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[French, from German Vampir, of Slavic origin.]
vampiric vam·pir'ic (văm-pĭr'ĭk) or vam·pir'i·cal (-ĭ-kəl) or vam'pir'ish (-ĭsh) adj.The predatory aristocrat whose blood-lust leads him to drain the blood of peasants, usually young women, is the stock figure of the vampire as represented by the cinematic Nosferatu, John Polidori's Lord Ruthven, and Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. For the ‘undead’, this exsanguination is a reproductive act, that conflates both food and sex. The most effective means of reproduction for the vampire, however, has been textual. Novels such as Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), Stoker's Dracula (1897), and Prest's Varney the Vampire (1847) have perpetuated an image that continues to replicate itself throughout our culture rather like a virus. Vampirism is encoded within popular culture through a complex nexus of literature, folklore, and fantasy.
Traditionally the revenant, or undead, is a mouldering corpse dragging itself out of graves to feed off the life-blood of the living. Premature burial arising from times of plague is one explanation for the prevalence of the vampire phenomenon at certain periods in history. The mecca for vampires is Eastern Europe. The word itself is believed to be of Magyar origin, possibly derived from the Turkish uber, meaning witch. The term was first used in English in 1734, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, where vampires are described as ‘The bodies of deceased persons, animated by evil spirits, which come out of the graves in the night-time, suck the blood of many of the living, and thereby destroy them’.
In contrast, Stoker's eroticized and glamorous cloaked Count is a hybrid of the Wandering Jew and his hypnotic gaze, the libertine Lord Ruthven, who is based on Byron, and at least two notorious historical figures, whose careers were drenched in the blood of Eastern European peoples. These were Vlad Tepes, impaler and Romanian Prince, and Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian aristocrat, who was known as the Blood Countess of Cachtice. A sixteenth-century mass murderer whose sadomasochistic practices included biting off the flesh of her victims, Báthory's cruelties towards her servants escalated into capturing women and young girls who were then tortured and killed. Estimates of the numbers range from from thirty to over seven hundred. Their blood was drained for the Countess's rejuvenating bloodbaths, by such torturous contraptions as the cruelly spiked Iron Maiden. The horrors of Báthory's necro-sadism were written out of criminal history into fairy-tale, where she is represented as the wicked queen in Snow White, who contemplates her beauty at her looking-glass for hours on end. As this pathological behaviour suggests, vampirism can be a clinical phenomenon within which folklore, fantasy, and deviant behaviour converge.
The ingestion of blood can complement necrophilia, which consists largely of sexual satisfaction derived from physical contact with a dead body. Auto-vampirism can include self-induced bleeding, or auto-haemofetishism, which is a condition whereby sexual pleasure is derived from the sight of blood.
The most well-known association of pathological conditions with vampires and werewolves was with the rare group of diseases called porphyrias. Caused by the body's over-production of porphyrins — a normal component of haemoglobin (due in fact to an inborn error of metabolism), one type of this condition caused George III to produce blue urine and to collapse, foaming at the mouth. More obviously vampiric forms of the illness present themselves as an intolerance to light, wherein the skin cracks and bleeds, the gums and upper lip recede, and there is redness of the eyes, teeth, and skin. Seclusion from daylight and, ironically, drinking blood were prescribed remedies.
anaemia has also been attributed to the vampire. During the nineteenth century, sufferers on this side of the grave were treated with animal blood, which they were expected to imbibe. In Joseph-Ferdinand Gueldry's painting, The Blood Drinkers, of 1898, a line of pale and languid women queue up in an abattoir for a glass of warm ox's blood. It is likely that their anaemia had been caused by menstrual losses.
A link between menstruation and vampirism is made by Freud in his essay ‘The Taboo of Virginity’ (1918). Again, among the myriad ways in which Dracula may be read is as an anti-menstrual subtext, which pathologizes femininity and constructs female blood as polluted and male blood as pure. From the writings on menstrual taboo of Stoker's contemporary, James Frazer, in The Golden Bough, we can infer similarities between vampires and menstruating women. Both are condemned as unclean, agents of pollution, and instigators of corruption. Sharing an avoidance of mirrors and crucifixes, they have been barred from many churches, temples, and synagogues. Some pre-industrial societies believed that a man could die from having contact, particularly intercourse, with a menstruating woman — and to make love with a vampire was potentially lethal. In such cultures, after menarche, a young girl would be kept out of the sun lest she, vampire-like, shrivel up into a withered skeleton. Frazer explains that for their own protection these adolescent girls were kept in tenebrous seclusion, where they were suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, until marriage. Likewise, the vampire exists in a bodily state that is between life and death and in a spiritual limbo betwixt heaven and earth. The coffins to which vampires retreat in the day serve, like menstrual huts, as places of seclusion and safety. For both vampires, their victims, and menstruating women, it is normal for blood to flow outside the body. Mythologized as transgressing the natural order, menstruating women in some cultures have a kinship with vampires.
Psychic vampirism is an affliction that, according to the Victorian physician Jules Michelet, affects young girls: ‘A hysterical girl is … a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people around her.’ The female vampire is a species of the femme fatale, whose deadly vampiric embrace can be seen as a metaphor for the transmission of syphilis — a potentially lethal, sexually transmitted disease. Not just young female patients but also the male doctors, too, who are known as leeches or blood-suckers and who practise blood-letting, partake of the nature of vampires.
