Largest vampire epidemic

The largest vampire epidemic was the Great Vampire Epidemic (or "vampire controversy"), which preoccupied the people of the eastern and southern provinces of the Austrian Empire (present day Hungary, Romania and the northern Balkans) from 1725 to the 1750s. During this period there were around 30 documented cases of people being exhumed, and their bodies either staked, dismembered or burned (sometimes all three) in an effort to stop them from terrorizing the living. It has been estimated that the total number is probably several hundred.

Most cultures have some kind of folklore in which the unquiet dead can return to drain the life force of the living, as either a physical presence or else as a malign ghost-like entity. The term "vampire" comes from the Serbian version of this myth, the vàmpīr. These were animated corpses, said to kill the living either by drinking their blood or by lying on their chests while they slept, crushing the breath from their lungs.

During times of extreme hardship, these beliefs would rise to the surface, and communities would sometimes become convinced that their troubles had a supernatural origin, triggering a vampire panic (or vampire epidemic). Notable examples of this phenomenon occurred in Serbia in 1349, Hungary in the 1720s and New England, USA, in the mid-19th century.

Things that triggered panics were typically outbreaks of illness, particularly slow-acting wasting diseases such as tuberculosis or pellagra. The typical response to what were perceived as vampire attacks was to exhume the recently buried dead, looking for evidence of activity from their corpses. Any corpse that was seen to be insufficiently decomposed, bloated, or that had liquid blood around its face was declared to be a vampire and destroyed.

If the community felt this had not lifted the curse, they would continue to exhume corpses – often including those believed to be victims of the original vampire – and repeat the process until the apparent afflication ceased.

The Great Vampire Epidemic began with the case of Peter Blagojovitch, who was alleged to have returned to haunt his community as a vampire in 1725. It was brought to an end in the 1750s when Empress Maria-Theresia of Austria passed the "Imperial and royal law for uprooting supestition and for the rational judgement of magical and sorcery crimes". This introduced harsh punishments for those who interfered with the dead, and put a stop to court cases involving crimes such as witchcraft. Although this did not eradicate vampire beliefs in the region (the most recent example of a vampire-related exhumation and burning took place in Romania in 2004) it did greatly reduce their frequency.