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{{short description|Undead creature from folklore}} | |||
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{{Other uses}} | |||
{{Featured article}} | |||
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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}} | |||
{{Use British English|date=September 2024}} | |||
], 1897|alt=A black and white painting of a man lying on a table, while a woman is kneeling over him.]] | |||
A '''vampire''' is a ] that subsists by feeding on the ] (generally in the form of ]) of the living. In ], vampires are ] that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods which they inhabited while they were alive. They wore ]s and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. | |||
] from '']'']] | |||
'''Vampires''' are ] or ] creatures said to subsist on ] and/or animal ] (]), often having unnatural powers, heightened bodily functions and the ability to ]. Usually a recently deceased person is made a vampire by being fed vampire blood (in some cases, the person must first be killed by a vampire by draining the body completely of human blood). Some cultures have myths of non-human vampires, such as ]s or animals like ]s, ]s, and ]s. Vampires are often described as having a wide variety of additional powers and character traits, extremely variable in different traditions, and are a frequent subject of folklore, ], and contemporary ]. | |||
Vampiric entities have been ]; the term ''vampire'' was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century ] of a pre-existing folk belief in ] and ] that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wilson |first1=Karina |title=Decomposing Bodies in the 1720s Gave Birth to the First Vampire Panic |journal=] |date=October 23, 2020 |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decomposing-bodies-1720s-gave-birth-first-vampire-panic-180976097/ |access-date=29 October 2024}}</ref> | |||
'''Vampirism''' is the practice of drinking blood. In folklore and popular culture the term generally refers to a belief that one can gain ] powers by drinking human blood. The historical practice of vampirism can generally be considered a more specific and less commonly occurring form of ]. The consumption of another's blood has been used as a tactic of ] intended to terrorize the enemy, and it can be used to reflect various spiritual beliefs. | |||
Local variants in Southeastern Europe were also known by different names, such as '']'' in ], '']'' in ] and '']'' in ], cognate to Italian ''strega'', meaning ']'. | |||
In modern times, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures (such as the '']'') still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of ] after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. ] was linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-to-the-purple-the-st/|title=Born to the Purple: the Story of Porphyria |last=Lane |first=Nick |author-link=Nick Lane |date=16 December 2002 |magazine=] |publisher=]|location=New York City|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170126142231/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-to-the-purple-the-st/|archive-date=26 January 2017|url-status=live|access-date=26 January 2017}}</ref> | |||
In ] the term ''vampirism'' is used to refer to ]es, ]s, ], ]s, and other ]s that prey upon the bodily fluids of other creatures. This term also applies to mythic animals of the same nature, including the ]. | |||
The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of "]" by the English writer ]; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. ]'s 1897 novel '']'' is remembered as the quintessential ] and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend, even though it was published after fellow Irish author ]'s 1872 novel '']''. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire ], still popular in the 21st century, with books, ], television shows, and video games. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the ] genre. | |||
==Etymology== | |||
English ''vampire'' comes from ] ''Vampir'', in turn from early Old ] ''*vąper' '' (where ''ą'' is a ] ''a'', and both ''p'' and ''r' '' are ]), in turn from Old Slavic ''*oper'' (with a nasal ''o'') or ] ''opiri''. According to Slavic linguist Franc Miklošič, the word ultimately comes from Kazan ] ''ubyr'' "witch". | |||
== |
== Etymology and word distribution == | ||
