Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, The Rising,
Speaker 1: we heard the beguiling tale of the supposed Highgate vampire
Speaker 1: that is said to have stalked London's most famous cemetery
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties and early seventies. As some
Speaker 1: listeners have been at pains to point out, the story
Speaker 1: has grown somewhat overblown in the years since, but perhaps
Speaker 1: most interesting is the animosity that developed out of it
Speaker 1: between David Farrant and Seawan Manchester, the two figures most
Speaker 1: often associated with the events. When the story was first
Speaker 1: reported in The Hampstead and Highgate Express in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: the pair appeared to be very much in audence about
Speaker 1: the possible nature of the unusual goings on. Before long, however,
Speaker 1: each became intent on establishing their own version of the story.
Speaker 1: Though Sean Manchester maintained throughout that it was a vampire
Speaker 1: stalking the cemetery, Farrant preferred instead to think of it
Speaker 1: more as a dark, ghostly entity that had become empowered
Speaker 1: by black magic. Before long, Manchester accused Farrant of meddling
Speaker 1: with things he didn't understand, and even charged him of
Speaker 1: being a black magic practitioner himself, who had helped to
Speaker 1: resurrect the vampire in the first place. Things deteriorated so
Speaker 1: much that in nineteen seventy three, Manchester challenged Farrant to
Speaker 1: a magician's duel to the death, billing the encounter as
Speaker 1: a fight between his white force of good and Farrant's
Speaker 1: black magic forces of evil. Sadly, in the end, the
Speaker 1: battle never took place. Many have also questioned Manchester's account
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Voidiwa and Barbara Moriarty's apparent experiences, neither of
Speaker 1: whom appeared to have ever spoken publicly on the matter,
Speaker 1: if indeed they existed at all. The similarity between elements
Speaker 1: of Manchester's stories and Bram Stoker's own Dracula has also
Speaker 1: not gone unnoticed, certainly his belief that a king vampire
Speaker 1: once lived at Ashurst House, close to the Cemetery, having
Speaker 1: arrived in England under a cloud of mystery from Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: where he also claimed a vampire plague had once Raged
Speaker 1: bears much of the hallmarks of bram Stoker's masterpiece. So
Speaker 1: what then, of the stories that inspired bram Stoker. It
Speaker 1: may seem far fetched to claim a vampire had been
Speaker 1: living at the site of Highgate Cemetery since the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: but did you know the so called vampire plague was,
Speaker 1: in one way or another, entirely real. The year was
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty one, and the place the village of Meadvija,
Speaker 1: a small farming community located about a hundred miles south
Speaker 1: of Belgrade in what was then the Kingdom of Serbia.
Speaker 1: It was there that a doctor Glaser, an expert on
Speaker 1: infectious diseases from nearby Parachin, was sent after the military
Speaker 1: commander in charge of the local region received word of
Speaker 1: some kind of infection that had broken out in the village,
Speaker 1: claiming the lives of at least ten of its inhabitants.
Speaker 1: On arrival at the village, the urbane Glasser was met
Speaker 1: by the captain of the Haiduks, a group of guards
Speaker 1: tasked with keeping watch over the local neighborhood. Before Glasser
Speaker 1: could get to work, the captain thought it important to
Speaker 1: provide a little background on the case. It had all started,
Speaker 1: he believed four years ago, when one Arnold Parvol returned
Speaker 1: home to Meadviger after a number of years serving in
Speaker 1: the army with a strange, haunted look in his eyes.
Speaker 1: For most who lived in the local area at the time,
Speaker 1: life was of fraught existence, being constantly buffeted between the
Speaker 1: two heavy weights of the Ottoman Empire pushing up from
Speaker 1: the south and the Habsburg Empire squeezing down from the north.
Speaker 1: So naturally, when Parvell returned home during a period of
Speaker 1: relative stability, it was assumed that he had simply taken
Speaker 1: the opportunity to establish a more peaceful life for himself,
Speaker 1: with that strange look in his eye, just a grim
Speaker 1: reflection of the harrowing experiences he'd no doubt encountered on
Speaker 1: the battle field. The truth, however, was something a little different.
Speaker 1: Things started happily enough when Parvel mere and fell in
Speaker 1: love with the daughter of a neighbor. Not long after
Speaker 1: he returned home, with the pair marrying soon after. He
Speaker 1: even found steady work as a high duk himself. Before long, however,
Speaker 1: Pavel's secret past eventually caught up with him, having grown
Speaker 1: increasingly frustrated with her husband's frequent bouts of melancholia. His
Speaker 1: wife eventually confronted him about it, demanding that he tell
Speaker 1: her what it was that grieved him so, and so
Speaker 1: he did. It happened while he was stationed in a
Speaker 1: small town in the vilayette of Kosovo, though he was
Speaker 1: a little hazy on the details. At some point he
Speaker 1: apparently began receiving nightly visits in his quarters from something undead.
