Petar Blagojević, the vampire of Kisiljevo
In 1725 villagers at Kisilova (probably Kisiljevo, Serbia) blamed nine deaths in eight days on the recently buried Petar Blagojević, and forced an Austrian official to witness his exhumation and staking.
1725 CE · 44.73, 21.40 · status: explained
The account
The imperial provisor Ernst Frombald reported that the body looked fresh, with new skin, grown nails and beard and blood in the mouth. The villagers drove a stake through the heart, blood gushed out, and they burned the corpse. Frombald's report in the Vienna newspaper Wienerisches Diarium, along with the Arnold Paole case of 1731–32, made 'vampire' an international word.
The sceptical view
Each sign Frombald describes, the bloating, the 'new skin', the blood at the mouth and the loosening nails, is a normal stage of decomposition.