#stana

Stana (18th c.) - Haglike vampire case reported in the 1730s in the Serbian village of Medvegia (Meduegna), as a result of the Arnod Paole vampire case. According to the records of investigating medical officers, a woman named Stana (also recorded as Stanacka or Stanicka) "lay down to sleep fifteen days ago, fresh and healthy, but at midnight started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, fearful and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a Haiduk by the name of Milloe (Milloc or Milove), who had died nine weeks earlier, whereupon she had experienced a great pain in the chest and became worse by the hour, until finally she died on the third day."

In Montague Summers’s account of the case, as given in The Vampire in Europe, Stana confessed on her deathbed that she had "anointed herself in the blood of a vampire to liberate herself from his persecutions." Her baby died, too.

Summers wrote that when vampire hunters dug up the woman's body, they found it untouched by decomposition.

When it was opened the chest was found to be full of fresh blood, the viscera had all the appearance of sound health. The skin and nails of both hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath was a clean new skin and nails.

The body of her baby also was exhumed, but had been so savaged by wolves that too little was left of it to determine if vampirism was present. The body of Milloe was dug up after the 16-year-old boy had lain in the grave for 90 days. Said Summers, "It was rosy and flabber, wholly in the Vampire condition."

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