Milos Rakovic, the Vampire of Svojdrug

The case of a Serbian vampire that was exhumed three times was written in the book of Alan Dundes, “The Vampire-A casebook” which was published on 1998.  Milos Rakovic, the suspected Serbian vampire who died of a sudden death.

By August of 1836, the villagers started to speculate that Milos Rakovic is a vampire.   They stormed the cemetery and exhumed the body without the authorization of the church.  The villagers decided not to get the approval of the authorities and the church since they will disapprove the exhumation anyway.   On the first time they unearthed the corpse, they examined it with any manifestation of vampire.  They quickly reburied it after that.

Jovan Obrenovic told her younger brother named Prince Milos Obrenovic (he was the prince during the Takovo uprising) that the villagers are suspecting that Milos Rakovic who died on the feast is a vampire and that the villagers already exhumed the body without a prior notice of the church.  Jovan and his brother went to the church. When the news about the suspected vampire reached the church, the priest ordered the villagers to exhume the body for the second time.  The priest examined the corpse and poured holy water onto the remains of Milos Rakovic and buried it again.  But that didn’t stop the vampire attacks on the villagers.  They decided to dig the body again for the third time, open the casket and they shot it at point blank.  They dismember his parts of the body and return it to the grave.

By that time, the churches have already implemented laws on exhuming the body of a suspected vampire.  But just like the other parts of the world, Serbia has a strong belief on vampires that time and anything that cannot be explained and causes a plague-like disease to the town can be attributed to the vampire.