That species of Vampirism known as Necrophagy or Necrophagism, which is Cannibalism, is very often connected with the religious rites of savage people and also finds a place in the sabbat of the witches. Sir Spenser St. John, in his description of Haiti, gives curious details of the Voodoo cult when cannibalism mingles with the crudest debauchery. Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia the cannibals (Hamatsas) are the most powerful of all the Secret Societies. They tear corpses asunder and devour them, bite pieces out of living people, and formerly they ate slaves who had been killed for their banquet.[108] The Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands practise a very similar religion of necrophagy.[109] Among the ancient Mexicans the body of the youth whom they sacrificed in the character of the god Tetzcatlipoca was chopped up into small pieces and distributed amongst the priests and nobles as a sacred food.[110] In Australia the Bibinga tribe cut up the bodies of the dead and eat them in order to secure the reincarnation of the deceased. The same ceremony was observed by the Arunta.[111] Casper, Vierteljahrschrift, viii (p. 163) mentions the case of an idiot who killed and ate a baby in order to impart to himself the vitality of the child. It should be remarked that necrophagy enters very largely into the passions of the werewolf, and there are innumerable examples of lycanthropists who have devoured human flesh, and slain men to feed upon their bodies. Boguet recounts that in the year 1538 four persons charged with sorcery, Jacques Bocquet, Claude Jamprost, Clauda Jamguillaume and Thievenne Paget, confessed that they had transformed themselves into wolves and in this shape had killed and eaten several children. Françoise Secretain, Pierre Gandillon and George Gandillon also confessed that they had assumed the form of wolves and caught several children whom they had stripped naked and then devoured. The children’s clothes were found without rent or tear in the fields, “tellement qu’il sembloit bien que ce fust vne personne, qui les leur eut deuestus.”[112]
A remarkable instance of necrophagy which caused a great noise in the eighteenth century is said to have given de Sade a model for Minski, “l’ermite des Appenins,” in Juliette, iii (p. 313). The horrible abode of this Muscovite giant is amply described. The tables and chairs are made of human bones,
