The Vampire Epidemic of 18th-Century Europe: Fear, Folklore, and the Digging of Graves

When Europe Feared the Dead

In the early 1700s, Europe found itself haunted by an unexpected terror. It was not the looming wars with empires, nor the famine and disease that seemed to strike every generation, but something stranger, something that blurred the line between the living and the dead. Across villages in Serbia, Poland, and other corners of Central and Eastern Europe, entire communities became convinced that the dead were crawling back from their graves to torment the living.

This panic did not remain confined to remote villages. Reports of the so-called “vampires” spread quickly, fueled by official investigations, church documents, and sensationalist newspapers. Suddenly, Europe—an Enlightened Europe that prided itself on reason and science—was talking about corpses with fresh blood at their mouths, bodies that refused to decay, and rituals of staking, burning, and exorcism. It became known as the Vampire Epidemic of the 18th century, a cultural and social phenomenon unlike anything before or since.

Folklore Roots of the Vampire

The belief in revenants, or the returning dead, was not new to Europe. Among Slavic peoples, stories of the upir, a creature that rose from its grave to drink the blood of the living, had circulated for centuries. In Greece, villagers feared the vrykolakas, a corpse that wandered at night. In Romania, whispers of the strigoi told of the restless dead rising to drain the life from their kin. Even in Western Europe, the medieval imagination was filled with accounts of restless corpses and hungry ghosts.

The 18th century, however, gave these beliefs new urgency. The expansion of the Habsburg Empire into the Balkans brought Catholic officials and Austrian military surgeons into direct contact with rural Slavic traditions. What for centuries had been dismissed as peasant superstition suddenly became documented in official reports, dissected in universities, and debated in the cafés of Paris and Vienna.

The Case of Petar Blagojević

One of the first cases to capture the continent’s attention occurred in 1725 in the Serbian village of Kisiljevo. A man named Petar Blagojević died suddenly, and within days nine other villagers followed. The survivors swore that Blagojević had returned at night, creeping into their homes and pressing the life from their chests. When his grave was opened, the body was said to be undecayed, with fresh blood around its lips, and nails and hair that appeared to have grown after burial.

For terrified villagers, the conclusion was clear: Blagojević had become a vampire. The solution was equally clear. A stake was driven through his chest, and his body was burned. An Austrian official, alarmed at the villagers’ insistence, recorded the incident, making it one of the first “official” vampire reports in Europe.

The Story of Arnold Paole

Barely a year later, in another Serbian village, the case of Arnold Paole spread panic far beyond local borders. Paole, a former soldier, had claimed in life that he was haunted by a vampire and had taken measures to protect himself. After his death, however, villagers began reporting strange illnesses and sudden deaths. Convinced that Paole was responsible, they exhumed his body. Once again, the corpse appeared fresh, with blood in the mouth and supple flesh.

The villagers staked and burned Paole, but the story did not end there. Months later, more villagers died, and the community insisted that Paole’s victims had themselves become vampires. Austrian military surgeons were called to investigate, and they produced detailed reports describing bodies that showed “incorrupt flesh” and “blood-filled hearts.” These documents circulated across Europe, feeding the sense that the vampire was not just folklore but a real and present danger.

The Visum et Repertum Report

By 1732, the panic reached its height with the publication of the Visum et Repertum, an official investigation into suspected vampires in Serbia. The report described the exhumation of seventeen bodies. Some were found with sunken features and natural signs of decay, but others, the investigators wrote, appeared strangely preserved, with blood still in their veins and hearts. To villagers and many clergy, these were unmistakable signs of vampirism.

The report sparked a storm of debate across Europe. In Vienna, Leipzig, and Paris, physicians and theologians argued furiously over what the investigators had seen. For Enlightenment thinkers, the idea of vampires was both absurd and troubling, exposing the gulf between rural superstition and the rational ideals that intellectuals believed should govern society. For the press, however, it was a sensation, and pamphlets describing vampires sold widely.

Signs of the Undead

To understand the epidemic, we must remember that villagers did not have modern knowledge of decomposition. What looked like proof of vampirism was, in fact, the natural process of decay. Corpses swell with gases, making them appear bloated and ruddy. Blood can seep from the nose or mouth, creating the illusion that the dead had recently fed. Hair and nails appear to grow after death because the skin retracts. When staked, a corpse might release trapped gas with a groan, a sound horrifying enough to confirm anyone’s worst fears.

Yet for the people of the 18th century, these signs were real. In a world plagued by outbreaks of tuberculosis, plague, and rabies—diseases that wasted the body, caused bloody coughing, and produced night terrors—death was already mysterious and terrifying. Linking illness to the presence of a restless corpse gave communities an explanation, however grim.

Religion, Empire, and Vampires

The vampire panic forced church and state to respond. Catholic and Orthodox clergy, while uneasy, often sanctioned exhumations because it was the only way to calm terrified communities. Austrian imperial authorities, anxious to maintain order in newly conquered Balkan territories, dispatched medical officers to examine the corpses. Ironically, these investigations gave the vampire belief legitimacy by placing it in official records.

Not everyone was convinced. Voltaire famously mocked the panic, writing with biting irony: “What! Vampires in our enlightened age? It seems the dead drink blood, while the living drink only water.” To Enlightenment philosophers, the vampire craze showed the stubborn hold of superstition. Yet their ridicule did little to stop villagers from sharpening their stakes.

From Folklore to Literature

The vampire epidemic of the 18th century did more than terrify peasants; it transformed European culture. Pamphlets and reports inspired poets, novelists, and playwrights, who reimagined the vampire as more than a grotesque corpse. By the early 19th century, John Polidori’s The Vampyre cast the creature as a sinister aristocrat, a figure of seduction and corruption. Later, Bram Stoker’s Dracula would immortalize the vampire as the brooding nobleman of Gothic fiction.

Behind these literary figures, however, lingered the memory of real villagers in Serbia and Poland digging up their dead, desperate to protect their families from a threat they could not understand.

Vampires Beyond Serbia

Although the most famous cases came from the Balkans, vampire traditions stretched across Europe. In Greece, people believed the vrykolakas knocked on doors, and if answered, brought death. In Poland, anti-vampire burials placed sickles across the necks of the dead to prevent them from rising. In Romania, the strigoi were feared for centuries, with rituals of staking and burning surviving into modern times. Western Europe, meanwhile, regarded the vampire epidemic as a curious import from the east, exotic and horrifying but not part of daily life.

Why the Vampire Epidemic Matters

The vampire epidemic was more than a bizarre episode of superstition. It revealed the deep tensions of a Europe caught between old beliefs and new science. It showed how folklore, when combined with disease and uncertainty, could fuel mass hysteria. It highlighted the struggles of empires and churches to govern not only bodies but also imaginations. And it left behind a legacy that still shapes how we imagine monsters today.

The 18th-century vampire panic was never really about the dead. It was about the living—their fears of illness, their struggles to explain suffering, and their desperate need for rituals to make sense of the world. Villagers who dug up corpses were not irrational; they were seeking control over forces that seemed beyond them.

In time, the vampire escaped the graveyards of Serbia and Poland to become a symbol in literature, cinema, and popular culture. But behind every cape and castle lies the memory of real people who once looked into the grave, saw the face of their neighbor, and believed it was staring back at them.