of Luxemburg, in a pamphlet on the subject. In the year 1843 a woman,
thirty-four years old, was brought to him who had been possessed since
her fifteenth year, and who exhibited the remarkable phenomenon that in
her sound moments she spoke no other language but the patois of her
native place, while in her paroxysms she used Latin, French, and German
at will. When the good bishop threatened the demon, the latter attacked
him in return, troubling him with nightly visits and suggesting to him
sinful doubts of the existence of God and the efficacy of Christ's
sacrifice. This fact shows how easily such disturbances of mind can be
transferred to others, when disease or mental struggles have prepared a
way. Fortunately the bishop first mastered his own doubts, and, thus
strengthened, obtained the same mastery over the possessed woman. He
commanded the demon to come out of her, whereupon she fell into
convulsions, speaking in a disguised tone of voice; but after a while
drew herself up, and now her face was once more free from anguish, and
"angel-like." Another bishop, who had been requested to exorcise
possessed persons in Morzine, in the Chablais, was not so successful. At
this place, in 1837, a little girl, nine years old, in consequence of a
great fright, fell into a deathlike sleep, which returned daily, and
lasted about fifteen minutes. A month later, another girl, eleven years
old, was attacked in the same way, and soon the number of afflicted
persons rose to twenty, all girls under twenty years. After a while they
declared that they were possessed by demons, and ran wild through the
fields, climbed to the top of lofty trees, and fell into violent
convulsions. In vain did the local priest and his vicar attempt to
arrest the evil; the girls laughed them to scorn. When the civil
authorities interfered, they were met with insults and blows; the guilty
were fined, but the number steadily increased, and now grown women also
were found in the crowd. At last the official reports reached Paris, and
the minister sent the chief superintendent of insane asylums to the
village. He immediately distributed all the affected among the adjoining
towns and hamlets, to break off the association, and sent the priest and
his vicar to their superior, the bishop of Annecy. A few only of the
women recovered, several died and one man also succumbed; others, when
they returned to Morzine, relapsed, and in 1864 the malady began to
spread once more so fearfully that the bishop of Annecy himself came to
exorcise the possessed. Seventy of them were brought to the church,
where the most fearful scenes took place; howling and yelling filled the
sacred building, seven or eight powerful men scarcely succeeded in
bringing one possessed child to the altar, and when there, the demoniacs
broke out in horrible blasphemies. The bishop, exhausted by the intense
excitement, and suffering from serious contusions inflicted upon him by
the unfortunate women, had to leave the place, unable to obtain any
results. Even as late as 1869 two demons were solemnly exorcised upon an
order from the bishop of Strasbourg, and with the consent of the prefect
of the department. The ceremony took place in the Chapel of St. George,
in the presence of the lady-abbesses, under the direction of the
Vicar-General of the diocese, assisted by other dignitaries and the
Superior of the Jesuits. The two boys who were to be relieved had long
been plagued with fearful visions and publicly given evidence of being
possessed, for "twenty or thirty times they had been led into a public
square in the presence of large crowds, and there they had pulled
feathers out of a horrible monster which they saw above them in a
threatening attitude; these feathers they had handed to the bystanders,
who found that when they were burnt they left no ashes." When the two
children were brought to the house of the Sisters of Charity, they
became clairvoyant, and revealed to the good ladies, although they had
never seen them before, their family relations, their antecedents and
many secrets. They also spoke in unknown tongues, and exhibited all the
ordinary phenomena of possession. The official report containing these
statements, and closing with their restoration to health and reason, is
so far trustworthy as it is signed by several hundred persons, among
whom the government authorities, officers, professors and teachers are
not wanting.
