The arrest of a Pennsylvania man on charges of grave robbing this week has led to hundreds of news outlets reporting the horrific details of his collection of hundred of bones and several skulls. Much like Ed Gein before him, Jonathan Christ Gerlach (yes, that’s his middle name) raided, at the very least, Mount Moriah Cemetery on the border of southwest Philadelphia — for purposes, at this time, unknown. Like Gein, was Gerlach a necrophiliac? Was he on his way to becoming a serial killer? Or was he, as some have suggested (based upon his being tagged in Facebook group about the sale of human remains) more interested in the money that can be had from “the bone trade” as it is sometimes called (oh, and he stole jewelry, too).
Are these grave robbers at the tomb of Ameneminet?
The history of grave robbing is fascinating, albeit gruesome, stretching back into antiquity. Ancient Egyptians were known to rob the tombs of the wealthy. In fact, most tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings were robbed within one hundred years of their sealing. But theft was not the only motivation for those who disturbed graves. In China, for example, in 506 BC, military general Wu Zixu dug up the corpse of King Ping of Chu to abuse and whip his corpse. Desecration, and the fear and revulsion that came with it, gave the abuser a sense of power over the living AND the dead.
The first known case of what is otherwise called “body snatching” was committed in 1319 by four medical students in Bologna, Italy. For centuries following — most notably the nineteenth century with the infamous duo of Burke and Hare active in the 1820s — grave robbers illegally sold human remains to medical schools primarily for purposes of teaching anatomy. Many doctors believed it to be a necessary evil. These body snatchers came to be known as “ressurectionists,” and many were paid handsomely for their ability to supply cadavers (with no questions asked as to how they were obtained). They would send spies to funerals to scout out the freshest bodies that would later be easily removed from the loose, newly disturbed ground. Some, like Burke and Hare, would even kill to get bodies, making the job all that much easier.
Mortsafes at a church yard in Logierait, south of Pitlochry, Perthshire, Scotland. Photo by Judy Wilson. Taken from Wikipedia.
Iron coffins, grave alarms, and mortsafes (the iron cage around a grave) became common as a way to combat body snatchers. In the UK, the problem was so prevalent that the government issued the Anatomy Act in 1832, making grave robbing a criminal offense. Of course, the practice didn’t stop. And to this day, there’s a black market for bones, skulls, scalps, skin, teeth — you name it. Not for medical schools, but for private collections… even sexual gratification. Morbid obsession. Anti-social urges.
At “oddities” flea markets, conventions and the like, one can actually find and buy a human skull. They are often accompanied by a certification of some kind stating that the skull was obtained by legal means (e.g., a museum auction for deaccessioned pieces). But these are relatively few and far between, whereas availability on the black market / dark web / and even — as was apparently the case with Gerlach — social media groups, is prevalent.
“Resurrectionists” stealing dead bodies from a graveyard. 1887 illustration by British artist Hablot Knight Browne.
Psychologists say the motivations for grave robbing vary. But at the root is a need for power and control. Thieves feel empowerment when they take from the dead, justifying their crimes as having no real victim, or seeing the theft as revenge for perceived injustice (“eat the rich”). Sociopaths find an outlet for anti-social behavior, whether its extreme vandalism, an inability to relate to the living, or an obsession with the dead and all things related to death. And psychopaths? They satisfy unspeakable urges. Some, like Ed Gein, go on to murder.
What were Gerlach’s motivations? The truth will come out in time. The details will be horrific. We will be further shocked by this man’s behavior. Perhaps what is most disturbing is that the reasons behind crimes like Gerlach’s are impossible to fully understand. But it gave him an identity in a subculture that exists at the fringes of polite society.
And that this subculture even exists is perhaps the most disturbing revelation of them all.
Scholars pretty much agree that the practice of driving a wooden stake through a suspected vampire’s heart finds its origins in Eastern Europe many hundreds of years ago. But nailing down a date when this belief first emerged is difficult. For millennia, people worldwide have believed in the power of wood to rid themselves of evil. The Chinese have tao, or peach wood, to ward off evil spirits. Native Americans used cedar wood to thwart theirs. And in many parts of Europe, it was believed that white thorn or ash was the best wood to combat evil. But the act of taking a piece of wood, sharpening it to a point, and driving it through (un)dead bodies? To the English-speaking world, word of such horrors came to Britain’s shores by way of a travel log: “The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, being the grand Tour of Germany, in the Year 1734” — published in 1745 in The Harleain Miscellany.*
Having heard tales of vampires from the men’s German landlord — who in turn was paraphrasing Baron Valvasor (the first to perhaps ever document a case of a vampirism (one Jure Grando from Istria) in 1689 — the author of the travel log writes of bodies being exhumed from their graves:
Illustration by Albert Decaris from Le Vampire. Extrait des mémoires du chevalier de Villevert, illustré de burins originaux par Albert Decaris. 1944.
