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"'And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and helper. You shall be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you have done. You have aided in thwarting me. Now you shall come to my call. When my brain says "Come!" to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding; and to that end this!' With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp fingernails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the -- Oh my God! my God! What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days. God pity me! Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril; and in mercy pity those to whom she is dear." Then she began to rub her lips as though to cleanse them from pollution.
— from Dr. Seward's Diary, 3 October, in Chapter XXI of Dracula by Bram Stoker
Contrary to the literary tradition created by Bram Stoker, there is no precedence in folk belief to support the notion that it is necessary for the victim of a vampire to drink the blood of the vampire in order to become a vampire himself. But, quite to the contrary, there are cases where the blood of the vampire was used to cure his victim of the illness inflicted by the vampire and/or to prevent the victim from becoming a vampire himself after he dies.
In the article "The Romanian Folkloric Vampire" by Jan Perkowski which was published in the September, 1982 issue of the journal Eastern European Quarterly, there is the following anecdote recorded in 1935 at the village of Izbecini in the Romananti district of the Romanian province of Oltenia, formerly an eastern part of Wallachia:
"A dead person becomes a pricolici and he feeds on his relatives. When he is exhumed his rump is facing upwards and he has blood on his lips. You have to take some of that blood and feed it to the person at home who is suffering from the pricolici. In this way the relative regains his health."
In the version of the infamous case of Arnaud Paole (Arnold Paul) given by Dom Augustine Calmet in Chapter 11 of his Treatise on Vampires and Revenants, it is written:
"It was then remembered that Arnold Paul had frequently told a story of his having been tormented by a Turkish vampire, in the neighborhood of Cassova, upon the borders of Turkish Serbia (for the notion is that those who had been passive vampires in their life-time become active ones after their death) but that he had been cured by eating some of the earth upon the vampire's grave, and by rubbing himself with his blood."
Also, in Chapter 13, Calmet wrote, concerning the ravages of the ouipire of Poland and Russia:
This reviving being, or ouipire, comes out of his grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to hug and embrace violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death. This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the last person in the family, if the course cannot be interrupted by cutting off the head or opening the heart of the revenant, whose corpse is found in the coffin, yielding flexible , swollen, and robicund, although he may have been date for some time. Their proceeds from his body a great quantity of blood, which some mix with flour to make bread of; and that bread eaten in the usual manner protects them from being tormented by the spirit, which returns no more."
In the Romanian journal of folklore and folk art, Ion Creanga vol. vii (1914), p. 165, there begins an article by the Romanian folklorist N. I. Dumitrascu which contains accounts he recorded concerning the detection, destruction, and disposal of vampires. In three of these, the heart (and, in two of these, also the liver) of the vampire is cremated, the resulting ashes are then mixed with water, and this mixture is then drunk by the vampire's victims.
The first of these cases is from the village of Amarasti in the north of the Dolj, district, in the southeastern corner of Romania. The incidents occurred around 1899. An old woman died and after that the children of her eldest son, Dinu Gheorgita, began to die one after another. Then the same began to occur to the children of her youngest son. Dinu and his brother exhumed their dead mother, cut her corpse in two, and then reburied it. The deaths still continued. So, they dug the woman up again and found that her body had become whole again without even a wound. This time, they disembowelled her and also cut out the heart, from which blood was flowing. They cut the heart into four pieces and burned these pieces over hot cinders. "They took the ashes of the heart and gave them to drink to the children with water." Next, they burned the remaining parts of the body and scattered the ashes. After that, the illness and deaths ceased.
The second case occurred some twenty or thirty years before 1914. An unmarried man, a cripple, died in the Cusmir region, in the south of the Mehedenti district in Romania. Shortly after that, his relations began to die or fall ill. "They complained a leg was drying up." After some discussion, they exhumed the cripple on a Saturday night. They found the corpse to be stark red and curled up into a corner of the grave. "They cut him open and took the customary measures. They took out the heart and liver, burned them on red-hot cinders. and gave the ashes to his sister and other relations who were ill to drink with water and regain their health."
(Note: Tuberculosis, besides affecting the lungs, causes lesions in the bones. A crippled leg can result.)
