When the stake has been thrust with one drive through the Vampire’s heart his head should be cut off, and this is to be done with the sharp edge of a sexton’s spade, rather than with a sword. Ralston[119] tells us that to transfix the Vampire with a pile is not always considered effectual. “A strigon (or Istrian vampire) who was transfixed with a sharp thorn cudgel near Laibach in 1672, pulled it out of his body and flung it back contemptuously”.[120] The only certain methods of destroying a Vampire appear to be either to consume him by fire, or to chop off his head with a grave-digger’s shovel. The Wends say that if a Vampire is hit over the back of the head with an implement of that kind, he will squeal like a pig.” It may be noted that the heads of murderers or warlocks were often struck off and destroyed, or else set between the legs or directly underneath the body.[121]
To burn the body of the Vampire is generally acknowledged to be by far the supremely efficacious method of ridding a district of this demoniacal pest, and it is the common practice all over the world. The bodies of all those whom he may have infected with the vampirish poison by sucking their blood are also for security sake cremated. Leone Allacci writes: “Quare ciues, cum uident homines, nulla grassante infirmitate, in tanta copia emori; suspicati quod est, sepulchra, in quibus recens defunctus sepultus est, aperiunt; aliquando statim, aliquando etiam tardius, cadauer nondum corruptum, inflatumque comperiunt; quod e sepulchro extractum, precibusque effusis a sacerdotibus, in rogum ardentem coniiciunt; et nondum completa supplicatione, cadaueris iuncturae sensim dissoluuntur, et reliqua exusta in cineres conuertuntur.”[122] Any animals which may come forth from the fire—worms, snakes, lice, beetles, birds of horrible and deformed shape—must be driven back into the flames for it may be the Vampire embodied in one of these, seeking to escape so that he can renew his foul parasitism of death. The ashes of the pyre should be scattered to the winds, or cast into a river swiftly flowing to the sea.
Sometimes the body was hacked to pieces before it was cast into the fire; very often the heart was torn from the breast and boiled to shreds in oil or vinegar. Quantities of boiling water or boiling oil were also poured into the grave. Mr. Abbott in his Macedonian Folklore (1903) tells us of a
