Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/134

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THE MYSTERY OF DEATH
131

was found. The blood in the cavities of the heart was not coagulated but liquid. All the internal organs were sound. The old skin and nails fell off and exposed fresh ones.

2. A woman named Miliza, aged sixty. She had been buried ninety odd days before. Much liquid blood was found in her breast. The viscera and other organs were in the same condition as the last. But what struck the heyduks standing by, and who had known her for many years, was that in life she had been a thin woman, whereas now she was plump, and under the dissecting knife revealed a strange amount of fat. She had protested in her last illness that she was the victim of a vampire.

3. An eight-days’-old child which had been ninety days in the earth. This also in the so-called vampire condition.

4. The son of a heyduk named Milloe, sixteen years old. The body had been interred nine weeks before. It was quite sound and in the vampire condition.

5. Joachim, also a heyduk’s son, aged seventeen years, had lain in the earth eight weeks and four days. His body was in the vampire state.

6. A woman named Ruscha had been buried six weeks previously, and her child