Speaker 1: Taking the advice of a local, Parvell sought out the
Speaker 1: body of the creature, which he found in a local cemetery,
Speaker 1: drove a stake through its chest and cut off its head. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: Parvell dipped his fingers into the wounds, wetted them with
Speaker 1: the creature's blood, and then smeared his face and body
Speaker 1: with it. Next, he grabbed a handful of dirt from
Speaker 1: the grave and threw it into his mouth, gagging and
Speaker 1: choking as he swallowed it down. Taking some flint, iron
Speaker 1: and tinder from his pocket, he set fire to the coffin,
Speaker 1: then stood back and watched the blood smeared across his face,
Speaker 1: glistening in the flames as the body burned to ash.
Speaker 1: Not long after telling this story to his shocked wife,
Speaker 1: Arnauld Parvel died, breaking his neck after falling from a
Speaker 1: hay wagon. It was around twenty days later in mid Major,
Speaker 1: as dusk was descending, that a villager out working in
Speaker 1: the fields saw a man ambling about in the distance
Speaker 1: who they recognized as Parvel. By the following week, many
Speaker 1: others believed they'd seen him two, including four villagers in total,
Speaker 1: who claimed that the long dead Parvel had even broken
Speaker 1: into their homes and strangled them as they slept. All
Speaker 1: four of those villagers were alleged to have then died
Speaker 1: themselves only a few days later. When news of Parvel's
Speaker 1: bizarre experiences in the villayette of Kosovo came to light,
Speaker 1: it was clear to all what had happened. The man
Speaker 1: had been tormented by a vampire, and now he was
Speaker 1: a vampire too. Without delay, a small task force was
Speaker 1: sent to Parvel's grave, whereby his coffin was promptly dug
Speaker 1: up and slid unceremoniously wrenched open inside. Much to everyone's shock,
Speaker 1: they found Parvell's body virtually unblemished by decomposition, despite having
Speaker 1: been in the earth for more than forty days. Perhaps
Speaker 1: even more disturbing were the rivulets of seemingly fresh blood
Speaker 1: that was flowing from his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.
Speaker 1: Then one of the men present pointed with horror to
Speaker 1: the deceased's hands. Although his old nails had dried and
Speaker 1: peeled off, a set of fresh nails appeared to be
Speaker 1: growing underneath. Terrified that Pavel might wake up any moment
Speaker 1: and attack them, a stake was swiftly hammered into his chest,
Speaker 1: which it is said, drew a blood curdling wail from
Speaker 1: the supposedly dead man's lips and caused rivers of blood
Speaker 1: to gush out from the wound. One of the men
Speaker 1: drew his sword from its hilt and cut off Pavel's head.
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Speaker 1: more than ever that they were in the midst of
Speaker 1: a vampire plague, the task Force then ordered the immediate
Speaker 1: exhumation of all four of Parvel's apparent victims, each of
Speaker 1: which was treated in the same manner as the former soldier,
Speaker 1: before all five bodies were thrown, along with their heads,
Speaker 1: onto a fire and burn to ash. As the captain
Speaker 1: telling this story, then went on to explain to Glassa
Speaker 1: they'd seen nothing like it in the four years since
Speaker 1: until the dead livestock began turning up in the fields,
Speaker 1: and then he knew the thing was back. Glassa thanked
Speaker 1: the captain for his help, but, not being one for superstition,
Speaker 1: took his words with a pinch of salt as he
Speaker 1: made his way to the home of the latest apparent
Speaker 1: victim of the illness. After examining the first body, Glassa
Speaker 1: found no sign of any obvious infection and concluded the
Speaker 1: individual had simply died of malnutrition. To make a more
Speaker 1: thorough assessment, however, he had little choice but to examine
Speaker 1: the other bodies. The first was Melitza, a woman said
Speaker 1: to be sixty years old, who died ninety days previously,
Speaker 1: having been suffering from the mystery illness for a good
Speaker 1: three months. Doctor Glassa stood over her coffin, holding a
Speaker 1: handkerchief to his nose. As the captain and his men
Speaker 1: wrenched off the lid. Things could be seen wriggling about
Speaker 1: at the bottom as a foul, putrid stench filled the air.
Speaker 1: But as the smell dissipated, the men's eyes widened in
Speaker 1: horror at the sight of Melitza's relatively well preserved body inside.
