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Arnold Paole

Also called: Arnont Paule, Arnaut Pavle, Arnold Paul
Folklore and mythUndead1500 to 1899

The Arnold Paole case turned a Serbian village belief into a European sensation. After two waves of deaths at Medveđa, Habsburg army surgeons led by Johann Flückinger opened the graves, catalogued the state of each corpse and signed an official report in Belgrade in January 1732. Because the witnesses were medical officers, the report was taken seriously, reprinted widely and argued over by scholars such as Augustin Calmet. It fixed the idea of undeath as something contagious that passes from corpse to victim.12

⚔️ Battle it
First recorded
1732
Austrian military commission report dated 26 January 1732
Origin
Serbian
Serbia
What causes it
Other
Paole said he had been plagued by a vampire in Ottoman territory; villagers believed its victims became vampires in turn.
How you become one
By being plagued by a vampire; those Paole tormented were treated as vampires in their turn.
Weak spots
  • a stake through the heart
  • beheading
  • burning the body and throwing the ashes in the river

When did it first appear?

Ancient world
Middle Ages
1500 to 1899
1900 to 1967
1968 to 1999
2000 to 2009
2010 to today
1732

Austrian military commission report dated 26 January 1732

field notes

What the sources say

1

A hajduk who settled at Medveđa and died around 1726 after falling from a hay wagon12

2

He claimed to have cured himself earlier by eating earth from a vampire's grave and smearing himself with its blood12

3

Four people accused him of tormenting them and died; at forty days his body was found fresh and groaned and bled when staked12

4

In the winter of 1731-32 a new wave of deaths brought two Austrian medical investigations12

5

The surgeons recorded twelve well-preserved bodies as being 'in the vampiric condition' and had them beheaded and burned12

Sources

  1. Arnold Paole - Wikipedia
  2. Vampire folklore by region - Wikipedia

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

Folklore from the same lands

Vampir (South Slavic)South Slavic (Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian), 1725Peter PlogojowitzSerbian, 1725

Same era: 1500 to 1899

JiangshiChinese, 1789Zombi (Haitian)Haitian (Vodou folklore), 1750StrigoiRomanian, 1714AbhartachIrish, 1870ChurelSouth Asian, 1880NachzehrerGerman, 1800