One of the first vampires that sparked the vampire panic throughout Europe in the 18th century, was Arnold Paole. A former soldier in the Serbian village Medveđa, often nicknamed Vampire Zero.
Tucked away in the shadowed valleys of what was once the Habsburg-occupied Balkans, in a small Serbian village named Medveđa, a chilling tale took hold in the early 18th century. In late 1731, a field surgeon from the Austro-Hungarian Regiment, Johannes Flückinger went all the way to the Serbian village Medvegya on the border. A series of deaths had been reported and people were frightened that it was because of vampires.
Flückinger traced the deaths many years back to what was believed to be Vampire Zero, a soldier called Arnold Paole. Arnold Paole’s story was so disturbing, so widespread, that it sparked one of the earliest vampire panics in the Western world, and left a trail of unease that still lingers in Balkan folklore to this day.
A Soldier Haunted by the Undead
Years before Flückinger made his reports, Arnold Paole was an Albanian soldier stationed on the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. The hajduks were seen as either bandits or freedom fighters during the Ottoman Empire depending on what side you were looking from. After the Habsburg takeover, they were recruited for border protection in exchange for land. While serving in Greece or Turkey (accounts differ), Paole reportedly fell victim to a vampire attack. He sometimes mentioned Gossowa which might have been Kosovo.
Terrified of becoming one himself after death, Paole sought to protect his soul. He allegedly tracked down the creature that had bitten him, killed it, and consumed a portion of its grave dirt, a ritual believed to ward off vampirism.
After leaving military service, Paole came to the village of Medveđa, a town located in the Jablanica District of southern Serbia. It’s uncertain if this is were he was born and returned, or someplace new he settled. There, he lived a relatively quiet life, but his peace was short-lived. In 1726, Paole died in an accident and some sources claim he fell from a hay wagon, others that he broke his neck. He was buried in consecrated ground, and life in Medveđa carried on.
That is, until the strange deaths began.
Within weeks to forty days after his death, villagers began reporting night-time visitations by Paole’s ghostly figure, pale and bloated, attacking them in their homes. Four villagers at least complained that he had come to them at night. Several residents fell ill and died in rapid succession. Fear gripped the village, and suspicion turned inevitably to vampirism.
The Exhumation and Horrifying Discovery
A local tribunal, terrified by the events and well-versed in vampire lore, ordered Paole’s exhumation, something the administration, or hadnack allowed. When his coffin was opened, those present reportedly recoiled in horror. His body, though buried for over a month, showed no signs of decay. His skin was ruddy, his nails and hair appeared to have grown, and fresh blood stained his lips. Fresh blood poured from his eyes, ears and nose.
This, according to folklore tradition, was the unmistakable sign of a vampire.
Read Also: Not too far from this village around the same time, another Serbian border town struggled with another case of vampirism that would reach the ear of western European as well. Read about Petar Blagojević: The Death That Sparked Europe’s Vampire Panic
Without hesitation, the villagers drove a wooden stake through Paole’s heart. Eyewitnesses claimed he let out an audible groan and a stream of fresh blood gushed from his mouth. His corpse was then burned to ashes and scattered.
A Second Outbreak of Vampirism
For around five years, the peace was restored to the village, although the fear lingered. That was until the vampire infection started to spread as a new epidemic happened in the winter of 1731.
The villagers believed that the cattle Paole had bitten before his own destruction had risen as vampires themselves. Although they were slaughtered, it was too late, and they believed the infected cattle further created 17 new vampires who had eaten the animals.
The locals held night watches and people started talking about leaving their homes and lives in the village for good.
Another investigation was ordered. This time by Austrian authorities attempting to quell the region’s vampire hysteria. When the contagion physician Glaser arrived in Medveđa on 12 December, Initially he was there as an expert on contagious diseases, but he found no known causes that would explain the deaths in a scientific way. In 1732, military surgeon Johannes Flückinger was dispatched to Medveđa to document the situation.
His chilling report detailed numerous exhumations, finding corpses in an unnaturally preserved state, blood at their mouths, and signs of vampiric transformation.
One of the first victims was Milica, A 50 or 60 year old woman. Glaser reports that the locals considered Milica to have been one of those to start the epidemic. Milica had come to the village from Ottoman-controlled territories six years before. The locals’ testimony indicated that she had always been a good neighbour and that, to the best of their knowledge, she had never “believed or practiced something diabolic”. However, she had once mentioned to them that, while still in Ottoman lands, she had eaten two sheep that had been killed by vampires. In real life she had been lean and slim, but after her death, looked plump and like she had eaten more than in life.
