Arnold Paole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arnold Paole (d. c. 1726) was a Serbian haiduk who was believed to have become a vampire after his death, initiating an epidemic of supposed vampirism that killed at least 16 persons in his native village. His case, like the similar case of Peter Plogojowitz, became famous because of the direct involvement of the Austrian authorities and the documentation by Austrian physicians and officers, who confirmed the reality of vampires. Their report of the case was distributed in Western Europe and contributed to the spread of vampire belief among educated Europeans. The report and its significance for the subsequent Eighteenth century vampire controversy are nowadays explained with the poor understanding of the process of corpse decomposition at the time.

Our knowledge of the case is based exclusively on Visum et repertum (roughly meaning "Autopsy", literally "Seen and discovered"), the report of Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Flickinger, who was sent to investigate the case (alternatively Flückinger, Fluchinger).^[1]^[2]

1 The first outbreak
2 The second oubreak
3 The investigation
4 A modern scientific explanation
5 Notes
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] The first outbreak

Arnold Paole came from the village of Medvedja, on what was apparently the territory of the Habsburg monarchy at the time. He was active as a hajduk in Turkish Serbia. Upon returning to his native village, he reportedly mentioned often that he had been plagued by a vampire at a location named Gossowa (Kosovo) but that he had cured himself by eating soil from the vampire's grave and smearing himself with his blood. About 1725, he broke his neck in a fall from a haywagon. Several weeks after Paole's death, four persons died after complaining that they had been plagued by him. Ten days later villagers, advised by a haiduk who had witnessed such events before, opened his grave and saw that the corpse was undecomposed "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". Concluding that Paole was indeed a vampire, they drove a stake through his heart, to which he reacted by groaning and bleeding, and burned the body. They then disinterred Paole's four supposed victims and performed the same procedure, to prevent them from becoming vampires.

[edit] The second oubreak

About 5 years later, in the winter of 1731, a new epidemic occurred. Seventeen people, young and old, died within a period of three months, some of them in just a 2 or 3 days without any previous illness. These were Militza (a 69-year-old woman, died after a three-month illness); an unnamed 8-year-old child; Stana (a 20-year-old woman, died at childbirth, reportedly said herself that she had smeared herself with vampire blood) and her newborn child (dead right after birth); an unnamed 16-year-old son of a haiduk (died after a three-day illness); an unnamed 10-year-old girl; Joachim (a 17-year-old, died after a three-day illness); the hadnuck 's (alternatively hadnack 's) unnamed wife; Ruscha (a woman, died after a ten-day illness); Stanche (a 60-year-old man); Milloe (a 25-year-old man); Ruscha's child (18 days old); Rhade (a 21-year-old man, died after a three-month long illness); the local standard-bearer's unnamed wife along with her child; the child of the hadnuck 's wife; Stanioicka (alternatively Stanoika, a 20-year-old woman, died after a three-day illness). The last to die, Stanioicka, had reportedly gone to bed healthy 15 days ago, but had woken up at midnight in terrible fear and cried that she had been throttled by the late Milloe. The local people had conjectured that the new epidemic had happened because the first to die, 60-year-old Miliza, had eaten the meat of cattle whose blood Paole had sucked out five years ago.

[edit] The investigation

When the new deaths were reported, the local Austrian supreme command sent a commission to investigate the case. It included a military surgeon, Johannes Flickinger (alternatively Flückinger, Fluchinger), two officers, lieutenant colonel Buttener and J.H. von Lindenfels, along with two other military surgeons, Isaac Siegel and Johann Friedrich Baumgärtner. Together with the village elders and some local Gypsies, they opened the graves of the deceased and established that, while five of the corpses (the hadnuck 's wife and child, Rhade, and the standard-bearer's wife and child) were decomposed, the remaining twelve were "quite complete and undecayed" and exhibited the traits that were commonly associated with vampirism. Their chests and in some cases other organs were filled with fresh (rather than coagulated) blood; the viscera were estimated to be "in good condition"; various corpses looked plump and their skin had a "red and vivid" (rather than pale) colour; and in several cases, "the skin on ... 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". The surgeons summarized all these phenomena by stating that the bodies were in "the vampiric condition" (das Vampir-Stand). After the examination had been completed, the Gypsies cut off the heads of the supposed vampires and burned both their heads and their bodies. The decomposed bodies were laid back into their graves. The report is dated 26th of January 1732, Belgrade (the city was then held by Austrian forces) and bears the signatures of the five officers involved.

[edit] A modern scientific explanation

In fact, all of the phenomena described are characteristic of corpses at certain stages of decomposition. Ruddiness is common, non-coangulated blood is often present and may be seen escaping from the orifices, and both nails and the outer layers of the skin peel off. See Finding "vampires" in graves for more details.