Revenant of Anantis

The Anantis case is the most violent of William of Newburgh's four revenant reports. A jealous husband dies without confession, walks at night and spreads a sickness that depopulates the town. Two young men exhume the bloated body, wound it, tear out the heart and burn it on a pyre, after which the pestilence stops. With its blood-filled corpse and heart-burning, it reads like a vampire case written five hundred years before the word reached English; one scholar identifies Anantis with Annan in Dumfriesshire.123