Shoemaker of Breslau
The Shoemaker of Breslau is one of the fullest early modern accounts of a town proceeding against a walking dead man. After his concealed suicide in 1591, residents of Breslau, now Wrocław, complained for months of a suffocating night visitor, and the magistrates twice had the body dug up. Only complete destruction, with the head and limbs removed and the heart burned, was held to have ended it. The case reached English readers through the philosopher Henry More, who used it as evidence for the reality of spirits.1
- reburial under the gallows (failed)
- decapitation and dismemberment
- tearing out and burning the heart, with the ashes thrown in the Oder
When did it first appear?
1591Died 20 September 1591; the case was retold in Henry More's An Antidote against Atheism (1653)
What the sources say
The town council investigated the rumours and the widow confessed to the cover-up1
His apparition pressed on sleepers and left bruises and finger marks1
Exhumed on 18 April 1592 after about eight months, the body was intact, with supple joints and the throat wound still open1
The haunting went on after he was moved to unhallowed ground1
At the second exhumation the corpse was swollen; the heart was found fresh1
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.
Nachzehrer
Strzyga
Upiór
Pień padlocked burial
Vjesci
Jiangshi
Zombi (Haitian)
Strigoi
Vampir (South Slavic)
Abhartach
Arnold Paole