Peter Plogojowitz

Peter Plogojowitz is one of the best documented cases of a village destroying a suspected walking corpse. After a run of sudden deaths in Kisilova in 1725, the villagers forced the local Austrian administrator to witness the exhumation, staking and burning of the dead man. His report was printed in the Vienna paper Wienerisches Diarium and reprinted across Europe. Together with the Arnold Paole affair it launched the 18th-century vampire debate, and the 'signs' he described are now understood as normal decomposition.12