In his vampire-hunter's manual, called Traité sur les Apparitions des Ésprits et sur les Vampires (Paris 1746), Dom Augustine Calmet provides case histories of how he set out to ‘cure’ the supposed plague of vampires that was infecting eighteenth-century Europe. His first resort was decapitation, staking out the heart, and then incineration. The overkill of this zealous Benedictine monk was presumably due to the ambivalent attitude towards death which characterized the average vampire. More apotropaic methods (techniques for turning evil away) included stuffing objects into the orifices of corpses or confronting the ambulatory blood-sucker with a crucifix. The latest breed of fictional vampires, such as Ann Rice's androgynous vampires in her Vampire Chronicles, which began publication in 1976, have proved to be a strain resistant to such apotropaics, while Poppy Z. Brite's vampires are immune to the deleterious effects of religious symbolism. For them vampirism is drained of signification. In Lost Souls (1992), which is an appropriate title for the vampire entering post-modernism, the sexual significance of vampirism is no longer a means of reproduction but a sadomasochistic diversion.
The vampire is a sublimation of our fears of death and disease, articulating our resistance to an acceptance of the process of decomposition. Human decay involves discolouration, bloating, and leaking of blood-stained fluid from the mouth and nostrils — which have been misinterpreted as the superfluities of a blood-satiated cadaver. The taboos surrounding putrefaction and funereal rights, which can involve the second burial of the exhumed undead, suggest that it is not until a corpse no longer resembles the living, and only when it resides in its skeletal state as a momento mori, that the living can truly rest in peace.
— Marie Mulvey-Roberts
See also sadomasochism; torture.
noun
Thanks to Bram Stoker and his ilk, we know all about vampires. We know that they once were people but now are dead; that they can't stand sunlight and spend their days in their coffins; that they have no reflections in mirrors because they have no souls; that they cannot enter a house without being invited but once invited can enter again and again; that for convenience they can change into vampire bats; that they drink the blood of others with the result that these others become vampires after death; and that, being dead already, they're very hard to kill, the effective methods being beheading, cremation, or a stake through the heart.
But what about the name vampire? Where did that come from? That's harder to determine. We know that words like vampire were thick as bats in the Slavic languages of eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian all had vampir, while Bulgarian also had vapir or vepir. There is also a variant beginning with u, as in Polish upiór, Russian upyr', Ukrainian uper or upyr. It is possible that this u-word came from Turkish uber, meaning "witch," and also possible that that u-word was the ancestor of vampire. And perhaps not. For our purposes, Serbo-Croatian is as good a candidate for the word's source as any other. Its word is vampir, the same form that made its way through such intermediate languages as Hungarian, German, and French to arrive in England by 1734. An English document of that date declares that "These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves, in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living, and thereby destroy them." That about sums it up.
Serbo-Croatian is a Slavic Indo-European language spoken both by Serbs and by Croats in Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, more than 20,000,000 people altogether. But since the people are not all together, and since the two cultures have recently become enemies, or at least gone their separate ways, they prefer to consider themselves speakers of two separate languages, Serbian and Croatian. The chief difference between the two is that Serbian is usually written in a Cyrillic (or Russian) alphabet, Croatian in a Roman one. From this language, or these languages, English has also imbibed slivovitz (1885) or plum brandy and has learned to wear a cravat (1656) or necktie, a word that traces back from French to German to the Serbo-Croatian word meaning a Croat. Neckties were worn by Croatian mercenaries in France.
For more information on vampire, visit Britannica.com.
In East European folklore, a vampire is a bloated, blood-filled corpse which leaves its tomb, bringing disease and death. It is often assumed that the concept was unknown in England until imported (in glamorized form) by 19th-century novelists. However, William of Newburgh in the late 12th century recorded several contemporary accounts of active corpses, one of which corresponds perfectly to the folkloric vampire's appearance and behaviour (Historia Rerum Anglicarum, book V, chapter 24).
It appeared at Alnwick (Northumberland) in 1196, emerging nightly from its grave to roam the streets, corrupting the air with ‘pestiferous breath’, so that plague broke out and many died. When two bold men decided to ‘dig up this baneful pest and burn it with fire’, they found the corpse much closer to the surface than they had expected; it had swollen to a horrifying size, its face was ‘turgid and suffused with blood’, and its shroud in tatters. They gave it a sharp blow with a spade; from the wound gushed ‘such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for a leech (sanguisuga) filled with the blood of many people’ (trans. Stevenson, 1856/1996: 660-1). So they tore the heart out, dragged the body away, and burned it; this put an end to the plague.
William gives three further accounts of aggressive undead (chapters 22-4), all recent and vouched for by eyewitnesses. In Buckinghamshire, a dead man returned to his widow's bed, almost crushing her with his weight, and then terrorized kinsmen and neighbours; the body was found uncorrupted, and a written pardon was laid on its breast, though some had advised burning it. At Berwick-on-Tweed, a ‘pestiferous corpse’ roamed the city, ‘pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings’; it was cut to pieces by ten brave young men, and burnt. At Melrose (Scotland) a monk who was attacked by a corpse struck it with an axe and chased it back to its grave; next day it was dug up to be burnt, and observers noted its ‘huge wound, and a great quantity of gore which had flowed from it in the sepulchre’.
