Centuries after the vampire panic that began with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire haunts the Serbian village of Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
In the gloomy heart of Eastern Europe, along the fog-shrouded banks of the Danube, lies the inconspicuous Serbian village of Kisilievo. While most of the world remembers Kisiljevo from the infamous Petar Blagojević case of 1725, fewer people have heard of a more recent and equally disturbing story: the haunting of a ghostly woman known as Ruža Vlajna.
Kisilyev's (Кисиљево) long and troubled relationship with the undead casts a shadow over his history, and even in state-of-the-art times, villagers remember stories of strange apparitions and restless spirits.
A village marked by the undead
Kisiljevo first gained international notoriety in the early 18th century when Petar Blagojević, who likely rose from the grave to torment the living, was stabbed through the heart by terrified locals. The event is widely considered to be one of the earliest recorded vampire cases in European history and sparked a wave of vampire hysteria throughout the region.
But Blagojević wasn't the only specter said to haunt this remote riverside community. And some of the last vampire stories to come out of this city weren't written that long ago.
The spooky legend of Ruža Vlajna
Unlike Blagojević, whose story was recorded in the records of the Austrian authorities, Ruža's story survived in the memories passed down through generations of villagers. According to those who have tried to take a closer look at the village's vampire cases, the locals have been hesitant at best to reveal any information about town gossip.
The city was once a river port on the Danube, but a dam was built in 1971 to prevent flooding. Although it is an venerable village, it has fallen into decline in state-of-the-art times and in 2022 it had 444 inhabitants. The church is one of the oldest parish churches in Nabob preserved in Serbia since 1822.
As one resident, Mirko Bogičić, said, Ruža Vlajna's sinister activities took place during his own grandfather's lifetime, suggesting that her hauntings took place well into the 19th and even early 20th centuries. She was not a distant, archaic legend, but a actual specter of recent memory.
The villagers claimed that Ruža was an venerable woman who became a vampire after death. Her nickname was Žapunjica, and in the middle of the day she announced her otherworldly presence in an unnerving way. She climbed into the attic and threw things around. When people went to check what the sounds were, she was nowhere to be found. At night she also hit pots hanging on the eaves of houses. The metallic clanging was a warning that the restless dead were roaming the streets again.
Perhaps most unnerving, however, was the news that Ruža Vlajna had been seen walking on the surface of the Danube.
Has Ruža ever been pegged?
Unlike the detailed and grim fate that befell Petar Blagojević, it is unknown whether the haunting of Ruža Vlajna was ever resolved as the venerable tradition wanted it to be. The oral histories passed down in Kisiliev never confirm whether the inhabitants dared to stake her body or exhume her grave. Perhaps they were never able to locate it, or perhaps they feared that disturbing her final resting place would only bring darker consequences.
But who was she? Her name and life have not been confirmed by anything other than village tales. It is said that the house where she haunted was demolished. But when did she die? There was one man who allegedly went on TV to talk about it and claimed to have seen her in the 1930s. It was then said that he had been dead for a hundred years.
Kisilievo today: a city still haunted
Although modernity has softened some of Kisilyev's superstitions, the city remains indelibly linked to vampire history. The sleepy town seems to be arguing with itself. On the one hand, reluctant to accept her vampire history, and on the other, eager to exploit it. Stories of restless spirits and unexplainable phenomena still surface from time to time, as if the soil itself remembered them.
The story of Ruža Vlajna survived not in official sources, but in fearful accounts of villagers who did not want to talk about it after gloomy. In Kisilyev, history and horror go hand in hand – and some legends refuse to die.
Meanwhile, the people of Kisiliev have many local traditions related to death. When a person dies, from the moment of death until the body is placed in a coffin, a lit candle is kept near the body at home, and rituals against evil spirits are performed before the body is placed in the coffin. Gold coins were placed over the eyes of the deceased, although today ordinary coins are used to prevent the deceased from being broken in the afterlife.
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The Serbian vampire city of Kisiljevo and the undead of Ruža Vlajna
Centuries after the vampire panic that began with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire haunts the Serbian village of Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
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