The exact ] is unclear.<ref name="Tokarev">{{cite book |last=Tokarev |first=Sergei Aleksandrovich |author-link=Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev |title=Mify Narodov Mira |publisher=Moscow |year=1982 |location=Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya |language=ru |oclc=7576647}} ("Myths of the Peoples of the World"). Upyr'</ref><ref name="Vasmer">{{cite web |title=Russian Etymological Dictionary by Max Vasmer |url=http://vasmer.narod.ru/p752.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060504222030/http://vasmer.narod.ru/p752.htm |archive-date=4 May 2006 |access-date=13 June 2006 |language=ru}}</ref> The term "vampire" is the earliest recorded in English, Latin and French and they refer to vampirism in Russia, Poland and North Macedonia.<ref>Katharina M. Wilson (1985). ''The History of the Word "Vampire"'' Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 46. p. 583</ref> The ] term was derived (possibly via ] {{lang|fr|vampyre}}) from the ] {{lang|de|Vampir}}, in turn, derived in the early 18th century from the ] {{lang|sr|вампир}} ({{transl|sr|vampir}}).<ref name=Grimm>{{cite web|url=http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/wbgui?lemid=GV00025|title=Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. (in 32 Teilbänden). Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1854–1960|access-date=13 June 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070926215950/http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb/wbgui?lemid=GV00025|archive-date=26 September 2007 |language=de}}</ref><ref name=MW>{{cite web|title=Vampire|publisher=Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary|url=http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/vampire|access-date=13 June 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060614081137/http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/vampire|archive-date=14 June 2006}}</ref><ref name=Tresor>{{cite web|url=http://stella.atilf.fr/Dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/affart.exe?44;s=2356384875;?b=0;|title=Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé|access-date=13 June 2006|language=fr|archive-date=30 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171230114722/http://stella.atilf.fr/Dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/affart.exe?44%3Bs=2356384875%3B%3Fb%3D0%3B|url-status=live}}</ref> Though this being a popular explanation, a pagan worship of ''upyri'' was already recorded in Old Russian in the 11–13th century.<ref>{{cite web |script-title=ru:Рыбаков Б.А. Язычество древних славян / М.: Издательство 'Наука,' 1981 г. |url=http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000031/index.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101226063300/http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000031/index.shtml |archive-date=26 December 2010 |access-date=28 February 2007 |language=ru}}</ref><ref name="period">{{cite journal |last=Зубов |first=Н.И. |year=1998 |script-title=ru:Загадка Периодизации Славянского Язычества В Древнерусских Списках "Слова Св. Григория ... О Том, Како Первое Погани Суще Языци, Кланялися Идолом ..." |url=http://kapija.narod.ru/Ethnoslavistics/zub_period.htm |url-status=dead |journal=Живая Старина |language=ru |volume=1 |issue=17 |pages=6–10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070225025712/http://kapija.narod.ru/Ethnoslavistics/zub_period.htm |archive-date=25 February 2007 |access-date=28 February 2007}}</ref> Some claim an origin from ].<ref>Matthew Bunson: ''Das Buch der Vampire.'' Scherz Verlag, p. 273 and following</ref><ref>Norbert Borrmann: ''Vampirismus oder die Sehnsucht nach Unsterblichkeit''. Diederichs Verlag, p. 13</ref> Oxford and others<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Wilson |first=Katharina M. |date=1985 |title=The History of the Word "Vampire" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709546 |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=577–583 |doi=10.2307/2709546 |jstor=2709546 |issn=0022-5037}}</ref> maintain a Turkish origin (from Turkish ''uber,'' meaning "witch"<ref name=":2" />), which passed to English via Hungarian and French derivation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=vampire |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803115137575#:~:text=The%20word%20comes%20(in%20the,an%20abbreviation%20of%20this%20word. |access-date=2024-09-14 |website=Oxford Reference |language=en |archive-date=14 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240914220052/https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803115137575#:~:text=The%20word%20comes%20(in%20the,an%20abbreviation%20of%20this%20word. |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=vampire |url=https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/vampire |website=Oxford Learner's Dictionary |access-date=14 September 2024 |archive-date=9 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240609224915/https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/vampire |url-status=live }}</ref> In addition, others sustain that the modern word "Vampire" is derived from the ] and ] languages form "онпыр (onpyr)", with the addition of the "v" sound in front of the large nasal vowel (on), characteristic of Old Bulgarian.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> Parallels are found in virtually all ] and ] languages: ] and ] {{lang|mk|вампир}} ({{transl|mk|vampir}}), ]: {{lang|tr|Ubır, Obur, Obır}}, ]: {{lang|tt|Убыр}} ({{transl|tt|Ubır}}), ]: {{lang|cv|Вупăр}} ({{transl|cv|Vupăr}}), ]: {{lang|bs|вампир}} ({{transl|bs|vampir}}), ] {{lang|fr|vampir}}, ] and ] {{lang|cs|upír}}, ] {{lang|pl|wąpierz}}, and (perhaps ]-influenced) {{lang|zle|upiór}}, ] {{lang|uk|упир}} ({{transl|uk|upyr}}), ] {{lang|ru|упырь}} ({{transl|ru|upyr'}}), ] {{lang|be|упыр}} ({{transl|be|upyr}}), from ] {{lang|orv|упирь}} ({{transl|orv|upir'}}) (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). In ] the words {{lang|sq|lu(v)gat}} and {{lang|sq|dhampir}} are used; the latter seems to be derived from the ] words {{lang|aln|dham}} 'tooth' and {{lang|aln|pir}} 'to drink'.