Their Countenances are fresh and ruddy; and their Nails, as well as Hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer dead than many other Bodies, which are perfectly putrified, not the least Mark of Corruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their Death, become Vampyres, so that, to prevent so spreading an Evil, it is found requisite to drive a Stake through the dead Body, from whence, on this Occasion, the Blood flows as if the Person was alive.
There were several reason why staking was effective. It pinned the vampire to the earth so that it could not rise. It released the excess of blood from the bloated creature, and, if made of wood (sometimes the stake was made of iron), the organic material carries the aforementioned protections against evil.**
THE CASE OF ARNOLD PAOLE
The next significant and detailed account of a real person accused of vampirism was the case of Arnold Paole, a Serbian solider who died in 1725 (some sources say 1726) and soon was suspected of four attacks on villagers in the town of Meduegna in which he was buried. Upon their deaths, bodies were exhumed and found to be vampires. Villagers recalled Paole saying he had been plagued by a vampire in Gossowa (possibly modern-day Kosovo), and that he had killed the creature. But apparently not before being cursed by the vampire himself.
A 1749 copy of Calmet’s influential Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits (photo credit: abebooks.co.uk)
While not mentioned directly in 1728’s De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis by Michael Ranft about vampires in Germany, the Paole story is traceable to the 1732’s Dissertationem De Hominibus Post Mortem Sanguisugis, Vulgo Sic Dictis Vampyren. It is pretty much certain, however, that it’s popularity in spreading across Western Europe is attributable to Dom Augustin Calmet, a Benedictine monk who recounted the tale in his influential Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, first published in 1746. There, Arnold Paole is Arnold Paul, but the story is pretty much the same. And it ends with Paole being staked.
The book went through multiple editions, and was readily available (in French) in England soon after The Harleain Miscellany travel log was published. All different publications. But all pretty much conclude that the vampire of Eastern Europe migrated to Austria and Germany in the mid eighteenth century and became a big hit among a public fascinated with the tales. No wonder then that in 1748, a German by the name of Heinrich Ossenfelder gave Western civilization its first poem to mention a vampire, the appropriately titled “Der Vampir.” Seems the vampire had crossed over from Eastern Europe, not only to Austria, but also Western literature.
THE VOURDALAK, VARNEY, AND CARMILLA
The intersection of history and literature is where discussions of vampires seemed to dwell for the next twenty to thirty years. Notable thinkers like Rousseau, in a letter to Christophe de Beaumont in 1762, asserted that he wholeheartedly believed in vampires. Others, like Voltaire, did not — even mocking such belief. But any scientific discussion that would quell superstitions from the continent was no match for the writers of the Romantic period who gave new life to the vampire.
Coleridge’s Bride of Corinth. Polidori’s Ruthven. Neither of these early English Romantic vampires are staked. But in 1839, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, in the Gothic novella Family of the Vourdalak, is among the first (if not THE first) to work the folklore directly into a literary work.
Family of the Vourdalak introduces old man Gorcha, and his warning to his family that if he does not come back from fighting the Turks after ten days, he is dead. If he comes after that ten days, he’s one of the undead, and they must destroy him. He tells his family “if this happens, I command you to forget that I was your father, no matter what I say or do, and to impale my heart with an aspen stake, because I will be a cursed Vourdalak returning to suck your blood.”
And what are these creatures? Gorcha explains:
“… vourdalaks, as the Slavic peoples call vampires, are believed in those countries to be dead bodies that come out of their graves to suck the blood of the living… Father Augustin Calmet, in his curious book on ghosts and apparitions, cites many frightening examples. Several times, the Emperors of Germany have appointed commissions to investigate outbreaks of vampirism. The commissioners tell of exhuming bodies engorged with blood, which they stake in the heart and then burn in the village squares. The magistrates who were present at these executions attest — with oaths and signed statements — that they heard the dead howl at the moment that the stake was plunged into their hearts.” (translated from the original French)
While Tolstoy’s vampire may be the first in western literature to be said to die by impaling it, English writers would soon take up the stake a few years after in James Malcolm Rhymer’s and Thomas Peckett Prest’s penny dreadful, Varney The Vampire.
