In Vaguilesti [again in Mehedinti, modern day Romania] there was a peasant named Dimitriu Vaideanu, of Transylvanian origin, who had married and settled there.
His children died one after the other; seven died within a few months of birth, and some of the older children died as well.
People began to wonder what the cause of all this could be so they convened a council and decided to take a white horse to the cemetery one night, and see if it would pass over all the graves.
Upon doing so they noticed that the horse jumped over all the graves, until it came to the grave of the mother-in-law, Ioana Marta, who had been a witch, renowned far and wide.
Then the horse stood still, beating the earth with its feet, neighing, and snorting, unable to step over the grave as if there was something unholy there.
At night, Dimitriu and his son took candles and went to dig up the grave. They supposedly found the woman sitting like a Turk, with long hair falling over her face, with all her skin red, and with finger nails frightfully long.
They got together brushwood, shavings, and bits of old crosses, they poured wine on her, they put in straw, and set fire to the whole.
Then they shoveled the earth back and went home.
It is not recorded if the deaths stopped after these measures were taken but we sure have a lot of interesting things in this case!
First of all we don`t have any symptoms of the mysterious disease that took all the young ones to the grave. Also we have the gathering of the council and the decision to literally scout the cemetery using one of the superstitions specific to the region – the white horse as a detector!
§ Signs to recognize vampires
Last but not least we have a rather unusual way of dispatching the vampire since there is no piercing/removing of the heart and the two simply torch the corpse… no mention of them taking ashes to mix with [holy] water.
You will find this case mentioned in books such as Montague Summers`s “The Vampire in Europe” and Adrien Cremene`s “Mythology of the vampire in Romania”. If was originally presented by Tudor Pamfile.
๑۞๑ Related: ๑۞๑
† Vampire Accounts
† Legends