The third case is from the same region as the last:
"In the Cusmir, another family began to show frequent deaths, and suspicion fell on an old man, dead long ago. When they dug him up, they found him sitting up like a Turk and as red as red, just like fire; for had he not eaten up the whole of a family....they...cut out his heart and liver, burnt them, and gave them to the sick folk to drink. They drank and regained their health. The old man was buried and the deaths ceased."
These quotations from Ion Creanga can be found in the article by Agnes Murogi "The Vampire in Romania" published in the December, 1926 issue of the journal Folk-Lore, and also in The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers.
There is also evidence of the same practice having occurred in New England.
In parts of New England during the late 18'th century and until nearly the end of the 19'th century, when tuberculosis, then better known as consumption spread from one member of a family to another it was sometimes suspected to be due to vampirism, though New Englanders involved didn't use the name vampire.
One of the last known cases is that of Mercy Brown which occurred in the town of Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. The details of the case were reported at the time in Rhode Island newspapers such as The Norwich Courier and the Providence Journal.
Mercy Brown's mother had died of consumption in 1883, and so had an older sister six months later. After several years following, Mercy's older brother Edwin caught the disease, and then finally Mercy herself. Mercy died in January, 1892. Two months after she died, her body and those of her mother and dead sister were exhumed. There was nothing left of the mother and sister but skeletons, but Mercy's body was relatively intact and blood was found to be dripping from her heart and liver. Consequently, both of these organs were cremated. However this did not cure Edwin of his consumption and he very soon died from the disease.
An article reporting this case in the March 19, 1892 issue of the Providence Journal under the multiple title
EXHUMED THE BODIES - TESTING A HORRIBLE SUPERSTITION IN THE TOWN OF EXETER - BODIES OF DEAD RELATIVES TAKEN FROM THEIR GRAVE begins with:
They had all died of consumption, and the belief was that live flesh and blood would be found that fed upon the bodies of the living.
A sequel article was printed in this newspaper on March 21, 1892, titled THE VAMPIRE THEORY - THAT SEARCH FOR THE SPECTRAL GHOUL IN THE EXETER GRAVES - NOT A RHODE ISLAND TRADITION BUT SETTLED HERE, compares the beliefs involved in the Mercy Brown case with vampire beliefs found in Eastern and Central Europe.
Of particular interest here are the following statements in the article regarding the belief and practice in Exeter County:
And the belief is that so long as the heart contains blood, so long will that of the immediate family who are suffering from consumption; but if the heart is burned, that the patient will get better. And to make the cure certain, the ashes of the heart and liver should be eaten by the person afflicted In this case [note: that of Mercy Brown} the doctor does not know if that latter remedy was resorted to or not,,,,The last illustration of the practice was six or seven years ago in the same county.
It is interesting that the author of the latter article considered both the connection with tuberculosis and the practice of eating the ashes to be exceptionally different from European beliefs and practices concerning the vampire. He was wrong on both points except that only in New England was such belief limited to occurrences of tuberculosis.
Both of these Providence Journal articles are reprinted in full in Vampire Legends of Rhode Island by Christopher Rondina (North Auburn, Massachusetts: Covered Bridge Press, 1997).
In both Romania and Rhode Island, there was also a related practice: fumigation by the smoke from the burning heart or corpse.
In her article, The Vampire in Romania cited above, Agnes Murgoci wrote that, in the Romananti district:
The heart was cut out, and one piece after another burnt. Last of all the heart was burnt , and those who came near so that the smoke passed over them, and protected them from evil.
In Rhode Island, there is the case of Nancy Young. She died of tuberculosis on the farm of her family near the town of Foster in 1827. She was the eldest daughter of the family, maybe 18 or 19 years old at the time, She was the first in the family to die of the disease. Her younger sister Almira soon afterwards became afflicted with the disease. When Almira told her father about a dream in which Nancy had visited her, the father consulted the town elders who then came to the conclusion that the family was afflicted by a demo which was lingering with the body of Nancy in the family burial plot. Soon afterwards, the body of Nancy was exhumed and cremated. At the advise of one of the town elders, members of the Young family formed a circle around the the burning corpse so that the smoke would fumigate and purify them.
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