Though blood is only mentioned in two of these tales, all have features regularly associated with vampires in Europe—the link with plague, and the need to destroy the uncorrupted bodies. In later folklore, a tradition persisted that suicides, criminals, or witches should be staked ‘to stop them walking’.
Full translations of the texts are in Joseph Stevenson, The History of William of Newburgh (1856; reprint 1996), 656-61; and Montague Summers, The Vampire in Europe (1929; reprint 1996), 80-8. The latter renders sanguisuga (literally ‘blood-sucker’) as ‘vampire’, not ‘leech’; though tempting, this is too bold. For European vampire lore, see Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988).
Bibliography
See A. Masters, The Natural History of the Vampire (1972); N. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995).
Russian vampir, South Russian upuir, probably from the root pi, to drain, with the prefix va, or av. A dead person who returns in spirit form from the grave for the purpose of sucking the blood of living persons, or a living sorcerer who takes a special form for destructive purpose. Webster's International Dictionarydefines a vampire as "a blood-sucking ghost or reanimated body of a dead person; a soul or re-animated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep, causing their death."
The belief in vampires is an ancient one. It was found in ancient India, Babylonia, Greece, and for a time accepted by early Christians. The conception of the vampire was common among Slavonic peoples, especially in the Balkan countries and in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.
In these territories from 1730 to 1735, there was a claimed epidemic of vampirism, but it was by no means confined there. In Russia and the Ukraine it was believed that vampires were generally wizards or sorcerers, but in Bulgaria and Serbia it was thought that any corpse over which a cat or a dog jumped or over which a bird flew was liable to become a vampire. In Greece, a vampire was known as a broncolaia or bourkabakos, which was identified with the Slavonic name for "werewolf,"vlkodlak, or vukodlak. The vampire, too, was often supposed to steal the heart of his victim and to roast it over a slow fire, thus causing interminable amorous longings.
Marks of Vampirism
Vampirism is said to be epidemic in character: where one instance is discovered it is almost invariably followed by several others. It is believed that the victim of a vampire pines away and dies and becomes in turn a vampire after death, and so duly infects others.
After the disinterment of a suspected vampire, various well-known signs are looked for by experienced persons. Thus, if several holes about the breadth of a man's finger are observed in the soil above the grave, the vampire character of its occupant may be suspected. The corpse is usually found with wide-open eyes, ruddy, life-like complexion and lips, a general appearance of freshness, and shows no signs of corruption.
It may also be found that the hair and nails have grown as in life. On the throat, two small livid marks may be observed. The coffin is also very often full of blood, the body has a swollen and gorged appearance, and the shroud is frequently half-devoured. The blood contained in the veins of the corpse is found, on examination, to be in a fluid condition as in life, and the limbs are pliant and have none of the rigidity of death.
Examples of Vampirism
Many tales of vampirism have been recorded. Charles Ferdinand de Schertz, in his work Magia Posthuma, printed at Olmutz in 1706, related several stories of apparitions of this sort.
One, among others, was of a herdsman of the village of Blow near the town of Kadam in Bohemia, who visited several persons who all died within eight days.
At last, the inhabitants of Blow dug up the herdsman's body and fixed it in the ground with a stake driven through it. The man, even in this condition, laughed at the action of the people about him and told them they were very obliging to furnish him with a stick with which to defend himself.
The same night, he extricated himself from the stake, frightened several persons by appearing to them, and caused the deaths of many more individuals. He was then delivered into the hands of the hangman, who put him into a cart in order to burn him outside the town. As they went along, the carcass shrieked in the most hideous manner and moved as if it were alive, and upon being again run through with a stake, it gave a loud cry, and a great quantity of fresh blood issued from the wound. At last, the body was burned to ashes.
Augustine Calmet, in his Dissertation on Vampires appended to his Dissertation upon the Apparitions of Angels, Demons, and Ghosts (English translation, 1759), gave several instances of vampirism: "It is now about fifteen years since a soldier, who was quartered in the house of a Haidamack peasant, upon the frontiers of Hungary, saw, as he was at the table with his landlord, a stranger come in and sit down by them. The master of the house and the rest of the company were strangely terrified, but the soldier knew not what to make of it. The next day the peasant died, and, upon the soldier's enquiring into the meaning of it, he was told that it was his landlord's father who had been dead and buried above ten years that came and sat down at table, and gave his son notice of his death.
"The soldier soon propagated the story through his regiment, and by this means it reached the general officers, who commissioned the count de Cabreras … to make an exact enquiry into the fact. The count, attended by several officers, a surgeon, and a notary, came to the house, and took the deposition of all the family, who unanimously swore that the spectre was the landlord's father, and that all the soldier had said was strictly true. The same was also attested by all the inhabitants of the village.
"In consequence of this the body of the spectre was dug up, and found to be in the same state as if it has been but just dead…. The count de Cabreras ordered its head to be cut off, and the corpse to be buried again. He then proceeded to take depositions against other spectres of the same sort, and particularly against a man who had been dead above thirty years, and had made his appearance there several times in his own house at meal-time. At his first visit he had fastened upon the neck of his own brother, and sucked his blood; at his second, he had treated one of his children in the same manner; and the third time, he fastened upon a servant of the family, and all three died upon the spot.