<ref>{{cite web |last=Husić |first=Geoff |title=A Vampire by Any Other Name |url=https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/6213/vampire_exhibit_catalog_2010.pdf;jsessionid=5B6036D02A0A800372E52679CB932EA0?sequence=3 |access-date=21 April 2022 |archive-date=20 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220820024335/https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/6213/vampire_exhibit_catalog_2010.pdf;jsessionid=5B6036D02A0A800372E52679CB932EA0?sequence=3 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Vasmer" /> The origin of the modern word Vampire (] means ], Vampire or ] in ] and ] myths.) comes from the term Ubir-Upiór, the origin of the word Ubir or Upiór is based on the regions around the ] and ]. Upiór myth is through the migrations of the ]-] people to the ] allegedly spread. The Bulgarian format is впир (vpir, other names: onpyr, vopir, vpir, upir, upierz).<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last1=Yaltırık |first1=Mehmet Berk |title=Turkish: Türk Kültüründe Vampirler, English translation: Vampires in Turkic Culture |last2=Sarpkaya |first2=Seçkin |publisher=Karakum Yayınevi |year=2018 |pages=43–49 |language=Turkish}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{in lang|bg}}Mladenov, Stefan (1941). Etimologičeski i pravopisen rečnik na bǎlgarskiya knižoven ezik.</ref> | |||
Czech linguist ] proposes Slovak verb {{lang|sk|vrepiť sa}} 'stick to, thrust into', or its hypothetical anagram {{lang|sk|vperiť sa}} (in Czech, the archaic verb {{lang|cs|vpeřit}} means 'to thrust violently') as an etymological background, and thus translates {{lang|cs|upír}} as 'someone who thrusts, bites'.<ref>MACHEK, V.: Etymologický slovník jazyka českého, 5th edition, NLN, Praha 2010</ref> The term was introduced to German readers by the Polish Jesuit priest ] in 1721.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wilson |first=Katharina M. |date=1985 |title=The History of the Word "Vampire" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709546 |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=577–583 |doi=10.2307/2709546 |jstor=2709546 |issn=0022-5037}}</ref> | |||
Tales of the dead craving blood are ancient in nearly every culture around the world. Vampire-like ] called the ] are mentioned in early ]. These female demons were said to roam during the hours of darkness, hunting and killing newborn babies and pregnant women. One of these demons, named ], was later adapted into ] as Lilith. Lilitu/Lilith is sometimes called the mother of all vampires. For further information, see the article on ]. | |||
The word ''vampire'' (as ''vampyre'') first appeared in English in 1732, in news reports about vampire "epidemics" in eastern Europe.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Modern Vampire and Human Identity |date=2013 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-349-35069-8 |editor-last=Mutch |editor-first=Deborah |page=3}}</ref>{{efn|1=Vampires had already been discussed in ]<ref>{{cite book|first=Keir|last=Vermeir|date=January 2012|chapter=Vampires as Creatures of the Imagination: Theories of Body, Soul, and Imagination in Early Modern Vampire Tracts (1659–1755)|editor-first=Y|editor-last=Haskell|title=Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period|publisher=]|location=Tunhout, Belgium|isbn=978-2-503-52796-3}}</ref> and ].<ref name=barber5/>}} After Austria gained control of northern ] and ] with the ] in 1718, officials noted the local practice of ] bodies and "killing vampires".<ref name="barber5">Barber, p. 5.</ref> These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.<ref name="barber5" /><ref name="Dauzat 1938">{{cite book |last=Dauzat |first=Albert |title=Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française |publisher=Librairie Larousse |year=1938 |location=Paris, France |language=fr |oclc=904687}}</ref> | |||
The Ancient Egyptian goddess ] in one ] became full of blood lust after slaughtering humans and was only sated after drinking ] colored as blood. | |||
== Folk beliefs == | |||
In ] '']'', the ] that ] meets on his journey to the ] are lured to the blood of freshly sacrificed rams, a fact which Odysseus uses to his advantage to summon the shade of ]. Roman tales describe the ], a nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood. The Roman ] is the source of the ] vampire, the '']'', which was also influenced by the ] vampire, and the ] ]. | |||
{{see also|List of vampiric creatures in folklore}} | |||
The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the ]ns, ], ], ] and ] had tales of ]s and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century ],<ref name="SU223">{{cite book|first1=Alain|last1=Silver|first2=James|last2=Ursini|date=1997|title=The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Interview with the Vampire|pages=22–23|location=New York City|publisher=]|isbn=978-0-87910-395-8}}</ref> when ] of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are ]s of evil beings, ] victims, or ], but they can also be created by a ] ] a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even ]s of people believed to be vampires.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=271–274}} | |||