There can be little doubt that the dancing mania which broke out
repeatedly in various parts of the continent of Europe, was a kind of
possession. The facts are recorded in history; the explanation only is
left as a matter of discussion. In 1374, when a new and magnificent
church was to be consecrated, in Liege, large numbers of people came
from North Germany; "men and women, possessed by demons, half naked,
wreaths on their heads, and holding each other's hands, performed
shameless dances in the streets, the churches, and houses." When they
fell down exhausted they had spasms, and convulsions; at their own
request, friends came and pressed violently upon their chests, till they
grew better. Their number soon reached thousands, and other thousands
joined them in Holland and Brabant, although the priests frequently
succeeded in exorcising them--whenever their mind was still sound enough
to recall their early reverence for holy men and their faith in holy
things. Some time before, the good people of Perugia had taken it into
their heads that their sins required expiation, and had begun to
scourge themselves publicly in the most cruel manner. The Romans were
infected soon after, and copied their example; from thence the contagion
spread, and soon all over Italy men, women, and children were seen
inflicting upon themselves fearful punishment in order to drive out the
evil spirits by whom they fancied themselves possessed. Noble and
humble, rich and poor, old and young, all joined the crowds which in the
daytime filled squares and streets, and at night, under the guidance of
priests, marched with waving banners, and blazing torches, in vast
armies through the land. Nor can we shut our eyes to the fact that the
Jumpers and Jerkers of the Methodist Church present to us instances of
the same mental disorder, caused by over-excitement, which in earlier
days was called possession, and that, hence, these aberrations, also,
infinitely varied as they are, according to the temper of men and the
habits of the locality in which they occur, must be numbered among the
phenomena of modern magic.
VAMPIRISM.
Occasionally possession is not attributed to demons, but to deceased men
who come by night from their graves, and suck the blood of their
victims, whereupon the latter begin to decline and finally die a
miserable death, while the buried man lives and thrives upon his
ill-gotten food. This is vampirism, the name being derived from the once
universal belief that there existed vampires, huge bats, who, whilst
fanning sleeping men with their soft wings, feasted upon their life's
blood and only left them when they had turned into corpses. Popular
credulity added a number of horrid details to the general outline, and
believed that the wretched victims of vampirism became themselves after
death vampires, and thus forever continued the fearful curse. It was
long thought that vampirism was known only to the nations of the Slavic
race, but recent researches have discovered traces of it in the East
Indies, and in Europe among the Magyars. Even the Sanscrit already
appears to have had a term of its own for the vampires--Pysachas,
"hostile beings, eager for the flesh and blood of living men, who
gratify their cruel lust mainly at the expense of women when they are
asleep, drunk, or insane."
Careful writers like Calmet and others have, it is true, always
maintained that, while the existence of vampirism cannot be denied, the
phenomena attending it are in all cases the creations of diseased minds
only. On the other hand, it is a well-established fact that the bodies
of so-called vampires, when exhumed, have been found free from
corruption, while in all the corpses around them decomposition had long
since begun. In the face of such facts vampirism cannot be dismissed as
simply the product of heated and over-excited imaginations, although it
must be admitted that its true nature is still to all intents and
purposes a profound mystery. According to popular belief the unusual
preservation of the corpses indicates that death has not yet obtained
full dominion over the bodies, and that hence the soul has not yet
departed to its eternal home. A kind of lower organic life, it is said,
continues, and as long as this lasts, the soul wanders about, as in a
dream, among the familiar scenes of its earthly life and makes itself
known to the friends of its former existence. The life thus extended
requires blood in order to sustain itself, and hence the minds of those
who come in magic contact with the soul of a vampire, become filled with
sanguinary thoughts, which present themselves to their imagination as
the desire to suck blood and thus lead to the actual performance. The
fact that vampirism is epidemic, like many similar mental diseases, has
led to the belief that the living are brought into close connection with
the dead and are infected by them, while in reality there is no bond
between them but a common misfortune. Nor must it be forgotten that in
this disease, as in the plague, the mere thought of being seized often
suffices to cause death without any warning symptoms, and hence the
great number of deaths in localities where vampirism has been thought to
prevail. For very few of those who are attacked succeed in escaping, and
if they survive they retain for life the marks left by their wounds. The
penalty, moreover, is not always undeserved; vampirism rarely if ever
attacks men of pure hearts and sober minds; it is found, on the
contrary, exclusively among semi-barbarous nations and only in persons
of rude, savage, and sinful disposition.
Traces of vampirism have been discovered in the most distant parts of
the earth, and often without apparent connection. The "Bruholaks" of
Greece, genuine vampires whose appearance was ascribed to the direct
influence of the Evil One, may possibly have been imported by the
numerous immigrants of Slavic origin (Huet, _Pensees Diverses_, Paris,
1722), but in Finland also the belief is, according to Castren, almost
universal, that the spirits of the departed have the power to vex and
torment persons in their sleep, and to afflict them with sorrow and
disease. In the Sunda and Molucca islands genuine vampirism is well
known, and the Dyaks of Borneo also believe in an evil spirit who sucks
the blood of living persons till they expire.