"Upon this evidence, the count gave orders that he should be dug up, and being found, like the first, with his blood in a fluid state, as if he had been alive, a great nail was drove through his temples, and he was buried again. The count ordered a third to be burnt, who had been dead above sixteen years, and was found guilty of murdering two of his own children by sucking their blood.
"The gentleman who acquainted me with all these particulars, had them from the count de Cabreras himself, at Fribourg in Brisgau, in the year 1730."
Other cases alluded to by Calmet are as follows: "In the part of Hungary … on the other side of the Tibiscus,… the people named Heydukes have a notion that there are dead persons, called by them vampires, which suck the blood of the living, so as to make them fall away visibly to skin and bones, while the carcasses themselves, like leeches, are filled with blood to such a degree that it comes out at all the apertures of their body. This notion has lately been confirmed by several facts.
"About five years ago, an Heyduke, named Arnold Paul, an inhabitant of Medreiga, was killed by a cart full of hay that fell upon him. About thirty days after his death, four persons died suddenly, with all the symptoms usually attending those who are killed by vampires. It was then remembered that this Arnold Paul had frequently told a story of his having been tormented by a Turkish vampire, in the neighbourhood of Cassova, upon the borders of Turkish Servia (for the notion is that those who have been passive vampires in their life-time become active ones after death; or, in other words, that those who have had their blood sucked become suckers in their turn) but that he had been cured by eating some of the earth upon the vampire's grave, and by rubbing himself with his blood. This precaution, however, did not hinder him from being guilty himself after his death; for, upon digging up his corpse forty days after his burial, he was found to have all the marks of an arch-vampire. His body was fresh and ruddy, his hair, beard, and nails were grown, and his veins were full of fluid blood, which ran from all parts of his body upon the shroud that he was buried in. The hadnagy, or bailiff of the village, who was present at the digging up of the corpse, and was very expert in the whole business of vampirism, ordered a sharp stake to be drove quite through the body of the deceased, and to let it pass through his heart, which is attended with a hideous cry from the carcass, as if it had been alive. This ceremony being performed, they cut off the head, and burnt the body to ashes. After this, they proceeded in the same manner with the four other persons that died of vampirism, lest they also should be troublesome. But all these executions could not hinder this dreadful prodigy from appearing again last year, at the distance of five years from its first breaking out. In the space of three months, seventeen persons of different ages and sexes died of vampirism, some without any previous illness, and others after languishing two or three days. Among others, it was said, that a girl, named Stanoska, … went to bed in perfect health, but awoke in the middle of the night, trembling, and crying out that the son of the Heyduke Millo, who died about nine weeks before, had almost strangled her while she was asleep. From that time she fell into a languishing state, and died at three days' end. Her evidence against Millo's son was looked upon as a proof of his being a vampire, and, upon digging up his body, he was found to be such.
"At the consultation of the principal inhabitants of the place, … it was considered how it was possible that the plague of vampirism should break out afresh, after the precautions that had been taken some years before: and, at last, it was found out that the original offender, Arnold Paul, had not only destroyed the four persons mentioned above, but had killed several beasts, which the late vampires, and particularly the son of Millo, had fed upon. Upon this foundation a resolution was taken to dig up all the persons that had died within a certain time. Out of forty were found seventeen, with all the evident tokens of vampirism; and they had all stakes drove through their hearts, their heads cut off, their bodies burnt, and their ashes thrown into the river."
Methods of Extirpation
The commonest methods of extirpation of vampires are beheading the suspected corpse, taking out the heart, impaling the corpse with a white-thorn stake (in Russia an aspen), and burning it. Sometimes more than one or all of these precautions is taken.
Instances are on record where the graves of as many as thirty or forty persons have been disturbed during the course of an epidemic of suspected vampirism and their occupants impaled or beheaded.
Persons who dread the visits or attacks of a vampire sleep with a wreath made of garlic round the neck, as garlic is supposed to be especially obnoxious to the vampire.
When impaled, the vampire is usually said to emit a dreadful cry, but it has been pointed out that intestinal gas may be forced through the throat by the entry of the stake into the body, and that this may account for the sound.
The method of discovering a vampire's grave in Serbia was to place a virgin boy upon a coal-black stallion which had never served a mare and to mark the spot that the horse refused to pass. An officer quartered in Wallachia wrote to Calmet, giving him an instance of this method.
A Bulgarian belief was that a wizard or sorcerer may entrap a vampire by placing some food for which the vampire has a partiality in a bottle. When the vampire enters in the shape of fluff, the sorcerer can seal up the flask and throw it into the fire.
Scientific Views of Vampirism
The British custom of piercing a suicide's body with a stake would appear to be a remnant of the belief in vampirism. Such beliefs were also to be seen in the Polynesian tii, the Malayan hantu penyardin (a dog-headed water demon), and the kephn of the Karens, which devoured human souls.
The English anthropologist E. B. Tylor considered vampires to be "causes conceived in spiritual form to account for specific facts of wasting disease." The Russian folklorist Alexander N. Afansyev regarded them as thunder gods and spirits of the storm, who sleep during winter in cloud coffins and rise again in spring.
