RICHARD FREEMAN: The Monsters of Prague (Part Three)

The Fish Eating Vampire of Stromovka Park


Karel Sabina (thought to be a pseudonym) was the aide to General Windschgratz, the Austrian military leader who bombarded Prague in 1848. The mysterious man came from a noble Carpathian family. He would bathe naked in the lake in Stromovaka Park on moonlit nights and the fish were said to swarm around him in 'military formations'.


One night a miller called Vondra beat him to death with a club and tossed his body into the lake where it sunk into the deep mud. The cadaver remained when the Austrian troops left Prague.
Sabina was said to have become a sort of ineffectual vampire. He succeed in biting only one senile old woman and one lost child. He is said to subsist on rotting fish meat and insect lavae. The creature is slow moving and can be detected by the bubbles of mud it blows through its nose.