10 Terrifying Vampire Stories For Halloween
7. The Tale Of Arnold Paole
Arnold Paole was a farmer who lived during the early 1700s in Medvegia. During his younger years, Arnold was called away to join the army in Serbia and help capture lands from the Ottoman Empire, an experience that would change his life forever.
Years later, he would tell his wife that he had encountered a vampire while in Serbia. His story went that the Vampire had attacked and injured him before fleeing into the night. A wounded Arnold then tracked the creature to its tomb, slaying it there. Arnold also stated that he had bathed in the vampires blood and ate soil from its grave, as according to local supposition that would cure his wounds and protect him from further vampire attacks.
Sadly, Arnold was killed in an accident shortly after regaling his wife with his tale. However, Arnolds story did not end there and three weeks after his burial people began to report sightings of him. Seeing Arnold was not something that you would want to do as one by one, everyone who reported catching sight of him died.
Understandably, this led to a wide spread panic in the village and its surrounding areas and a mob of townspeople dug up Arnolds body to inspect it for signs of vampirism. Although he had been buried over forty days previously, the townspeople reported that his body was fresh and not in any way decomposed.
Upon seeing the body, the townspeople deemed that Arnold was indeed a vampire and drove a stake through his heart, cut off his head and set fire to his remains. It was said by an eye witness that Arnold let out a moan as this happened.
The apparent confirmation that a vampire had been operating in the area led to a mass hysteria and a vicious vampire hunt followed. All of the people who had died after reporting seeing Arnold were also dug up and burnt incase they had been infected by Arnold and turned into vampires themselves.
Relative peace then returned to the town until a second vampire pandemic broke out five years later. The townspeople believed that Arnold had infected a batch of livestock and that people who had eaten the meat of these animals and died were now rising from the dead to become vampires themselves.
A second wide-scale vampire hunt followed with many more bodies being dug up, staked and burnt.