Calmet's difficulty in accepting vampires was that he could not understand how a spirit could leave its grave and return there with matter in the form of blood, leaving no evidence that the surface of the earth above the grave had been stirred. But this view might be combated by the theory of the precipitation of matter.
In modern times, it is easy to understand how individuals in an unrecognized condition of cataleptic trance might have been prematurely buried alive and upon regaining consciousness have struggled to escape their horrible plight. Their bodies would have exhibited many of the signs associated with vampires.
It is now also generally known that some individuals suffer from a morbid fascination with human blood, and it would have been easy in the past to associate such unnatural appetite with vampirism. The infamous Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Transylvania (d. 1614) was reputed to have murdered nearly 700 young women in the belief that their blood would keep her young.
No doubt the observed activities of the various types of vampire bats (Desmodus Rufus, Didemus Yungi, Diphylla Caudata, Des-modus Rotunda) in sucking blood from cattle and horses have helped to spread legends of vampires. The vampire bat drinks 20 ccs of blood per day and has been known to attack human beings. It also spreads rabies, thus enhancing stories of a vampire plague.
Psychic Theories of Vampires
Some individuals seem to have the ability to draw some kind of psychic energy from others. Every stage performer or public speaker is aware of the rapport which exists between performer and audience, and many have become expert at gaining confidence and power through some instinctive techniques of centralizing and transforming psychic or nervous energy.
The common experience of out-of-the-body travel or astral projection has sometimes been associated with visits to other individuals, as well as contacts with frightening elementals on the astral plane. Some occultists appear to have mastered techniques by which they can astrally project, and visit their victims while asleep and drain their vitality from them.
During the nineteenth century, the French Spiritualist Z. J. Piérart attempted to reconcile the theory of premature burial with astral projection by those who died after being buried alive. He wrote: "Poor dead cataleptics, buried as if really dead in cold and dry spots where morbid causes are incapable of effecting the destruction of their bodies, the astral spirit enveloping itself with a fluidic ethereal body, is prompted to quit the precincts of its tomb and to exercise on living bodies acts peculiar to physical life, especially that of nutrition, the result of which, by a mysterious link between soul and body which spiritualistic science will some day explain, is forwarded to the material body lying still within the tomb, and the latter is thus helped to perpetuate its vital existence."
Adolphe d'Assier, in his book Posthumous Humanity (1887), admitted that the body of the vampire may be dead but the spirit earthbound and obsessed with the idea that the physical body must be saved from dissolution. Consequently the dense astral body feeds on human victims and, by some mysterious process, conveys the blood into the tomb.
Both speculations furnish explanations of the attestation of numerous ancient chronicles that fresh blood was found in the exhumed and uncorrupted body of dead people suspected of vampirism.
Following the occult boom of the 1950s, Bram Stoker 's powerful but much neglected masterpiece Dracula was taken up again, examined by critics and found to be as full of vitality as during Stoker's own lifetime. Almost by contagion, it has generated a plethora of horror movies, plays, and other vampire thrillers.
In Britain, the Dracula Society, with its general interest in Gothic themes, pioneered tourist expeditions to Transylvania, and in Stoker's Ireland, a Bram Stoker Society was founded to honor a much neglected Irishman. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the most active organization was the Count Dracula Fan Club, headquartered in New York City. However, in 1999, the club announced its closing.
Much of the interest in vampires has also been carried by fan clubs that have grown out of television series. "Dark Shadows" fandom, from the 1960s, had retained its vitality for over 30 years and still attracts 400-600 members to its annual meeting. Another set of fan clubs sprung up from "Forever Knight," the series featuring a vampire policeman from Toronto. As the century ended, vampire fandom received an unexpected boost from the successful series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
In the 1990s, interest in vampires shifted largely to the Internet where thousands of sites cover all aspects of the vampire world. Over 2000 sites alone were devoted just to the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" show in 1999. Vampire Junction, formerly a fan magazine, was one of the first to make the transition to the Internet and emerged as one of the most complete guides to vampires.
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Rohr, Philip. De Masticatione Mortuorum. N.p., 1679.
Ronay, Gabriel. The Dracula Myth. London: W. H. Auden, 1972; London: Pan 1975.
Roth, Phyllis A. Bram Stoker. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Senf, Carol A. The Vampire in Nineteenth-Century English Literature. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988.
Shepard, Leslie. The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories. New York: Citadel, 1977.
Summers, Montague. The Vampire, His Kith and Kin. London: Kegan, Paul, 1928; New York: University Books, 1960.
——. The Vampire in Europe. London: Kegan, Paul, 1929; New York: University Books, 1962.
Thompson, R. Campbell. The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia. 2 vols. London, 1903-04.
Underwood, Peter. The Vampire's Bedside Companion: The Amazing World of Vampires in Fact and Fiction. London: Leslie Frewin, 1972.
Wright, Dudley. The Book of Vampires. 2d ed. London, 1924; Causeway Books, 1973.
Zopfius, Johan Heinrich. Dissertatio de Vampiris Seruiensibus. Halle, 1733.