Poland and Western Russia have, however, been for two centuries the
stage on which most of these dread tragedies have occurred. Men and
women were reported to have been seen in broad daylight sucking the
blood of men and beasts, while in other cases dogs and even wolves were
suspected of being upires or vampires, as blood-suckers are called in
most Slavic dialects. The terror grew as these reports found their way
into newspapers and journals, till fear drove men and women to resort to
the familiar remedy of mixing blood with the meal used for their bread;
they escaped not by any healing powers inherent in the horrid mixture,
but thanks to the faith they had in the efficacy of the prescription and
the moral courage exhibited in its application. To prevent the spreading
of the epidemic the bodies of the vampires were disinterred, and when
found bleeding, were decapitated or impaled or burned in public. In some
parts of Hungary the disease appeared in the shape of a white spectre
which pursued the patients; they declined visibly and died in a week or
a fortnight. It was mainly in this country that physicians attending the
disinterment of suspected bodies noticed the presence of more or less
considerable quantities of blood, which was still fluid and actually
caused the cheeks to look reddish. Some of the witnesses even thought
they noticed an effort to breathe, faint pulsations, and a slight change
of features; these were, however, evidently nothing more than the
effects of currents of air which accompanied the opening of the coffin.
It was here also that animals were first believed to have been attacked
by vampires; cows were found early in the morning bleeding profusely
from a wound at the neck, and horses standing in their stalls trembling,
covered with white foam, and so thoroughly terrified as to become unfit
for use.
Another period of excitement due to accounts of vampirism comprised the
middle of last century, when all Europe was deeply agitated on the
subject. The Emperor of Germany and other monarchs appointed committees
of learned men to investigate the matter; theologians and skeptics,
philosophers and physicians, took up the discussion, and hundreds of
volumes were published on the mysterious question, but no satisfactory
result was ever obtained. Many declared the whole a fable or merely the
effect of diseased imaginations, others looked upon it as a malignant
and epidemic disease, and not a few as the unmistakable work of the
devil. Learned men searched the writings of antiquity, and soon found
more traces of the fearful disease than they had expected. They
discovered that in Thessaly, Epirus, and some parts of the Pieria, men
were reported by ancient writers as wandering about at night and tearing
all whom they met to pieces. The Lamiae of the Greeks and the Strigae of
the Romans evidently belonged to the same category, while the later
Tympanites of the Greeks were persons who had died while under the ban
of the church and were therefore doomed to become vampires. The Slavic
population of Moravia and Bohemia was in those days especially rich in
instances of vampirism, and so many occurred in Hungary that the Emperor
Charles IV. intrusted the investigation of the matter to a prince of
Wuertemberg, before whom a number of cases were fully authenticated. Men
who had died years before, were seen to return to their former homes,
some in the daytime, some at night, and the following morning those whom
they had visited were found dead and weltering in their blood. In a
single village seventeen persons died thus within three months, and in
many instances, when bodies were disinterred, they were found looking
quite alive. At this time the Sorbonne at Paris also took up the
subject, but came to no conclusion, save that they disapproved of the
practice of disinterring bodies, "because vampires, as cataleptics,
might be restored to life by bleeding or magnetic treatment," according
to the opinion of the learned Dr. Pierard. (_Revue Spirit._, iv.)
Here we come at last to the grain of truth around which this mass of
popular superstition has gradually accumulated, and the ignorance of
which has caused hundreds of innocent human beings to die a miserable
death. There can be no doubt that cases of "suspended animation" or
apparent death have alone given rise to the whole series of fearful
tales of vampirism. The very words of a recital belonging to the times,
and to the districts where vampirism was prevalent, prove the force of
this supposition. Erasmus Francisci states that, in the duchy of Krain,
a man was buried and then suspected of being a vampire. When disinterred
his face was found rosy, and his features moved as if they attempted to
smile; even his lips opened as if gasping for air. A crucifix was held
before his eyes and a priest called out with a loud voice: "Peace! This
is Jesus Christ who has rescued thy soul from the torment of hell, and
suffered death for thee!" The sound seemed to penetrate to his ear, and
slowly a few tears began to trickle down his cheeks. After a short
prayer for his poor soul, his head was ordered to be cut off; a
suppressed cry was heard, the body turned over as if still alive, and
when the head was severed a quantity of blood ran into the grave. It was
as clear a case of a living man who had been buried before death as has
ever been authenticated. Nor are such cases as rare as is popularly
believed. High authorities assure us that, for instance, after
imperfect poisoning, in several kinds of suffocation, and in cases of
new-born children who become suddenly chilled, a state of body is
produced which presents all the symptoms of complete suspension of the
functions of life. Such apparent death is, according to the same high
medical authority, a period of complete rest, based upon a suspension of
the activity of the heart, the lungs, and all spontaneous functions,
extending frequently to the sense of touch, and the intellect even. At
the same time the natural heat of the body sinks until it seems to have
disappeared altogether. The duration of this exceptional state is
uncertain, at times the patient awakes suddenly, and in full possession
of all his faculties; in other cases external means have to be employed
to restore life. Among many well-authenticated cases of this kind, two
of special interest are mentioned by Dr. Mayo. Cardinal Espinosa, the
minister of Philip II. of Spain, died after a short period of suffering.
