Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
In the dark heart of Eastern Europe, along the mist-veiled banks of the Danube, lies the unassuming Serbian village of Kisiljevo. While most of the world remembers Kisiljevo for the infamous Petar Blagojević case of 1725, fewer have heard of a more recent and equally unsettling tale: the haunting of a spectral woman known as Ruža Vlajna.
Kisiljevo’s (Кисиљево) long, uneasy relationship with the undead casts a pall over its history, and even in modern times, villagers recall 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, believed to have risen from his grave to torment the living, was staked through the heart by terrified townsfolk. This event is widely considered one of the earliest recorded vampire cases in European history and ignited a wave of vampire hysteria across the region.
Read More: Petar Blagojević: The Death That Sparked Europe’s Vampire Panic
But Blagojević was not the only revenant said to haunt this remote riverside community. And some of the last vampire stories coming out of this town are not that long ago at all.
The Ghostly Legend of Ruža Vlajna
Unlike Blagojević, whose story was penned into the records of Austrian authorities, Ruža’s tale survives through recollections passed down by generations of villagers. According to those who have tried to look further into the vampiric cases from the village, the locals have been hesitant at best to divulge any information about the town gossip.
The town used to be a river port town of the Danube, but a dam was built to stop flooding in 1971. Although an old village, it has seen its decline in modern times and in 2022, it was said to be 444 residents. The church is one of the oldest parish churches in nabob preserved in Serbia from 1822.
As told by one resident, Mirko Bogičić, Ruža Vlajna’s sinister activity took place within the lifetime of his own grandfather — suggesting that her hauntings occurred well into the 19th or even early 20th century. She was no distant, ancient legend, but a tangible specter of recent memory.
Villagers claimed that Ruža was an old woman who became a vampire after her death. Her nickname used to be Žapunjica and she would announce her otherworldly presence in an unnerving manner in the middle of the day. She would climb up to the attic and throw things around. When people went to investigate what the sounds were, she would be nowhere to be found. She would also be striking the pots hanging from the eaves of homes at night. The metallic clanging was a warning that the restless dead roamed the streets once more.
But perhaps most unnerving was the claim that Ruža Vlajna was seen walking on the surface of the Danube River.
Was Ruža Ever Staked?
Unlike the detailed and grim fate that befell Petar Blagojević, it’s unknown whether Ruža Vlajna’s haunting was ever resolved as the old lore would have it solved. The oral histories passed down in Kisiljevo never confirm whether the villagers dared to stake her corpse or exhume her grave. Perhaps they could never locate it, or perhaps they feared that disturbing her final resting place would only provoke darker consequences.
Who was she though? Her name and life has not been confirmed through anything other than village stories. The house she used to haunt is said to be torn down. When did she die though? There was one man who allegedly went on TV to talk about this who claimed to have seen her in the 1930s. By then, it was said she had already been dead a century.
Kisiljevo Today: A Town Still Haunted
Though modernity has softened some of Kisiljevo’s superstitions, the town remains indelibly linked to its vampire lore. The sleepy town seems at odds with itself. On one side reluctant to accept its vampiric history, on the other keen to capitalize on it. Stories of restless spirits and inexplicable phenomena still surface from time to time, as though the soil itself remembers.
Ruža Vlajna’s tale endures, not through official records, but through the frightened accounts of villagers reluctant to speak of her after dark. In Kisiljevo, history and horror walk hand in hand — and some legends refuse to die.
Meanwhile, the people of Kisiljevo have many local traditions about death. When a person dies, they keep a lit candle next to the body from the moment of death until the body is placed in the casket at home and perform rituals against evil spirits before placing the body in the coffin. Gold coins were placed over the eyes of the deceased, although today they use regular coins so the dead won’t be broke in the afterlife.
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