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10th 1610 a band of Hungarian soldiers stormed the estate and discovered over 50 corpses drained of their blood scattered nonchalantly all over the property and inside the estate. Elizabeth herself had kept a book recording the names of over 650 victims in the span of about 15 years. Her servants were tried and convicted for their part in the crimes. The Emperor of Hungary was so appalled by Elizabeth Bathory's actions that he refused her a trial, and instead found her guilty under his own power. Wanting to punish her beyond anything under Hungarian law, he had her bricked up inside of her own estate, with only a small opening which guards would pass small amounts of food to her through. After four years of confinement Elizabeth Bathory died. Although it is popular among enthusiasts to cite Elizabeth Bathory as a genuine vampire, what she is in fact is one of the first historically documented serial killers. In modern days there have been many serial killers who have drank blood from and even eaten their victims and there has been no movement to have them declared vampires.
The final case is of famous historical "Vampires" is the case of Arnold Poale. Poale was a soldier from Serbia; in 1727 he was stationed in Greece. He was known for creating wild unsubstantial stories to frighten villagers and their children. One such story was that he had been attacked by a vampire while on night watch duty. Shortly thereafter Poale died in an accident when he fell from a hay wagon and cracked his skull. The superstitious townspeople remembered his story and soon rumors began that people had seen him lurking the villages at night. A group of townspeople dug up the man's grave in a local cemetery one month after he had been buried. They found that he had not decomposed at all and that his hair and fingernails appeared to be growing. They hammered a steak through his heart which poured blood. They took this as proof that the man had indeed been a vampire. Five years later an infectious illness killed seventeen villagers, since medicine at the time could not explain it they chalked it up to vampires, dug them up found them in the same condition that Poale's corpse had been, and took this to verify that they too were vampires. The seventeen corpses were promptly staked and burned. Although "believers" like to site this case as proof of vampires, modern science has a more rational explanation. In the 1700's fresh bodies were very rarely exhumed, and the medical community had
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by Dorothy Baum
The Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary defines vampire as such:
vam-pire n. 1. In folklore, a corpse that rises from it's grave at
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