His rank required that he should be embalmed, and his body was opened
for the purpose. At the moment when lung and heart were laid open to
view, the surgeon observed that the latter was still beating, and the
Cardinal, awaking, had actually strength enough to seize with his hand
the knife of the operator. The other case is that of a well-known French
writer, the Abbe Prevost, who fell down dead in the forest of Chantilly.
His apparently lifeless body was found, and carried to a priest's house
in the neighborhood. The surgeon ascribed his death to apoplexy; but
the authorities ordered a kind of coroner's inquest, and the body was
opened. During the operation the Abbe suddenly uttered a cry of
anguish--but it was too late!
If a certain number of such cases of apparent death has really given
rise to the faith in vampirism, then it is equally possible to suppose,
that this kind of trance--for which there may exist a special
predisposition in one or the other race--may become at times epidemic.
Persons of peculiar nervousness will be ready to be affected, and a
locality in which this has occurred may soon obtain an unenviable
reputation. Even where the epidemic does not appear in full force, a
disturbed state of the nervous system will be apt to lead to dreams by
night, and to gossip in the daytime, on the fatally attractive subject,
and the patient will soon dream, or really imagine, that a person who
has died of the disease has appeared to him by night, and drawn his
strength from him, or, in his excited fancy, sucked his life's blood. By
such means even the popular way of speaking of nocturnal visits made by
the "vampire's ghost" is not so entirely unfounded as would appear at
first sight, and the superstition is easily shown to be not altogether
absurd, but to be based upon a small substructure of actual truth.
It is remarkable, however, that the Germanic race has never furnished
any instances of vampirism, although their ancient faith in a Walhalla,
where their departed heroes feast sumptuously, and their custom to place
food in the graves of their friends would have seemed most likely to
reconcile them to the idea that men continue to live in their graves.
How sadly persistent, on the other hand, such superstitions are among
the lower races, and in specially ignorant communities, may be gathered
from the fact that, as late as 1861, two corpses were disinterred by the
peasants of a village of Galicia, and decapitated. The people believed
them to be vampires, and to have caused a long-protracted spell of bad
weather!
ZOANTHROPY.
Even more fearful yet than vampirism is the disease, very common already
in the days of antiquity, which makes men think that they have changed
into beasts, and then act as such, according to the logic of insanity.
Petronius is probably the first to mention, in his "Feast of
Trimalchio," a case of lycanthropy, when Niceros relates how someone who
was journeying with him threw off his garments, changed into a wolf and
ran away into the forest. When he returned home, his account continues,
he found that a wolf had fallen upon his flock, but had been wounded by
a servant in the neck with a lance. Thereupon he goes to inquire after
his fellow-traveler, and finds him sick in bed with a physician by his
side, who binds up an ugly wound in his neck. The well-known writer took
this episode from the Arcadians, a rude nation of shepherds, whose
flocks were frequently attacked by wolves, and among whom stories of men
changed into wild beasts, were quite current. Nor must we forget, among
historic personages, the daughter of King Proetus of Argos, who believed
herself changed into a cow; and of Nebuchadnezzar, who according to his
own touching account "was driven from meat, did eat grass as oxen, and
his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like
eagle's feathers, and his nails like bird's claws." (Daniel iv. 33.) The
early days of Christianity are naturally full of incidents of this kind,
but what is remarkable, zoanthropy was then already treated as a mere
delusion. The holy man Macarius once saw a large procession approaching
his hermitage in Egypt; it was headed by a number of persons who led a
large and imposing-looking woman by a bridle, and followed by a crowd of
people of all ages. When they came near they told his disciples that the
woman had been changed into a mare, and had thus remained for three days
and nights without food--would the saint pray over her and restore her
to her natural condition? The delusion was so forcibly contagious that
the disciples also forthwith saw a mare, and not a woman, and refused to
admit the animal to the presence of the hermit! Fortunately the latter
had retained his self-control; he rebuked his followers, saying: "You
are the real beasts, that imagine you see something which does not
exist. This woman has not been changed, but your eyes are deluded." Then
he poured holy water over her, and at once everybody saw her once more
in her natural shape. He dismissed her and her escort with the words:
"Go more frequently to church and take the holy sacrament; then you
will escape such fearful punishment."
