The Shoemaker of Silesia

Even before Peter Plogojowitz's death there were detailed accounts of
exhumations, and not just from Slavic territory. And if you look at just
the exhumation, rather than the folklore associated with the revenant,
many of these accounts are very much like the Slavic ones: vampire and
Nachzehrer (from nach [after] and zehren [consume, prey upon]: a northern
German variety of revenant) seem to be identical in the grave.
We see this in the following account. This particular revenant is referred
to in the text simply as a "ghost" {Gespenst) and is found in Gràsse's
collection of Prussian folklore. '
The Shoemaker of Breslau
In the year 1591, on the twentieth of September, a Friday, early in the morning
in the garden behind his house, a well-to-do shoemaker in the city of
Breslau cut his throat—for what reason, no one knew. He had cut the veins
of his throat with his knife, and was obliged to die from the wound. When
his wife had seen this and told her sisters, they were all most distraught about
this sudden misfortune, but sought to conceal it however they could, considering
it a great disgrace. She, therefore, told everyone who asked her about
her husband's death, that a stroke had taken him. She also had the doors
locked, so that no one could see what had happened. But when her neighbors
and acquaintances came to speak with her and to console her, the sisters of
the widow did not allow it and said that she recognized their love and wellmeaning
very well, but the dead man had no need of their services and the
widow, in her first distress, did not want to accept visitors. They should,
therefore, if they liked, come some time later. Then they sent to the church
fathers and ordered the burial, the grave site, and the ringing of the bells,
which they achieved without hindrance, since the dead man had been considered
a rich man. But so that everything would remain secret and no one
would learn anything about the murder [that is, suicide], they hired an old
woman who had to wash the corpse, which had lost its blood, and tie up the
wound so tightly that one could not see anything of it. When she had done
that, together they laid him into the coffin. The widow herself, who was recovering
from childbirth—she had been lying in for just ten days—had the
priest come, so that he could comfort her in this grievous instance. And he
did come and comfort the widow, but when he wanted to leave, the sisters of
the widow suggested—and he knew nothing of the matter—that he should at
least look at the body once. This he did, without any thought that there was
anything behind this. For the body was so well wrapped up on all sides with
linen, that even someone who was paying close attention would not have noticed
anything, and they had placed it so high that the folded and twisted
wraps could not arouse suspicion. The third day thereafter—it was on a Sunday—
he was buried with great ceremony, in the manner of those who are
pious and distinguished. And such a send-off and funeral speech were held, as
though he had led a holy and guilt-free life and had been a splendid
Christian.
If the relatives of the deceased believed that the murder would remain concealed,
since they had arranged things so carefully, nonetheless a rumor came
about among the people, to the effect that the man had killed himself and had
not been killed by a stroke. At first people did not want to believe it, but nonetheless
the rumor got stronger and stronger, so that the council saw itself obliged
precisely to question those who had been with the deceased, and to demand that
they admit, in accordance with the truth, what they had seen or heard and what
each of them was aware of. Perhaps because all these people tried to talk their
way out of it, and did not stay with one answer, they could soon see that not
everything was right. Finally they conceded that he had fallen and had hit a
sharp rock and had injured himself in this way. They said also that an awl had
been found in his clothing, but they had removed it so that it could never again
injure anyone else. The council, since the evidence continued to increase, now
considered what was to be done. This too did not remain quiet, and some friends
of the widow persuaded her under no circumstances to allow the body of her
husband to be dug out or put at a dishonorable location or viewed as a sorcerer
or suicide, if they could not come up with stronger proofs. In the meantime a
ghost appeared now and again, in just such a form as the shoemaker had in his
lifetime, and during the day as well as at night. It scared many people through
its very form, awakened others with noises, oppressed others, and others it vexed
1 2 I THE SHOEMAKER OF SILESIA
in other ways, so that early in the morning one heard talk everywhere about the
ghost. But the more the ghost appeared, the less the relatives wanted to celebrate.
They went to the president of the court and said that too much credence was
being placed in the people's unfounded rumors, the honorable man was being
abused in his grave, and they found themselves obliged to take the matter to the
Kaiser. But now that the matter actually brought about a prohibition, the state
of haunting became even worse. For the ghost was there right after sundown,
and since no one was free of it, everyone looked around constantly for it. The
ones most bothered were those who wanted to rest after heavy work; often it
came to their bed, often it actually lay down in it and was like to smother the
people. Indeed, it squeezed them so hard that—not without astonishment—
people could see the marks left by its fingers, so that one could easily judge the
so-called stroke [that the shoemaker was alleged to have died from]. In this manner
the people, who were fearful in any case, became yet more fearful, so that they
did not remain longer in their houses, but sought for more secure places. Most
of them, not secure in their bedchamber, stayed in the rooms, after bringing
many others in, so that their fear was dispersed by the crowd. Nonetheless,
although they all waked with burning lights, the ghost came anyway. Often
everyone saw it, but often just a few, of whom it always harassed some.
