For Experience Writing Halloween: Monsters and Hunters

Photo: Cicero Moraes,

In the 16th century, on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, this woman was suspected of being a nachzehrer—a “shroud-eater” or revenant.

Shroud-eaters did not consume their victims with fangs, but instead chewed on their own burial shrouds in the grave. From their coffins, they fed on the life force of the living, which then fueled ongoing plague outbreaks and killed the remaining villagers.

To stop her from feeding on the living, the people who buried her drove a brick into her mouth and then placed her in a mass grave.

I’m not sure why you’d bury a vampire in a mass grave where there was a chance of other shroud-eaters ready to chow down on another shroud-eater’s veil, but people don’t always make the best choices when they’re in a panic.

Science tells us that the “Shroud-Eater” wasn’t really a vampire; rather, she may have been an index case who carried the plague into her home and neighborhood. As people began to fall ill and die, a group took a brick and went to the grave of the person they suspected.

As we know, that probably didn’t work. A lot of people died from the plague. People experiencing this must have thought the monsters were winning, and I guess, in a way, you can say they were right.

Woodcut showing the beheading of Peter Stumpp in Cologne in 1589

On October 31, 1589, “The Werewolf of Bedburg” was broken on the wheel. Flesh was torn from his body in ten places with red-hot pincers. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead.

Under this torture, the accused werewolf, Peter Stumpp, confessed to being a cannibal; he confessed to incest; he confessed to practicing black magic since he was 12 years old. I’m not sure, but I think that by the age of 12 (or shortly thereafter), he confessed that the Devil had given him a magical belt or girdle, which enabled him to metamorphose into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.”

After a confession that could have given anyone nightmares for the rest of their life, he was beheaded, and his body was burned on a pyre along with his daughter and mistress, who had been flayed and then strangled to death.

In the end, Peter Stumpp—who had been a wealthy man—and his entire family had been wiped out based on a confession he gave as his flesh was being torn from his body with red-hot pincers.

Who took Peter Stumpp’s property after his death is an open question.

On the other hand, the werewolf went on to live its own life without Peter, and it still haunts us.

One of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692/1693—and the only one of the first three to be imprisoned and not executed for it—was an enslaved woman by the name of Tituba.

Tituba was owned by Reverend Samuel Parris, and it was in his household that the first signs of witchcraft being used in Salem appeared. Samuel’s daughter, Betty, and his niece, Abigail Williams, began acting strangely. The girls violently twisted their bodies and often complained about bites on their skin. They’d make animalistic roaring sounds and interrupted church sermons.

Two more girls, Ann Putnam and Betty Hubbard, accused Tituba and two other women—Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne—of using witchcraft to hurt them. Betty’s testimony against Tituba in court caused the community to take legal action, and all three women were arrested on February 29, 1692.

From there, the madness took hold, and in my mind, all of these people were victims of Samuel Parris’s family:

The official death count for the Salem Witch Trials is 20 people: 19 victims were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge, near Gallows Hill, and one person was tortured to death. Four people also died in prison while awaiting trial. The other victims were either found guilty but pardoned, found not guilty, never indicted, evaded arrest, or escaped from jail. 

Interior of the old dungeon, old witch jail, Salem, Mass, circa 1935

When we think about monster hunters, I think nobody has ever caught a real monster like a vampire, witch, or werewolf because, based on history, it would appear that people didn’t even know who the real monsters were.

I can see them, can you?