=== Description and common attributes === | |||
In early Slavic folklore, a vampire drank blood, was afraid of (but could not be killed by) ] and could be destroyed by cutting off its head and putting it between the corpse's legs or by putting a wooden stake into its heart. | |||
]'' (1895) by ]|alt=A painting of a woman with red hair.]] | |||
It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire, though there are several elements common to many European legends. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood, which was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin, and its left eye was often open.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=41–42}} It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=2}} Chewing sounds were reported emanating from graves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Calmet |first=Augustin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wh9wDwAAQBAJ&dq=It+is+an+opinion+widely+spread+in+Germany%2C+that+certain+dead+persons+chew+in+their+graves%2C+and+devour+whatever+may+be+close+to+them%3B+that+they+are+even+heard+to+eat+like+pigs%2C+with+a+certain+low+cry%2C+and+as+if+growling+and+grunting.&pg=PA460 |title=The Phantom World |date=2018 |orig-date=1751 |publisher=BoD – Books on Demand |isbn=978-3-7340-3275-2 |language=en}}</ref> | |||
==== Creating vampires ==== | |||
] historians and chroniclers ] and ] recorded the ] of vampires in the ]. | |||
]'s '']'' (1934)|alt=An image of a woman kissing a man with wings.]] | |||
The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. In ] and ], any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=33}} A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was also at risk. In ], vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the ] while they were alive.<ref name="Strange & Amazing">{{cite book|author=Reader's Digest Association|title=The Reader's Digest Book of strange stories, amazing facts: stories that are bizarre, unusual, odd, astonishing, incredible ... but true|year=1988|publisher=]|location=New York City|isbn=978-0-949819-89-5|pages=432–433|chapter=Vampires Galore!}}</ref> | |||
Many vampire legends also bear similarities to ]s regarding ] or ] | |||
In ], the ] is the hybrid child of the {{transl|sq|]}} (a ] creature with an iron ] shirt) or the {{transl|sq|]}} (a water-dwelling ] or monster). The dhampir sprung of a ''karkanxholl'' has the unique ability to discern the ''karkanxholl''; from this derives the expression ''the dhampir knows the lugat''. The lugat cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the dhampir, who himself is usually the son of a lugat. In different regions, animals can be revenants as lugats; also, living people during their sleep. {{transl|sq|Dhampiraj}} is also an Albanian surname.<ref>{{cite book |last=Albanologjike |first=Gjurmime |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O5biAAAAMAAJ&q=dhampiri |title=Folklor dhe etnologji |date=1985 |volume=15 |pages=58–148 |language=sq |access-date=12 January 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160519060955/https://books.google.com/books?id=O5biAAAAMAAJ&q=dhampiri |archive-date=19 May 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
In popular western culture, vampires are depicted as unaging (or aging very slowly), intelligent, and mystically endowed in many ways. The vampire typically has a variety of notable abilities. These include great strength and immunity to any lasting effect of any injury by mundane means, with specific exceptions. | |||
==== Prevention ==== | |||
It is believed that vampires have no reflection, as traditionally it was thought that mirrors reflected your soul and creatures of evil have no soul. Fiction has extended this belief to an actual aversion to mirrors, as depicted in ]'s novel '']'' when the vampire casts Harker's shaving mirror out of the window. | |||
Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as ]s or ]s,{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=50–51}} 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 resembles the ] practice of placing an ] to pay the toll to cross the ] in the underworld. The coin may have also been intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore. This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the '']'', in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "] conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lawson|first=John Cuthbert|title=Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion|url=https://archive.org/details/moderngreekfolkl00laws|pages=–06|year=1910|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|oclc=1465746|isbn=978-0-524-02024-1}}</ref> | |||
