In 1721, London curate Thomas Lewis, concerned about the mephitic stink of decomposing flesh seeping from overstuffed tombs into his church, published a pamphlet, “Seasonable Considerations on the Indecent and Dangerous Custom of Burying in Churches and Church-yards”. The noxious vapors, he believed, desecrated the space, distracting his congregation from prayer. Lewis claimed that the odors also caused diseases like plague, smallpox and dysentery.
Lewis’ view of the dead as dangerous to the living was based in contemporary scientific thinking which, in the 1720s, hadn’t quite broken free of medieval superstition. A few years later, on the other side of Europe, in the village of Kisiljevo, on the outskirts of the Hapsburg Empire, locals similarly blamed a corpse for spreading disease — but via a radically different method of transmission.
In July 1725, they summoned the Kameral Provisor, a health and safety official. Provisor Frombald’s usual concern in such situations was identifying the cause of the cluster of cases and preventing a full-blown epidemic. The villagers believed Petar Blagojević, who had died ten weeks earlier, was up and out of his grave and bringing death to their homes. The Widow Blagojević claimed her husband knocked on her door after the funeral, demanding his shoes before attempting to strangle her. Blagojević remained active over the next nine nights, attacking nine more villagers. On waking, each victim reported Blagojević had “laid himself upon them, and throttled them”. After suffering a mysterious “twenty-four hour illness”, they all died
As Frombald detailed in his official report, the village elders had already made their diagnosis: Blagojević was ‘vampyri’, the Serbian word for ‘back from the dead’. Frombald’s only job was to rubber stamp this conclusion. The villagers would take it from there.
So, Frombald conducted a formal autopsy on the exhumed Blagojević. He recorded the appearance (and smell) of the corpse as “completely fresh”. He also noted the appearance of “fresh blood” around the mouth, supposedly sucked from the victims. With such evidence before him, he couldn’t muster any objection to the villagers’ plan of action, repulsive though it seemed. As they drove a sharpened stake through Blagojević’s torso, Frombald witnessed “much blood, completely fresh” gush from the ears and mouth — further proof of undead status, if any was needed.
In his report to the Hapsburg authorities, Frombald accepted “all the indications were present” that Blagojević was indeed a vampire. At the same time, he refused to accept any blame if his superiors felt his conclusion was ignorant. He insisted the fault lay entirely with the villagers “who were beside themselves with fear” and he did what he had to do to calm them down. His report made sensational newspaper copy, leading to the first printed usage of the local term “vampyri”, which would soon filter into other European languages.
Vampires came when folk tradition filled the void of scientific knowledge. In this illustration, men gather a gravesite to kill a purported vampire.
At the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, the stench of corpses and the general presence of death raised fears of vampyric behavior.
Much more about how they handled the situation with considerable gorry detail.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decomposing-bodies-1720s-gave-birth-first-vampire-panic-180976097/?