What image comes to mind when you hear the word vampire?

Perhaps it is the classic depiction of Belal Ligosi's Dracula, an elegant, immortal, reclusive figure,

or maybe it's the more feral, animalistic sort.

Cold, unfeeling, superhuman killing machines,

driven only by an insatiable thirst for blood,

a creature whose only weakness is exposure to pure silver and sunlight.

But is there any truth to these creatures' existence?

Surprisingly, yes. In the first half of the 18th century, following the Austrian Empire's

seizure of Belgrade and much of Serbia, reports of strange deaths would make their way into the hands

of Austrian officials. Unusual reports

from Serbian villages, now under the control and supervision of the Austrian monarchy,

villages whose inhabitants were being picked off one by one by what was described as an

inhuman and unnatural enemy.

Austrian doctors and men of science scoffed at these absurd claims,

attributing the villagers' strange deaths to some unknown disease.

But when Austrian medical officers and soldiers were sent to investigate these deaths

and to bring order to what was clearly a population

of uneducated and superstitious peasants,

these military men quickly realized

that the villagers were telling the truth.

This is the story of the Austrian army and the vampire.

I'm Luke Lamanah, and this is wartime stories. In the early years, the early years of the 18th century, the Austrian Habsburg monarchy found itself embroiled in a bitter war with the regional powerhouse of the Ottoman Empire.

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