Other methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the ] or placing ] seeds, ], or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains,{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=49}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Abbott |first=George |year=1903 |title=Macedonian Folklore |url=https://archive.org/details/macedonianfolkl01abbogoog/page/n226/mode/2up |page=219|publisher=Cambridge, University press }}</ref> indicating an association of vampires with ]. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampiric being came across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a theme encountered in ], as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings.<ref name=Jaramillo>{{cite book|last=Jaramillo Londoño|first=Agustín|title=Testamento del paisa|year=1986|orig-year=1967|edition=7th|publisher=Susaeta Ediciones|location=Medellín|isbn=978-958-95125-0-0|language=es}}</ref> | |||
== Folk beliefs in vampires == | |||
==== Identifying vampires ==== | |||
It seems that until the 19th century, vampires in Europe were thought to be hideous monsters rather than the debonair vampire made popular by later fictional treatments. They were usually believed to rise from the bodies of suicide victims, criminals, or evil magicians, though in some cases an initial vampire thus "born of sin" could pass on his vampirism onto his innocent victims. In other cases, however, a victim of an untimely or cruel death was susceptible of becoming a vampire. Most of the European vampire myths have Slavic and/or Romanian origins. | |||
Many rituals were used to identify a vampire. One method of finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse would supposedly balk at the grave in question.<ref name="Strange & Amazing"/> Generally a black horse was required, though in Albania it should be white.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=68–69}} Holes appearing in the earth over a grave were taken as a sign of vampirism.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=125}} | |||
Corpses thought to be vampires were generally described as having a healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs of decomposition.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=109}} In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its face.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=114–115}} 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 ]-styled activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects,{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=96}} and ] on people in their sleep.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|pp=168–169}} | |||
===Slavic vampires=== | |||
==== Protection ==== | |||
The ] including most east Europeans from ] to ], ] to ], have the richest vampire folklore and legends in the world. The Slavs came from north of the ] and were closely associated with the ]. Prior to ] they migrated north and west to where they are now. | |||
{{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=240 | |||
| image1 = GarlicBasket.jpg|width1=1600|height1=1200 | |||
| image2 = Thebible33.jpg|width2=1600|height2=1200 | |||
| image3 = Salzburg Kajetanerkirche Weihwasserbecken.jpg|width3=1600|height3=1200 | |||
| image4 = Johann Jacob Kirstein 001.JPG|width4=1600|height4=1200 | |||
| footer = Garlic, Bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, holy water, and mirrors have all been seen in various folkloric traditions as ] or identifying vampires.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=6}}<ref name="Burkhardt221"/> | |||
}} | |||
]—items able to ward off ]s—are common in vampire folklore. ] is a common example;{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=63}} a branch of ] and ] are sometimes associated with causing harm to vampires, and in Europe, ]s would be sprinkled on the roof of a house to keep them away.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mappin|first=Jenni|title=Didjaknow: Truly Amazing & Crazy Facts About ... Everything|year=2003|publisher=Pancake|location=Australia|isbn=978-0-330-40171-5|page=50}}</ref> Other apotropaics include sacred items, such as ], ], or ]. Some folklore also states that vampires are unable to walk on ], such as that of churches or temples, or cross running water.<ref name="Burkhardt221">{{cite book |last=Burkhardt |first=Dagmar |title=Beiträge zur Südosteuropa-Forschung: Anlässlich des I. Internationalen Balkanologenkongresses in Sofia 26. VIII.-1. IX. 1966 |chapter=Vampirglaube und Vampirsage auf dem Balkan |year=1966 |publisher=Rudolf Trofenik |location=Munich |oclc=1475919 |language=de | page=221}}</ref> | |||
] began almost as soon as they arrived in their new homelands. But through the ] and ] centuries the ] and the western ] were struggling with each other for supremacy. They formally broke in ], with the Bulgarians, Russians, and Serbians staying Orthodox, while the Poles, Czechs, and Croatians went Roman. This split caused a big difference in the development of vampire lore - the Roman church believed incorrupt bodies were saints, while the ] believed they were vampires. | |||
Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, ]s have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire's lack of a ] or their weakness to silver).<ref name=EoOc>{{cite book|last=Spence|first=Lewis|title=An Encyclopaedia of Occultism|year=1960|publisher=University Books|location=New Hyde Parks|oclc=3417655|isbn=978-0-486-42613-6}}</ref> This attribute is not universal (the Greek ''vrykolakas/tympanios'' was capable of both reflection and shadow), but was used by Bram Stoker in ''Dracula'' and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|p=25}} | |||
Causes of vampirism included being born with a caul, teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, irregular death, excommunication, improper burial rituals etc. Preventative measures included: placing a crucifix in the coffin, or blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, or piercing the body with thorns or stakes. | |||
Some traditions also hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited by the owner; after the first invitation they can come and go as they please.<ref name=EoOc/> Though folkloric vampires were believed to be more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to ].{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|p=25}} | |||
Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighbourhood included death of cattle, sheep, relatives, neighbours, exhumed bodies being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, or if the body was swelled up like a drum, or there was blood on the mouth and if the corpse had a ruddy complexion. | |||
Reports in 1693 and 1694 concerning citings of vampires in Poland and Russia claimed that when a vampire's grave was recognized, eating bread baked with its blood mixed into the flour,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Calmet |first=Augustin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1GqcY9ow3QC&dq=There+proceeds+from+his+body+a+great+quantity+of+blood%2C+which+some+mix+up+with+flour+to+make+bread+of%3B+and+that+bread+eaten+in+ordinary+protects+them+from+being+tormented+by+the+spirit%2C+which+returns+no+more.&pg=PA273 |title=The Phantom World: The History and Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, &c., &c |date=1850 |publisher=A. Hart |page=273}}</ref> or simply drinking it, granted the possibility of protection. Other stories (primarily the ] case) claimed the eating of dirt from the vampire's grave would have the same effect.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Calmet |first=Augustin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1GqcY9ow3QC&dq=but+that+he+had+found+means+to+cure+himself+by+eating+earth+from+the+grave+of+the+vampire%2C&pg=PA265 |title=The Phantom World: The History and Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, &c., &c |date=1850 |publisher=A. Hart |page=265}}</ref> | |||
Vampires could be destroyed by staking, ] (the Kashubs placed the head between the feet), ], repeating the funeral service, ] on the grave or ]. | |||
==== Methods of destruction ==== | |||
===Romanian vampires=== | |||
] | |||
Methods of destroying suspected vampires varied, with ] the most commonly cited method, particularly in South Slavic cultures.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=73}} ] was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states,<ref>{{cite book|last=Alseikaite-Gimbutiene|first=Marija|author-link=Marija Gimbutas|title=Die Bestattung in Litauen in der vorgeschichtlichen Zeit|year=1946|location=Tübingen|oclc=1059867|language=de}} (thesis).</ref> or ] in Serbia,<ref name="Vuk59">{{cite journal|last=Vukanović|first=T.P.|year=1959|title=The Vampire|journal=Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society|volume=38|pages=111–18}}</ref> with a record of ] in ].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Klapper|first=Joseph|title=Die schlesischen Geschichten von den schädingenden Toten|journal=Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde|volume=11|pages=58–93|year=1909|language=de}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Calmet|first1=Augustin|title=Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2016|isbn=978-1-5331-4568-0|page=7|date=30 December 2015|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform }}</ref> ] was also used for stakes, as it was believed that ] was made from aspen (aspen branches on the graves of purported vampires were also believed to prevent their risings at night).<ref>{{cite book|author=Theresa Cheung|title=The Element Encyclopedia of Vampires|publisher=HarperCollins UK|year=2013|page=35|isbn=978-0-00-752473-0}}</ref> Potential vampires were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany<ref>{{cite book|last=Löwenstimm|first=A.|title=Aberglaube und Stafrecht|page=99|year=1897|publisher=Berlin|language=de}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Bachtold-Staubli|first=H.|title=Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens|year=1934–1935|publisher=Berlin|language=de}}</ref> and the stomach in north-eastern Serbia.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Filipovic|first=Milenko|year=1962|title=Die Leichenverbrennung bei den Südslaven|journal=Wiener Völkerkundliche Mitteilungen|volume=10|pages=61–71|language=de}}</ref> Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated vampire. This is similar to a practice of "]": burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=158}} | |||
