old;
he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had
been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.

10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six
weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and
abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.

11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6
weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.

12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an
illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was
florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the
heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.

The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental
surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a
sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near
Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its
_general_ fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is
supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously
verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that,
where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur
several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred,
weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life
has only recently departed.

What inference shall we draw from this fact?--that vampyrism is true in
the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned
corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing
themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let
us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but
still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the
so-called vampyr state, instead