Halloween History: The ‘Real’ Serbian Vampires Who Inspired Folklore
Petar Blagojević and Sava Savanović captured the imagination of their countrymen and others
Long before Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, there were accounts of people who died — or maybe didn’t — and came back to prey on the living. Whether the tales were true or not, they terrified the public and fed into the tales and legends we know today. Let’s look at a few, both based in Serbia:
Peasant Petar Blagojević, (and purported vampire), died 1725
The reason we still know about Petar Blagojević — who supposedly came back from the grave to kill nine people in his village before the populace staked his corpse — is because the account is preserved in a letter from Imperial Provisor Ernst Frombald, an official with the Austrian government who was there for the staking and took statements from villagers.
Frombald said in the letter that ten weeks ago Petar had passed away and was buried. However, a number of villagers who were taken with some kind of illness reported the following before they expired:
Peter Plogojoviz came to them in his sleep [and] lay down on them and choked that they would now have to give up the ghost.