Originally part of central European folklore, they now appear in horror stories as living corpses who need to feed on human blood. A vampire will leave his coffin at night, disguised as a great bat, to seek his innocent victims, bite their necks with his long, sharp teeth, and suck their blood.
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings that are renowned for subsisting on human blood or lifeforce, but in some cases may prey on animals. Although vampires have different characteristics depending on which lore one reads, in most cases, they are described as reanimated corpses who feed by draining and consuming the blood of living beings.
The term was popularised in the early 18th century and arose from the folklore of southeastern Europe, particularly the Balkans and Greece. Folkloric vampires were depicted as undead beings who visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited while living. They wore shrouds, did not bear fangs and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or darkened countenance.
The 1897 novel Dracula brought folklore into the realm of published fiction. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century. Books and films of the genre have portrayed vampires with attributes markedly distinct from those of original folkloric vampires. With Count Dracula, the gaunt, fanged noble undead, vulnerable to sunlight was born. However, traits such as aversion to garlic and vulnerability to staking were simply incorporated from the folklore.
Numerous cultures the world over have similar entities that suck blood or energy and prey on the living; indeed, some also have stories of non-human vampires, including real animals such as bats, dogs, spiders and mythical creatures such as the chupacabra. All vampire lore stems from ancient demonology, which had vampiric beings, but are not classified as vampires as such.
The word Vampire appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1734 as much was appearing in German literature on the subject. After the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz where parts of Serbia and Wallachia came under Austrian control, the Austrian officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These reports prepared between 1725 and 1732 received widespread publicity.[1] The etymology is uncertain, though several theories of its origin exist.[2] The English term was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn thought to be derived in the early 18th century[3] from Serbian вампир/vampir,[4][5][6][7] or Hungarian vámpír.[8][9] The Serbian and Hungarian forms have parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian вампир (vampir), Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upiór, Russian упырь (upyr'), Belarusian упыр (upyr), Ukrainian упирь (upir'), from Old Russian упирь (upir'). (Note that many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" secondarily from the West). Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь.[10] The Slavic word might, like its possible cognate that means "bat" (Czech netopýr, Slovak netopier, Polish nietoperz, Russian нетопырь / netopyr' - a species of bat), contain a Proto-Indo-European root for "to fly".[10]
The first recorded use of the Old Russian form Упирь (Upir') is commonly believed to be in a document dated 6555 (1047 AD).[11] It is a colophon in a manuscript of the Book of Psalms written by a priest who transcribed the book from Glagolitic into Cyrillic for the Novgorodian Prince Vladimir Yaroslavovich.[12][13] The priest writes that his name is "Upir' Likhyi " (Упирь Лихый), which would mean something like "Wicked Vampire"[14] or "Foul Vampire."[15] This apparently strange name has been cited as an example of surviving paganism and/or of the use of nicknames as personal names.[16] However, in 1982, Swedish Slavicist Anders Sjöberg suggested that "Upir' likhyi" was in fact an Old Russian transcription and/or translation of the name of Öpir Ofeigr, a well-known Swedish rune carver. Sjöberg argued that Öpir could possibly have lived in Novgorod before moving to Sweden, considering the connection between Eastern Scandinavia and Russia at the time. This theory is still controversial, although at least one Swedish historian, Henrik Janson, has expressed support for it.[15] Another early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy," dated variously to the 11th—13th centuries, where pagan worship of upyri is reported.[17][18]
The notion of vampirism has been in use for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits including the Empusa,[19] Lamia,[20] and Lilitu,[21] who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the devil was considered synonymous with the vampire in earlier times.[22] However, despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the mythology for the entity we know today as the vampire comes almost exclusively from Southeastern Europe. It is in these regions, such as the Balkans, Transylvania, Wallachia and Greece, that it is believed the folklore about vampires had its origins. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims or witches, but can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire itself. The legends of the vampire grew to such a height, that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires. Although the original lore has been distorted due to new fictional references such as Dracula, there are many ways to destroy a vampire; decapitation, a stake to the heart, incineration and exposure to sunlight are commonly cited.[23]
It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire though there are several elements common to many European legends. It is usually reported as bloated in appearance and ruddy, purplish or dark in colour, often attributed to drinking blood. Indeed, blood is often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one is seen in its shroud or coffin and his left eye is often open.[24] Clothing often consisted of the linen shroud they were buried in and teeth, hair and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature.[25]