Speaker 1: What was strangest, however, was that she now appeared to
Speaker 1: be twice as big as she was before, as if
Speaker 1: she had somehow been gorging herself all that time. Filling
Speaker 1: doctor Glasser in on the details, the men recounted how
Speaker 1: Melitza had emigrated to the village about six years before
Speaker 1: from somewhere south in Ottoman controlled lands, and had been
Speaker 1: well liked by everyone. Then another of the men cut in,
Speaker 1: remembering a story he'd heard about the woman, how she
Speaker 1: was said to have once eaten the meat from two
Speaker 1: sheep back in her homeland, which she later discovered had
Speaker 1: been killed by a vampire. Doctor Glassa frowned under his handkerchief,
Speaker 1: then waved for the men to place the lid back
Speaker 1: on the coffin. The second body Glasser was taken to
Speaker 1: was that of a woman named Stana, who died two
Speaker 1: months before at the age of twenty, having given birth
Speaker 1: to a child who died almost immediately after. Stana then
Speaker 1: herself fell ill and died three days later. Examining her body,
Speaker 1: Glasser was surprised to find, just like in the tail
Speaker 1: of Arnold parvel that although most of her body was
Speaker 1: in keeping with that of a two month old corpse,
Speaker 1: her hands appeared to have recently grown nails and fresh skin. Then,
Speaker 1: after making a quick incision into her chest, the doctor
Speaker 1: gasped at the sight of fresh blood oozing out from
Speaker 1: her veins. Staner, he was told, had also emigrated to
Speaker 1: the village from somewhere in Ottoman controlled territory, where it
Speaker 1: was said that she once claimed to have smeared vampire
Speaker 1: blood on herself as a protection from local vampires. After
Speaker 1: examining the rest of the apparent victims, doctor Glasser couldn't
Speaker 1: escape the fact that something very peculiar was taking place,
Speaker 1: with each body either strangely undecomposed or exhibiting unusual conditions
Speaker 1: unlike anything he expected to find in long dead bodies.
Speaker 1: As fears grew that another vampire plague was upon them,
Speaker 1: many in the village demanded that the bodies be destroyed
Speaker 1: in the traditional manner, Realizing the power that such superstition
Speaker 1: could hold over a rural community. On December twelfth, seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty one, Glasser compiled his report accordingly, recommending that the
Speaker 1: apparent vampires be executed as soon as possible in order
Speaker 1: to grant permission for the executions. However, a second expert
Speaker 1: was dispatched to the town to verify Glass's findings. Doctor
Speaker 1: Flukinger arrived in early January seventeen thirty two, only to
Speaker 1: find that a further seven people had by then succumbed
Speaker 1: to the apparent vampire plague. After conducting his own autopsy
Speaker 1: on the bodies, a greatly disturbed fluking A wasted little
Speaker 1: time in signing off the previous doctor's unusual request. One
Speaker 1: of the more recently deceased was reported to be a
Speaker 1: twenty year old woman called Stanoika, As it was explained
Speaker 1: to Flukinger, have been perfectly healthy. A month before, the
Speaker 1: woman had woken up screaming in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: claiming she was being strangled by a man named Milo,
Speaker 1: who died nine weeks before. Over the next few days,
Speaker 1: the woman complained of a great pain in her chest
Speaker 1: that steadily intensified until three days after the apparent attack,
Speaker 1: when she died. As Flukinger wrote in his own report
Speaker 1: on the matter, Stanoika died after a three day illness
Speaker 1: and had been buried eighteen days previously. In the dissection,
Speaker 1: I found that she was in her countenance quite red
Speaker 1: and of a vivid color, and as was mentioned above,
Speaker 1: she had been throttled at midnight by Milo, the son
Speaker 1: of a high Duke. And there was also to be
Speaker 1: seen on the right side under the ear a bloodshot
Speaker 1: blue mark the length of a finger. As she was
Speaker 1: being taken out of the grave, a quantity of fresh
Speaker 1: blood flowed from her nose. With the dissection I found,
Speaker 1: as mentioned often already a regular, fragrant fresh bleeding, not
Speaker 1: only in the chest cavity, but also in the ventriculo cordice.
Speaker 1: The hypodermis of the entire body, along with the fresh
Speaker 1: nails of hands and feet, was as though completely fresh.
Speaker 1: His report ended with the following declaration. After the examination
Speaker 1: had taken place, the heads of the vampires were cut
Speaker 1: off by the local gypsies and burned along with the bodies,
Speaker 1: and then the ashes were thrown into the river. The
Speaker 1: undersigned a test herewith that all we have observed in
Speaker 1: the matter of vampires is in every way truthful, and
Speaker 1: has been undertaken, observed, and examined in our own presence.
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Speaker 1: and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been
Speaker 1: covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones,
Speaker 1: among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music,
Speaker 1: are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and
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Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com
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