WWW.SHROUDEATER.COM - Vampire of Vagiulesti

The Sources:

Montague Summers :
"The Vampire in Europe" [1929]
reprinted by University Books, New York, USA, 1968

Adrien Cremene:
"Mythologie du Vampire en Roumanie"
Editions du Rocher, Monaco, 1981.

The Case:

Both Montague Summers and Adrien Cremene give us translations of the same story, which appears to have been taken from Tudor Pamfile's "Dusmani si Prieteni ai Omului", and/or may have been published in "Ion Creanga". This - more or less - is the story:

In the village of Vagiulesti the children of a farmer, Dumitriu Vaideanu, died one after the other. Only his eldest son was left. One night, the farmer took a white horse and marched it over the graves in the cemetery. The horse stopped at the grave of Iona Marta, the farmer's mother-in-law. The next night the farmer and his son returned to open up the grave. They found her sitting down in the grave, with long hair, long nails and a red face. They fetched some wood to put into the grave, and after pouring wine over the corpse they burned it. After that they closed the grave again.

The Date:

Sadly, no date is given. So we will have to find the original source...

The Place:

I found a Vagiulesti in the SouthWest of Romania, not very far from the Serbian border.

Possible Follow-Up:

We have been given a place name. We have the name of the vampire and the name of the man who took care of the vampire. We know that the story was written by Theodor Pamfile, even though we can not be quite sure in which of his publications. I think there is more than enough information to help us get started.

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