Western Europe first became widely aquainted with the vampire in the early eighteenth century when the Ottoman Empire ceded many areas including Wallachia and Serbia to the Austrian Empire. Although folk practices to prevent vampirism had probably been widespread before then, the new Austrian government were sufficiently bewildered and appalled by the locals' bizarre practices to comment upon them.
The story of Peter Plogojowitz appeared in English for the first of many times in 1729. The unfortunate man was a farmer who lived in village of Kisolova in what was then Austrian Serbia (modern Hungary). In 1728, the hale and hearty sixty-two year old died suddenly, but unfortunately, that was not the last that the village saw of him. Three days after his death, he appeared at midnight at his door and asked his son for food. The next night passed without incident, but the following night the dead man returned and asked for more. The younger Plogojowitz then refused to serve his father, at which the ambulent corpse cast him a threatening look and disappeared. The next day, the younger Plogojowitz had died. Within a week, nine people in the village had joined him.
Ultimately, an Imperial Provisor was summoned to make a report. He stated that all nine villagers had died after "a 24 hour illness", and that they believed that Plogojowitz the vampire was responsible. Before their deaths, the nine victims had reportedly said that Plogojowitz had "lain himself on them, and throttled them, so that they would have to give up the ghost". Although the Provisor had wanted to seek advice from his superiors in Belgrade, the terrified villagers refused to wait for such legal niceties and speedily exhumed the remains of Peter Plogojowitz.
The Provisor was evidently surprised at what he saw; despite the time that Plogojowitz had spent in the ground, the corpse did not emit the foul odour that he expected it to, and the body was astonishingly intact except for a little decay around the nose. The old skin was whitish and had peeled away to reveal a new one growing underneath. The same thing had happened to the nails. Plogojowitz's hair and beard had grown, and there was fresh blood at his mouth. Accordingly, a sharpened stake was placed at his heart and driven through his body. Fresh blood poured from his nose and mouth, and the official report made reference to other "wild signs", a euphemism for an erection. The body was then burned to ashes. The other corpses from the outbreak were checked, but since there were no signs of vampirism, their graves were simply treated with precautionary garlic and white thorn.
Not far from the vampire Plogojowitz, and a year before him, a man named Arnod Paole had died when he had fallen from a hay wagon and broken his neck. Paole had claimed to have eaten the earth from the grave of a vampire to try and rid himself of it, but without success, for Paole rose after death and started on his fellow villagers.
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