According to the farmer Lako Petrovic from Zabrgje the following happened around 1758 in the village of Cengic in the Zvornik district [region East of Sarajevo].
The story is that of the wife of a priest [regionally called a “popadija”] and it can be found in a series of books I will list in the notes.
After she died other people started dying immediately.
Having had lost almost all of his family an old farmer called Pero kept watch at night and saw the popadija coming into the house. He chased her away with a piece of burning hawthorn.
At this point it seams the vampire tried to lure him out of the house but Pero warned her that he will not allow her to cross his doorstep but won`t come out either. Apparently the vampire remained near the house until dawn and threatened Pero by telling him that none of his family will survive to help him in his quest to destroy it.
The next day he told the priest but he would not believe that his wife was the undead.
Then he went to the authorities and got permission to open the grave. He went to the cemetery with the most respectable people from the village and they found that the popadija’s body was terribly inflated so it was decided to deal with her in the usual manner – they drove a stake through her stomach and set the corpse on fire, burning it to the ash.
When they wanted to fill in the grave a snake came out [sign of the devil], which was killed straight away.
This put an end to the deaths in the village.
The original text was published in 1908 in “Slavische Volksforschungen” by Friedrich S. Krauss and from this date I drew my approximate date for the events because in this text the timeframe is given as “some 150 years ago”. The case is also mentioned in “The Vampires: A casebook” by Alan Dundes.
๑۞๑ Related: ๑۞๑
† Vampire Accounts
† Legends
