abstract
| - Apparently, the method worked as a deterrent but not as a cure. Paole was able to return to his home in 1727; however, he died soon after from a fall off a haywagon, and was buried. Within a month after Paole's death, the people of his village started reporting that he was attacking them at night. Four of the victims eventually died. The villagers began to fear the vampire, and decided to dig up his body. When the "hunters" did so, they found that Paole's body was undecayed, his skin and nails had fallen away and had been replaced by new skin and nails, and (of course) streams of "fresh blood" were flowing from his orifices. To rid themselves of the monster, the villagers drove a wooden stake through Paole, and according to them, the vampire groaned and blood erupted from his body. They then burned the body. Paole never again bothered anyone, but the hunters were still not satisfied that the curse ws lifted from their village. They believed that all of Paole's victims were also vampires, and to make sure the village was free from vampires for good, the hunters dug up those bodies as well. They found them also to be in the "vampire condition," and disposed of them in the same manner. Several years later, another epidemic apparently broke out, because another vampire hunt occurred in the same graveyard. In the account of that expedition, Visum et Repertum, which is translated in Paul Barber's book Vampires, Burial, and Death, sixteen alleged vampires were exhumed. All of the "successors" of Paole seemed to have the same characteristics as he did(lack of decomposition, new skin and nails, and the presence of fresh blood). Also, all the vampires were buried for approximately the same amount of time—around two months. Four of the vampires were infants, and three of them were buried along with their mothers(who were among the alleged sixteen vampires). The belief that a vampire's child would also become a vampire was common in Greece as well. There is no surviving written testimony of just what Paole's victims saw, or of how they were attacked by him. The only evidence we have is the secondary source already mentioned, the Visum et Repertum. That is a secondary account because it was written by the hunters who investigated Paole's successors. How reliable is this source for determining what actually happened at the graveyard in either instance?
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