Other attributes may vary greatly from culture to culture; some vampires, such as those found in Transylvanian tales, are gaunt, pale and have long fingernails, while Bulgarian vampires only had one nostril,[26] while Bavarian vampires slept with thumbs crossed and one eye open.[27] Moravian vampires only attacked victims naked and the vampires of Albanian folklore wore high heeled shoes.[27] As stories of vampires spread throughout the globe to the Americas and elsewhere, so did the varied and sometimes bizarre descriptions of them; Mexican vampires have a bare skull instead of a head,[27] Brazilian vampires had furry feet and vampires from the Rocky Mountains only sucked blood with their noses from the victim's ears.[27] Even broad descriptions were implemented, such as having red hair.[27] So from these various descriptions across time, works of literature such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and the influences of historical figures such as Gilles de Rais and Vlad Tepes, the vampire has developed into the stereotype we perceive today; over time, a selection of more common reported attributes from a huge variety of ancient and medieval stories have coalesced to form a contemporary vampire profile as seen in literature and film today. [27]
It is commonly accepted in modern cultural depictions that one is likely to become a vampire if bitten by one. However the causes were far more varied in original vampire folklore. In Slavic and also Chinese traditions any corpse which was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or cat, would become one of the undead.[28] If a body had a wound which had not been treated with boiling water. And in Russian mythology, vampires were said to have once been witches while they were living, or people who rebelled against the church. [27]
Practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one turning into an undead revenant. Burying a
corpse upside-down was a common prevention method, as well as placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles,[29] near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it
would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method is similar to the ancient Greek practice of placing a obolus in the corpse's mouth so that they may pay their way across the
The rituals behind identifying a vampire were in most cases elaborate, with several methods arising throughout Eastern Europe and other areas where vampire legends became prominent. In some Eastern European instances, the method of finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin, black stallion; the tomb which the horse stopped at first was said to be that of the vampire's.[27] Corpses thought to be vampires were generally described as having a healthier appearance than a normal, dead body would have and were also said to be plump and have no decomposition. In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its face, although many theories have been made attributing all these abnormal appearances to natural causes and village hysteria; Some historians have stated that the coffin acted as an airtight tomb in some cases, thus preserving the body from decomposition, much in the same way as natural mummies are preserved. However, when the villagers open the coffin in search of a vampire, the rate of decomposition is accelerated rapidly by the change of pressure and air, so much so that it may appear to be evaporating significantly; in most legends of vampires, when a vampire is stabbed in the heart with a wooden stake, it is said to deteriorate into nothing more than a skeleton, propagating this theory further. Another modern theory attempting to debunk the appearance of undecomposed corpses in coffins is the fact that the person could have simply been buried alive.[32] Evidence that a vampire was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours; folkloric vampires could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-like activity and pressing on people in their sleep.
A common theme is the use of apotropaics to ward the revenants off, namely mundane or sacred items or things such as garlic,[33] sunlight or holy water. Items vary from region to region; a branch of wild rose is said to harm vampires as well as the hawthorn plant; in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was said to keep vampires away.[34] Other apotropaics include sacred items, for example a crucifix, rosary beads and the aforementioned holy water; vampires are said to be unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as those of churches or temples or cross running water.[35] In Asian legends, vampiric creatures are often warded by holy devices such as Shintō seals.[36] In South American superstition, Aloe vera hung backwards behind or near a door has the same function.[31] Although not regarded as a vampire apotropiac, mirrors have been used to ward off vampires when placed facing outwards on a door; it's a well known myth that vampires do not have a reflection and in some cultures, do not cast shadows either, perhaps to express the vampire's lack of a soul.[36] This attribute, although not universal as the Greek vrykolakas/tympanios was capable of both reflection and shadow, was utilized by Bram Stoker in Dracula and has since remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.[37] In addition to apotropaics, some traditions hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited by the owner, although they only have to be invited once as after this they can come and go as they please without further permission.[36]
Traditional methods of destroying vampires are numerous, with the most commonly cited the driving of a wooden, or less commonly metal, stake through the heart. The preferred wood is ash in Russia and the Baltic states,[38] or hawthorn in Serbia,[39] with a record of oak in Silesia.[40] This is thought to have originated in Eastern Europe along with many other vampire legends; unlike today's cloaked and suave vampires, the original revenants were described as largely bloated. Thus the act of piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the vampire; this is similar to the act of burying sharp objects, such as sickles, in with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently whilst transforming into a revenant.[41] Other methods include decapitation or complete incineration of the body. Other than being decapitated, the vampire's head may also have a spike driven through it, often with force so as to pin it to the ground.[42] The act of cutting off the head was also seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul from the body, which in some cultures, was said to linger in the corpse for a prolonged amount of time before dispersing.