Also the 20 year old woman, Stana was believed to have started the epidemic. She died after a three day illness two months before the surgeon arrived with her newborn baby. The baby had been buried behind the fence of where Stana lived as the baby hadn’t lived long enough to be baptized and was half eaten by dogs. She had admitted that when she was in Ottoman-controlled lands, she had smeared herself with vampire blood as a protection against vampires she thought was stalking her, as these had been very active there.
The sick had complained of stabs in the sides and pain in the chest, prolonged fever and jerks of the limbs. They also struggled to breathe. According to Flückinger’s report, by 7 January, 17 people had died within a period of three months (the last two of these apparently after Glaser’s visit)
Stanojka was a 20 year old wife of a hajduk who claimed to have been visited at night and choked by Miloje, a 25 year old son of a hajduk who had died nine weeks earlier. She died three days later of the disease. When they exhumed her 18 days after her death, fresh blood poured from her nose and her internal organs, skin and nails looked tough and fresh. Flückinger did point out that there was a finger-length red patch under the woman’s right ear, without, however, drawing a connection with bloodsucking.
An eight day old child that had been in the grave for 90 days, but looked fresh. As did the 16 year old son of a Haiduk after being dug up nine weeks after death. He also died of an illness in three days. Joachim, another son of haiduk 15 or 17 years old, had the same story of a three day illness before dying, with signs of vampirism after being in the grave for eight weeks and four days.
But there were people who didn’t fit the pattern of their corpse looking fresh. Milosava, a 30 year old woman and the wife of a hajduk was found with her eight week old child. Although their graves were like those of the vampires nearby, their bodies were completely decomposed. Rade a 24 year old man and the servant of a haiduk, was found completely decomposed.
Also among the dead:
Miloje: A 14 year old boy
Petar: 15 year old boy
Vučica: 9 year old boy
Ružica: a 40 year old woman.
The dead were dispatched with stakes, beheaded and burned, following the grisly protocols of local custom.
The Birth of European Vampire Hysteria
The Arnold Paole incident and Flückinger’s official report from January in 1732 he called “About the so-called vampire or bloodsucker, as seen in Medvedja, in Serbia, on the Turkish border on January 7, 1732.”, spread quickly through European intellectual circles, feeding an insatiable curiosity for vampire lore. It was one of the first recorded cases to feature systematic investigation, written documentation, and public execution of suspected vampires — long before Bram Stoker’s Dracula or even the Gothic literature of the 19th century.
The case of Arnold Paole cemented the Balkans as the epicenter of vampire mythology and inspired a wave of vampire-related pamphlets, academic debates, and terrified imaginings across Europe.
Criticism of the Investigation and Vampire Report
Although a man of science, was Flückinger’s report on the ongoings really a reliable one?
For once it was the blatant xenophobia and classicism of the report. Serbia had for centuries been the land of Turks and had been closed off for many Europeans. Their language, religion, culture and folklore differed greatly from the German and Austrian ways and when they met, it was close to a colonial meeting. A them versus us.
Besides, the border town was a farming one, ravaged by war and poverty. He had no problem labeling the peasants and foreigners as vampires and let them be taken by the vampire panic that swept through town. But the wealthier Hungarian families, like the wife and her newborn baby, were let off the hook and reburied without any disturbances in consecrated ground. Making his own belief in his report sway.
But what really happened? In many of the instances, the supposed signs of vampirism, could easily be explained by natural stages of decomposition. Like the bloating on the woman that had once been slim, as gasses amasses in the body after death.
Some modern scholars think the disease was splenic fever, and there is some evidence that something like this spread among sheep in the area in the summer of 1731. Some speculated about rabies, although this illness is perhaps too well known that trained surgeons would have explained it as vampirism. Even at the time, people had science to explain what happened. Christian Reiter, a prominent Viennese forensic scientist, believes that behind all these cases was an anthrax epidemic, a common phenomenon in the past in the periods during and after the war. Anthrax is a bacterial disease that is transmitted from infected animals to humans and is often fatal.
Medveđa’s Lingering Curse
Today, the village of Medveđa remains largely forgotten by the world, a quiet patch of Serbian countryside. But those who know their vampire history understand its significance. The ghost of Arnold Paole, the soldier turned predator, continues to cast a long and uneasy shadow over vampire folklore.
In the dead of night, when the wind howls through ancient graveyards under a blood-red moon, one might refuse to believe that the deaths were the works of vampires, but the effect it had on modern folklore through the Balkans, and even the rest of Europe, were certainly real.
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References:
Decomposing Bodies in the 1720s Gave Birth to the First Vampire Panic
The Origins of Vampire Stories in the Christian-Islamic Borderlands
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