Victor Ardisson

Who is Victor Ardisson?

Victor Antoine Ardisson, nicknamed the "Vampire of Muy," was a French graverobber and necrophiliac.

He was born on 5 September 1872 at Muy in Provence in southeastern France, and became an undertaker and gravedigger as an adult. He violated many bodies, especially those of young women, and mutilated and decapitated them in some cases. According to his confession, Ardisson regularly spoke to the corpses which he had retrieved, feeling genuine shock and hurt when they would not respond.

Victor Ardisson was arrested in 1901 upon multiplied charges of the exhumation and violation of dead bodies.

Ardisson was examined by Dr. Alexis Epaulard, one of the first psychiatrists to associate necrophilia and vampirism. Epaulard diagnosed Ardisson as a "degenerate impulsive sadist and necrophile." Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who also studied the case, called Ardisson a "moron void of any moral sense."

Victor Ardisson was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital at Pierrefeu-du-Var.

This is one of the few necrophiliacs passed to posterity, and known worldwide.