Vampires are sometimes endowed with special abilities when described in folklore; some are given great strength, while others the ability to transform not only into a bat, as is often depicted in modern cartoons and film, but rather other familiars such as rats, dogs, wolves, spiders and even moths. An attribute shared by the 19th century literary vampires Lord Ruthven and Varney the Vampire was the ability to be healed by moonlight, although no account of this is known in traditional folklore.[43] Though folkloric vampires thought more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to sunlight. This vulnerability has developed with subsequent vampire fiction.[44]
Tales of the undead consuming the blood or flesh of living beings have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries.[45] Today we know these entities predominantly as vampires, but in ancient times, the term vampire didn't exist; blood drinking and the such like was referred to as the work of demons or spirits, such as Lilith, Empusa, Lamia and other monsters; vampires and the devil were closely linked in many cultures as well. Modern vampire mythology spread from Eastern Europe, however, early vampiric creatures have been described throughout the world — from Europe to Asia, from the Americas to the Pacific. Almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon. Indeed, some of these legends could have given rise to the Eastern European folklore, though they are not strictly considered vampires by historians when using today's definitions.[46][47]
The
The Ancient Greeks had several vampiric beings, often gods or goddesses, who appeared as a precursor to modern vampires, although none were considered as undead. Modern Greek folklore describes the vrykolakas, the Greek equivalent to the East European vampire; however in ancient times there were Lamia, Empusa and striges (strix in Ancient Roman mythology). Over time both the words Empusa and Lamia were changed to the general terms empusae and lamiae meaning witches and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and was described as a demonic, bronze-footed creature. Empusa would feast on blood by transforming into a young woman and seducing men as they slept before drinking their blood. Lamia was the daughter of King Belus and secret lover of the Greek god Zeus. However, when Zeus' wife Hera discovered this infidelity, she killed all of Lamia's offspring; Lamia swore vengeance and began to prey on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood. Like Lamia, the striges, feasted on young children, but also preyed on young men. They were described as having the bodies of crows or birds and were later incorporated into Roman mythology as strix, a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.[49] The Romanian vampire breed Strigoï has no direct relation to the Greek striges, but was derived from the Roman term strix, as is the name of the Albanian Shtriga and the Slavic Strzyga, though myths about these creatures are more similar to their Slavic equivalents.[50][47]
In India, tales of vetalas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses, are found in old Sanskrit folklore. A prominent story tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive vetala. The vetala legends have been compiled in the book Baital Pachisi. The vetala is an undead creature, who like the bat associated with modern day vampirism, hangs upside down on trees found in cremation grounds and cemeteries.[51]
The Ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet in one myth became full of bloodlust after slaughtering humans and was only sated after drinking alcohol colored as blood.
As an example of the prominence of similar legends in later times, it can be noted that 12th century English historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants,[52] which resemble those of Eastern Europe. However, there are scant records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date.[53]
India of later times is also familiar with many vampiric entities. The Bhut or Prét is the soul of a man who died an untimely death.[54] It wanders around animating dead bodies at night, attacking the living much like a ghoul. In northern India, there is the BrahmarākŞhasa, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood. pishacha are other creatures who resemble vampires to an extent. Since Hinduism believes in reincarnation of the soul, it is supposed that leading an unholy or immoral life, sin or suicide, will lead the soul to reincarnate into such evil spirits. This kind of reincarnation does not arise out of birth from a womb, but is achieved directly, and such evil spirits' fate is predetermined as to how they shall achieve liberation from that yoni, and re-enter the world of mortal flesh in the next incarnation.
Despite previous entities having existed as precursors to the vampire we know today, almost all modern vampire mythology comes from Europe, especially the region of Eastern Europe.
The vampire legends of various Slavic peoples do have some common characteristics, but are on the whole rather varied. Some of the more common causes of vampirism include being a magician or an immoral person; suffering an "unnatural" or untimely death such as suicide; excommunication; improper burial rituals; an animal jumping or a bird flying over the corpse or the empty grave (in South Slavic folk belief); and even being born with a caul,[55] teeth or tail, or being conceived on certain days. In southern Russia, people who were known to talk to themselves were believed to be at risk of becoming vampires.[56] Slavic vampires were able to appear as butterflies,[57] echoing an earlier belief of them symbolizing departed souls.[58]
Preventive measures included piercing the body with thorns or stakes, putting sawdust in the coffin (so that the vampire awakens in the evening and is compelled to count every grain of sawdust, which occupies the entire evening, so he will die when at dawn), placing blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, and placing a crucifix in the coffin. In the case of stakes, the general idea was to pierce through the vampire and into the ground below, pinning the body down. Certain people would bury those believed to be potential vampires with scythes above their necks, so the dead would decapitate themselves as they rose.
One Serbian ritual is as follows; after the deceased was taken out of the house, a nail was driven into the floor beneath the bier, and an egg was broken. Two or three elderly women would come to the grave the evening after the funeral, and stick five hawthorn pegs or old knives into the grave: one at the position of the chest of the deceased, and the other four at the positions of his arms and legs. Alternately, they may surround the grave with a red woolen thread, ignite the thread, and wait until it was burnt up.[59]
By one of the customs intended to protect a village from vampires and diseases, twin brothers yoked twin oxen to a plow, and made a furrow with it around the village.
If a noise was heard during night, suspected to be made by a vampire sneaking around someone's house, it was shouted, "Come tomorrow, and I will give you some salt," or "Go, pal, get some fish, and come back."[60]
Vampires could be destroyed by staking, decapitation (sometimes the head would be placed between the feet), burning, repeating the funeral service, sprinkling holy water on the body, or exorcism. In the Balkans, a vampire could also be shot or drowned.
Some traditions spoke of "living vampires" or "people with two souls", a kind of witches capable of leaving their body and engaging in harmful and vampiric activity while sleeping.[61]
South Slavic legends had a number of specific characteristics that set them apart from the others. Most notably, a vampire was believed to pass through several distinct stages in its development. The first 40 days were considered decisive for the making of a vampire. It started out as an invisible shadow and then gradually gained strength from the blood it had sucked, forming a (typically also invisible) jelly-like, boneless mass, and eventually building up a human-like body nearly identical to the one the person had had in life. This development allowed the creature to ultimately leave its grave permanently and begin a new life as an ordinary human. The vampire (who was usually male) was also sexually active and could have children, either from his widow or from a new wife. These could become vampires themselves, but could also have a special ability to see and kill vampires, allowing them to become vampire hunters. The same talent was believed to be found in persons born on
