Places

Europe

• CaseVärend, Småland, Sweden, 1883 to 1889

  The lindworm reward in Småland was never claimed

  In May 1884 a former chargé d'affaires in Småland offered up to 1,000 crowns for a dead lindworm. A Växjö paper joked it had been found; nobody brought a snake.

  

• TaleEdam and Haarlem, Holland, Netherlands, 1403 to 1786

  Before the Edam mermaid had a tail

  Edam says a mermaid named Minne was caught in 1403 and taught to spin. The chronicles name no one and give no tail; the tail first shows in a print of 1645.

  

• TaleVrhnika (Ober-Laybach), Slovenia, 1684 to 1689

  Vrhnika's baby dragons: Valvasor's lizard and the olm

  A tourism page says Valvasor wrote of a dragon that spews out its young. His 1689 chapter has one dead, lizard-shaped animal a postmaster hung up for weeks.

  

• CaseHermersdorf (Svobodné Heřmanice), Czechia, 1753 to 1768

  Hermersdorf's vampires were burned before Vienna sent a physician

  Maria Theresa's earliest letter we found on the Hermersdorf vampires is dated 8 February 1755, eight days after an executioner burned nineteen of the dead.

  

• CaseLucerne, Switzerland, 1420 to 2006

  The Lucerne dragon stone: a pledge, a charter and a CT scan

  In 1523 Lucerne's council certified a dragon's stone as a cure for plague. In 2006 a CT scan showed a painted clay ball.

  

• CaseGévaudan, France, 1764 to 1767

  The Beast of Gévaudan outlived the king’s wolf

  In 1765 the king's gunbearer shot a wolf, and the Gazette declared the Beast of Gévaudan dead. Five months later a new beast was killing in the same hills.

  

• CaseKisiljevo and Medveđa, Serbia, 1725 to 1732

  Plogojowitz and Paole: the vampire reports of 1725 and 1732

  In January 1732 Habsburg army surgeons had graves opened at Medveđa, cut the bodies open, and signed a report saying which dead were in a "vampire state".

  

• CaseBedburg, near Cologne, Germany, 1589 to 1590

  The werewolf of Bedburg in the Cologne papers of 1589

  A London pamphlet of 1590 says the werewolf of Bedburg killed two pregnant women. No German text of 1589 mentions them, and no trial record has been found.