] was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the ] or away from the body.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=73}} This act was seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul, which in some cultures was said to linger in the corpse. The vampire's head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to prevent rising.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=157}} | |||
Tales of vampiric entities were also found among the ] and among the Romanized inhabitants of eastern Europe, ] (known as ] in historical context). ] is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising that Romanian vampires are similar to the Slavic vampire. Yet they are called ] based on the Roman term ''strix'' for screech owl which also came to mean ] or ]. | |||
] | |||
There are different types of ''strigoi'' : ''strigoi vii'' are live witches who will become vampires after death. They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches or with ''Strigoi morţi'' who are dead vampires. The ''strigoi morţi'' are the reanimated bodies which return to suck the blood of family, livestock, and neighbours. | |||
] drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. In a 16th-century burial near ], a brick forced into the mouth of a female corpse has been interpreted as a vampire-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006.<ref>Reported by Ariel David, "Italy dig unearths female 'vampire' in Venice", 13 March 2009, ] via ], ; also by Reuters, published under the headline "Researchers find remains that support medieval 'vampire'" in ''The Australian'', 13 March 2009, with photo (scroll down).</ref> In ], over 100 skeletons with metal objects, such as ] bits, embedded in the torso have been discovered.<ref name="bulg">{{cite web | url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18334106 | title='Vampire' skeletons found in Bulgaria near Black Sea | work=BBC News | date=6 June 2012 | access-date=22 October 2019 | archive-date=24 April 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424154013/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18334106 | url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In Southeastern Europe, a vampire could also be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by sprinkling ] on the body, or by ]. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 19th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the ] was taken. For resistant cases, the body was ] and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure. In ] of Germany, a ] was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=154}} | |||
A person born with a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire, as was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or who was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. And naturally, being bitten by vampire, meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death. | |||
=== Ancient beliefs === | |||
The ''Vârcolac'' which is sometimes mentioned in folklore was more closely related to a mythological wolf that could devour the sun and moon (similar to ] in ]), and later became connected with werewolves rather than vampires. The person afflicted with ] could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf. | |||
]'', 1887 by ]. Stories of Lilith depict her as a demon drinking blood.|alt=A painting of a naked woman with a snake wrapped around her.]] | |||
Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood or flesh of the living have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries.<ref>{{cite book|last1=McNally|first1=Raymond T.|last2=Florescu|first2=Radu|title=In Search of Dracula|year=1994|publisher=]|location=Boston, Massachusetts|isbn=978-0-395-65783-6|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/insearchofdracul00mcna/page/117}}</ref> The term ''vampire'' did not exist in ancient times. ] and similar activities were attributed to ]s or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the ] was considered synonymous with the vampire.{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=24–25}} Almost every culture associates blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India tales of ], ghoulish beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the '']''; a prominent story in the '']'' tells of King ] and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one.<ref>{{cite book|last=Burton|first=Sir Richard R.|author-link=Richard Francis Burton|title=Vikram and The Vampire: Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance|orig-year=1870|year=1893|publisher=Tylston and Edwards|location=London|url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vav/vav00.htm|access-date=28 September 2007|isbn=978-0-89281-475-6|archive-date=7 November 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111107164840/http://sacred-texts.com/goth/vav/vav00.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> '']'', the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=200}} | |||