As the clamor grew worse from day to day, with the whole city confirming
the being, the council decided to do something so that the ghost would stay
away. The corpse had lain in the grave now into the eighth month, from September
22, 1591, to April 18, 1592, when the grave was opened, by high command.
Present were the entire council, the innkeepers, and other functionaries.
In the opened grave they found the body complete and undamaged by decay,
but blown up like a drum, except that nothing was changed and the limbs all
still hung together. They were—which was remarkable—not stiffened, like those
of other dead people, but one could move them easily. On his feet the skin had
peeled away, and another had grown, much purer and stronger than the first,
and as almost all sorcerers are marked in an out-of-the-way place, so that one
does not notice it easily, so did he have on his big toe a mole like a rose. No
one knew the meaning of this. There was also no stench to be noticed, except
that the cloths in which he was wrapped had a repulsive smell. The wound in
his throat gaped open and was reddish and not changed in the slightest. The
body was guarded day and night on its bier, from the fourth to the twentyfourth
of April, except that in the day he was put out in the air, whereas in the
evening he was put in a house there. Everyone could see him up close, and every
day many citizens, and many people from the neighboring areas, went there.
Nonetheless the exhumation did not help: the ghost, which they had hoped to
banish by this means, caused still more unrest. The corpse was laid under the
gallows, but this didn't help either, for the ghost then raged so cruelly that one
cannot describe it.
But now, as the ghost was raging so terribly and thereby causing great inconvenience
to many citizens as well as his good friends, the widow went to the
council and said that she would admit everything, they could deal with her
former husband with all strictness. But in the short time from April 24 to May
7, the body had grown much fuller of flesh, which everyone could see who
remembered how it had looked before. Whereupon, on the seventh, the council
had the hangman take the corpse out of the other grave. Then its head was cut
off, its hands and feet dismembered, after which the back was cut open and the
heart taken out, which looked as good as that of a freshly slaughtered calf.
Everything together was burned on a pyre built up of seven klafters* of wood
and of many pitch rings. But so that no one would gather the ashes or the bones
and keep them for sorcery, as tends to happen otherwise, the guards were not
allowed to let anyone near. Early in the morning, when the stack of wood had
burned up, the ashes, in a sack, were thrown into the flowing water, whereupon,
through God's help, the ghost stayed away and was never seen again.
Much in this story, clearly, is implausible, but, as we shall see later,
many details—notably in the description of the dead body—are accurately
depicted, leaving us with no choice but to conclude that we are dealing
here with an account based on real events, however badly those events
have been misinterpreted. The bloated body, for example, and the "new
skin" (a phenomenon known to pathologists as "skin slippage") are normal
events associated with decomposition and provide convincing proof that
an exhumation took place. In general we will find that such accounts are
accurate as to their data, inaccurate as to their interpretations. And this
particular account conveys much that is typical:
1. The revenant dies as a suicide, murder victim, drowning victim—
indeed, in almost any way that causes him to end his days somewhat
earlier than expected: he "dies before his time." We do not know, of
course, how this particular revenant died—he may have been murdered—
but it is clear that his death was out of the ordinary and was therefore
viewed as a possible source of disturbance within his community.
2. Such bodies are dealt with differently from "honorable" ones—
buried in a different place, often with a very different set of funerary
rites—and the resulting disgrace to the survivors of the deceased is such
that they typically go to great lengths to prevent such treatment of the
body. Klapper gives an account, for example, from Upper Silesia, of a
woman who demanded (successfully) that her mother's body be exhumed
so that it could be turned right-side-up and various other apotropaic
measures could be undone.2
3. The body, when exhumed, looks rather different than expected (it
is bloated, does not show rigor mortis, has a mole on the big toe, does
not have a sufficiently rank odor).
*An old measure: one Klafter was about three cubic meters of wood.
4. The body is "killed" in a variety of ways, one after another—
dismembered, excoriated, and cremated, then thrown into a river: nothing
is left to chance. An accelerant (pitch) is used to encourage the fire: such
bodies burn only reluctantly.
5. The account ends, typically, when the ghost is finally laid. The ghost,
incidentally, appears to be independent of the corpse in one sense—
nothing is said of the corpse leaving the grave—yet dependent on it in
another, for to kill the ghost, you only need to kill the body in the right
way. I stress "in the right way" because sometimes several methods must
be tried and the right one selected, finally, by trial and error. In this
instance, apparently, the methods were used all at once, to dispense with
the nuisance of waiting to see which one worked.
Even this account, however, as detailed as it is, does not present us
with such a dramatic juxtaposition of physiological anomalies and compelling
testimony as our next account, Visum et Repertum, which was
written by a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of
a graveyard full of Serbian vampires.