Step into a low room warm with soup and smoke. The door opens. No one invited the newcomer-because he died weeks ago. He sits, says nothing, and tips his chin at one guest. In Moravian lore, the nod is a verdict. Within days, that diner is dead.
About the case. In the early 1700s, bishops in the Diocese of Olomouc (Olmütz) fielded reports of the redivivi-the returned dead-whose visits meant sickness, suffocation, or a wasting pallor. These weren’t caped aristocrats. They were neighbors and shepherds, turning up at tables or barns; sometimes, witnesses swore, they pounded chests, gripped throats, even ran livestock to exhaustion. Local clergy wrote to Rome. No answer. So communities did what they felt they must: exhume, examine, and, if the signs fit-supple limbs, fresh-looking blood, uncorrupted flesh-destroy the corpse.
The book that made a panic legible
In 1706, a legally trained Moravian noble, Karl Ferdinand von Schertz, set the pattern for how to think about such events. His Latin treatise, Magia Posthuma (Olomouc), reads like a country casebook: depositions, omens, procedures. You can feel the lawyer’s hand-he asks under what authority villagers may burn a suspected spectre, and what evidence (fluid blood? flexibility? movement of garments, oddly reported) justifies it. The text is rare, but scholars have traced copies and a 1703 manuscript; most readers met it secondhand, quoted and reframed by later writers.
Dinner omens, barn terrors, and a dog-shaped spectre
One widely retold incident begins modestly: a newly buried woman returns in shifting shapes-dog, then human-grabbing sleepers by the throat, leaving them bruised and faint. Cows wobble as if bewitched; horses drip sweat “as after a rough journey.” Another tale, from nearby Bohemia but often bundled with Moravian cases, names a shepherd: Myslata of Blov. He calls to passersby; those named die within eight days. Villagers stake him-he jeers that they’ve given him a stick to fight off dogs-and only after burning does the terror stop.
Here the vampire label feels off. These are revenants: physically present, dangerous, but not fixated on blood. The most chilling image isn’t a bite-it’s that silent nod across the table.
From parish panic to print-and to “vampires”
How did Moravian revenants become “vampires of Europe”? Enter Dom Augustin Calmet, the Benedictine scholar whose 1740s-50s dissertations hoovered up reports from Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Calmet’s compendium gave the scattered filings a new, portable life. Printers and polemicists followed. The vampire craze was born on paper as much as in graveyards.
The Enlightenment knocks: van Swieten and the ban
By mid-century, the Habsburg court had had enough. Empress Maria Theresa sent her physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate. His verdict: no demons, only physics of decay-gas pressure, preserved tissue in cold or anaerobic graves, and the all-too-human tendency to see intention in nature’s mess. The state moved to ban staking, beheading, and burning. In place of village rituals, there would be physicians, police, and procedure.
Why the bodies looked “too alive”
If you’ve ever opened a sealed jar after winter, you know: lack of oxygen and sealed moisture can change what rot looks like. In some soils, in cold months, the dead bloat, purge fluids, and keep a disconcerting color. Hair and nails seem to grow (skin retracts). A body pinned with a stake can “cry” as gases escape. To a grieving farmstead, these are not lab notes; they are proof-until a new kind of proof arrives with doctors and decrees.
If you go
Olomouc, Czech Republic. Baroque churches, a UNESCO-listed column, and archives that preserve the diocese’s paper trail. You won’t find a vampire museum; you will find a city where court, church, and rumor once argued over the strange behavior of the dead. For the Bohemian strand, Kadaň is your waypoint; the village of Blov sits in the orbit of that old report about Myslata, the shepherd who wouldn’t stay put.
Closer. The room is quiet again. The bowl of soup has cooled. Was it grief? Gas? Or fear made flesh in a small, dark doorway? The nod remains-an old story’s smallest, sharpest blade.
Sources & Further Reading
- Augustin Calmet, Dissertations upon the Apparitions… and concerning the Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (18th-c. editions; English 1759).
- Niels K. Petersen, “Magia Posthuma: Karl Ferdinand von Schertz, Calmet and revenant beliefs,” Bull. of Transilvania Univ. of Brașov, 2021 (overview of the treatise and its reception).
- Magia Posthuma research blog (context, documents, and notes on the book’s survival and the Myslata of Blov case).
- Gerard van Swieten, writings on “Vampyrismus” and Habsburg policy responses.
- Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (forensic takes on “incorrupt” corpses).
FAQ (extended)
Did Rome really ignore the bishops?
Reports say local clergy consulted Rome and received no formal answer. Without guidance, communities leaned on local remedies—exhumation and destruction.
What made a corpse “suspicious”?
Supple limbs, lack of visible decay, “fresh” blood, movement of clothing, or recent apparitions naming victims. These were read as marks of the redivivus.
Why the dog-to-man shapeshift?
It fits broader European spectre lore: ambiguous forms signal a boundary creature, not a stable human revenant.
Was Myslata of Blov in Moravia?
No-Bohemia, near Kadaň. But Calmet and later writers grouped Bohemian, Moravian, Silesian, and Hungarian reports, so the stories travel together.
Where does the word “vampire” enter?
In German and French print culture of the 1730s-1750s, amplified by cases in Habsburg-ruled Serbian lands. Moravian tales fed that stream but weren’t always called “vampires” at the time.