Vampires can definitely be destroyed by stakes in the penny dreadful that is VARNEY THE VAMPIRE (1845-47)
Published in serialized format from 1845 to 1847, Varney The Vampire is the first vampire tale in English literature to makes clear that stakes kill the undead (see especially the 48th chapter). It is also the first work to introduce the trope of a vampire having fangs. And it was all but forgotten as an essential piece of the puzzle that is vampires in literature. Looked down upon as it was the people’s fiction of the penny dreadfuls. Not artful like the vampire to come thirty years later from the penn of a talented Irish writer.
Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, first widely made available in 1872 (included in the author’s In a Glass Darkly) is considered among the first truly great vampire stories in English literature. Predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 25 years, Carmilla is not only a cornerstone of vampire literature, but also an early example of lesbianism in the genre.
It is a tale of the close relationship between Laura, the female protagonist, and Carmilla, a mysterious girl invited to live under the same roof with Laura, prone to mood swings and melancholy. When it is revealed that Carmilla is, in fact, a 17th century Countess named Mircalla Karnstein — and a vampire — it is only a matter of time before the men in Laura’s life track down the vampire, stake it, cut off its head, burn the body, and scatter the ashes in a river.
STAKES AND STOKER
Stoker would pick up the practice in Dracula (1897) when Lucy Westenra is staked by her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood. As for Dracula himself? Dispatched with a kukri knife to the throat and a Bowie knife to the chest. Arguably, the more horrendous and gory a death is Lucy’s, and not the vampire who made her.
From Dr. Seward’s Diary (Chapter XVI) comes the account of Lucy’s end:
“The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it.”
By the dawn of the twentieth century, the public at large was becoming well aware of this pointy wooden means of destroying the undead. Though Stoker’s novel sold only moderately well upon release, sales of it skyrocketed when Dracula was adapted for Broadway in the 1920s. From there, it is only a short jump to 1931’s DRACULA, Universal studios’ adaptation. There, the Count is staked off-screen with an unceremonious whack of a hammer and moan from Lugosi.
MAKE NO MISTAKE
Actor Michael Gough stakes vampire woman Valerie Gaunt in Hammer’s DRACULA (a.k.a. HORROR OF DRACULA) from 1958.
In the late 1950s, Hammer Studios would not only bring out the stake to destroy the “vampire woman” in HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), but also, in the process, introduce a gush of bright red blood that other filmmakers would go on to repeat again and again. The rise of the hammer. The thrust of the stake. It was all very sexual. Penetration. Release, But let’s leave that for the literary scholars and psychoanalysts to discuss.
Suffice to say that by the 1960s, stakes and vampires went together like flyswatters and flies. It’s the first thing vampire hunters reach for — next to, maybe, the holy water or crucifix. No wonder it ended up in many a vampire hunting kit (which started “turning up” (read as: were made)) in the twentieth century. But the authenticity of these kits is always questioned. Still cool as hell.
A 20th century vampire hunting kit that belonged to Montague Summers, author of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. From the Vampa Museum collection.
Make no mistake, however: people like the influential and eccentric Montague Summers (1880-1948) — whose own vampire hunting kit is pictured here in this post — truly believed in vampires. And as much as enlightened twentieth and twenty-first century men and women relegate vampires solely to the world of fiction, there are still those who turn to the stake to destroy suspected vampires. As recently as March of 2024, an Oregon man staked his mother, believing her to be a bloodsucker.
It’s bloody business to impale a person. Just ask Mel Brooks. A brilliant parody of Francis Ford Coppolla’s DRACULA (1992), Mel Brooks’ DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT (1995) has perhaps the bloodiest — and definitely the funniest — destruction of a vampire ever seen on screen. Brooks, along with writers Rudy De Luca and Steve Haberman,*** take staking to a whole new level when Jonathan Harker takes a literal bloodbath dispatching the undead Lucy. It’s a scene embedded below.
Once you watch it — and now, perhaps, having read this blog post — you will never think of staking a vampire in quite the same way again.
*Click here to read a more detailed excerpt from The Travels of Three English Gentlemen.
**Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burial and Death is an excellent resource for those who wish to dig further into the nature of corpses and why many who were disinterred were thought to be vampires.
***In addition screenwriting, Steve Haberman is a film historian. Check out his many great Blu-ray and DVD feature commentaries on many horror films, including 1931’s DRACULA and its recent 4K re-release.
Finally, the photo that server as header for this post is from 1968’s DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. Not one of best of Hammer’s Dracula films, but still a solid enough entry (with interesting color filters) — except for the silly part where Dracula actually removes a stake from his heart. Because the right prayer wasn’t said. Yeesh, so many rules. Give me a good beheading any day.
