Case file · High strangeness
Sergeant Bertrand, the 'vampire' of Montparnasse
In 1849, after months of desecrated graves in Paris cemeteries, a spring-gun at Montparnasse wounded the culprit: army sergeant François Bertrand, who confessed to mutilating corpses.
1849 CE · 48.84, 2.33 · status: official
The account
The press called him the 'vampire'; a court martial gave him one year in prison. Psychiatrists made the case a founding example of necrophilia.
The researched reading
A solved crime. The “vampire” was a mentally disturbed soldier, and the name came from the newspapers.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 40% | A spring-gun caught the culprit, a soldier who confessed to compulsive desecration of corpses. Psychiatrists made the case a founding example of necrophilia, a paraphilia, not vampirism. |
| Undetermined | 35% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A cultural story | 20% | The press turned a disturbed man into a “vampire” in the language of popular gothic fiction. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | Animals were suspected at first, but the culprit was caught. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 1% | Fully documented by the court martial. |
| Something in the surroundings | 1% | Not relevant. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 1% | Nothing unexplained. |
Official position: A court martial convicted Bertrand of grave desecration and sentenced him to a year in prison.