During the Middle Ages a similar disease existed in many parts of
Europe; men were changed into dogs or wolves, sometimes as a divine
punishment for great crimes, at other times in consequence of a delusion
produced by Satan. Such unfortunate men walked on all fours, attacked
men and beasts, but especially children, killed and devoured them. They
actually terrified many people into believing as confidently in this
delusion as they believed in it themselves! For this is one of the
specially fearful magic phenomena of zoanthropy that it is apt to
produce in healthy persons the same delusion as in the sufferer. Many
cases also are recorded of persons lying in deep sleep, produced by
narcotic ointments, who, seeing visions, fancied that they were acting
like wolves. In the year 1598 such a disease raged as an epidemic in the
Jura mountains, till the French Parliament determined to make an end of
it by treating all the afflicted either as insane or as persons
possessed by the devil and therefore deserving instant death. Among
Slavic nations and the Magyars lycanthropy is so closely connected with
vampirism that it is not always easy to draw the line between the two
diseases. There can be no doubt, however, that it is merely a variety of
possession, arising from the same unhappy state in which dualism is
developed in the soul, and two wills contend with each other for
superiority to the grievous injury of mind and body. The only
distinctive feature is this, that in lycanthropy not only the functions
of the brains but also those of the skin are disordered, and hence an
impression arises that the latter is hairy and shaggy after the manner
of wild beasts.
The German Waehrwolf (were-wolf or man-wolf) is the same as the
lycanthropos of the Scythians and Greeks and the _versipellis_ of the
Romans; he was in German mythology connected with Woden. Hence,
probably, the readiness with which the disease during the Middle Ages
took hold of the minds of Germans; but at that period nearly all the
nations of Europe firmly believed in the reality of such changes.
As late even as the beginning of the sixteenth century cases of this
kind occurred in France, where the possessed were known as
_loups-garoux_. A young man of Besancon was thus brought before the
Councilor of State, _De l'Ancre_, at Bordeaux, and accused of roving
like a wild animal through the neighboring forests. He confessed readily
that he was a huntsman in the service of his invisible master, the
devil, who had changed him into a wolf and forced him to range by the
side of another more powerful wolf through the country. The poor fellow
shared the usual fate of his fellow-sufferers, who were either subjected
to a sharp treatment of exorcism or simply executed as heretical
criminals.
In our day lycanthropy is almost entirely limited to Servia and
Wallachia, Volhynia and White Russia. There, however, the disease breaks
out frequently anew, and popular belief knows a variety of means by
which a man may be changed into a wolf; the animal differs, however,
from a genuine wolf in his docked tail and his marked preference for the
blood of young children.
In Abyssinia there exists, according to Pearce, a belief that men are
occasionally changed into hyenas--the wolves of that country--but this
sad privilege is limited to workers in clay and iron, called Booda among
the Amharas, who wear a gold earring of special form as a distinction
from other inferior castes.
It will thus be seen that, like all other varieties of possession,
zoanthropy also is simply a kind of insanity, and our amusement at the
marvelous conduct of werewolves will vanish, if we recall the entire
change produced in man by the loss of reason. In that sad condition he
endures fatigue, cold or heat, and hunger as no healthy man ever can
learn to do; he does not mind the severest castigation, for his body is
almost insensible, it ceases to be susceptible to contagious diseases
and requires, in sickness, double or treble doses of medicine. If we
once know the precise nature of an insane person's hallucination, his
actions will be apt to appear quite consistent, and thus lycanthropy
also not only produces the fine connection of a change into a wolf, but
causes the sufferer to conduct himself in all his ways like the animal
which he represents.
VIII.
MAGNETISM.
"Great is the power of the hand."
--ST. AUGUSTINE, _Op._, iv. 487.