The ] were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated ] shards.{{sfn|Marigny|1994|p=14}} Ancient ] and ] had tales of the mythical ],<ref name="Hurwitz"/> synonymous with and giving rise to ] (] לילית) and her daughters the ] from ]. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies,<ref name="Hurwitz">{{cite book |last=Hurwitz |first=Siegmund |others=Gela Jacobson (trans.) |pages=39–51 |year=1992 |orig-year=1980 |title=Lilith, the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine |location=Einsiedeln, Switzerland |isbn=978-3-85630-522-2 |publisher=Daimon Verlag}}</ref> and ], female shapeshifting, blood-drinking demons, were said to roam the night among the population, seeking victims. According to ], estries were creatures created in the twilight hours before ]. An injured estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given to her by her attacker.<ref>{{cite web|last=Shael|first=Rabbi|url=http://shaelsiegel.blogspot.com/2009/06/vampires-einstein-and-jewish-folklore.html|title=Rabbi Shael Speaks ... Tachles: Vampires, Einstein and Jewish Folklore|website=Shaelsiegel.blogspot.com|date=1 June 2009|access-date=5 December 2010|archive-date=5 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181005071949/http://shaelsiegel.blogspot.com/2009/06/vampires-einstein-and-jewish-folklore.html|url-status=live}}</ref><!-- covers previous two sentences --> | |||
The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of ] (] ], ] ]), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St Georges Day is still celebrated in ]. | |||
] described the ]e,{{sfn|Graves|1990|pp=189–190}} the ],{{sfn|Graves|1990|pp=205–206}} the ]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theoi.com/Phasma/Empousai.html |title=Philostr Vit. Apoll. iv. 25; Suid. s. v. |access-date=24 October 2020 |archive-date=27 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201027063134/https://www.theoi.com/Phasma/Empousai.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and the ]. Over time the first two terms became general words to describe witches and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess ] and was described as a demonic, ]-footed creature. She feasted on blood by transforming into a young woman and seduced men as they slept before drinking their blood.{{sfn|Graves|1990|pp=189–190}} The Lamia preyed on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood, as did the ''gelloudes'' or ].{{sfn|Graves|1990|pp=205–206}} Like the Lamia, the ''striges'' feasted on children, but also preyed on adults. They were described as having the bodies of crows or birds in general, and were later incorporated into Roman mythology as ''strix'', a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Oliphant|first=Samuel Grant|date= 1913|title=The Story of the Strix: Ancient|journal=Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association|volume=44|pages=133–49|doi=10.2307/282549|issn=0065-9711|jstor=282549}}</ref> | |||
A vampire in the grave could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing who didn't eat it. | |||
In ], an ''ubır'' is a vampiric creature characterized by various regional depictions. According to legends, individuals heavily steeped in sin and practitioners of ] transform into ubırs upon their death, taking on a bestial form within their graves. Ubırs possess the ability to shape-shift, assuming the forms of both humans and various animals. Furthermore, they can seize the soul of a living being and exert control over its body. Someone inhabited by a vampire constantly experiences hunger, becoming increasingly aggressive when unable to find sustenance, ultimately resorting to drinking human blood.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |date=2023-08-25 |title=Ubır: A Vampire-Like Creature in Turkic Mythology and Folk Beliefs |url=https://ulukayin.org/ubir-english/ |access-date=2024-01-26 |website=ULUKAYIN English |language=en-US |archive-date=26 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240126093031/https://ulukayin.org/ubir-english/ |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
Graves were often opened three years after death of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism. | |||
=== Medieval and later European folklore === | |||
Measures to prevent a person becoming a vampire included, removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle, especially on ] & St Andrew's days. | |||
{{main|Vampire folklore by region}} | |||
] | |||
Many myths surrounding vampires originated during the ]. With the arrival of ] in ], and other parts of ], the vampire "began to take on decidedly Christian characteristics."<ref name="Hansen2011">{{cite book|author=Regina Hansen|title=Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery|date=3 May 2011|publisher=]|language=English|isbn=978-0786464746|quote=After the arrival of Christianity in Greece, however, the vampire began to take on decidedly Christian characteristics. The vampire was now no longer a demon from a supernatural realm but a reanimated corpse, a dead person who retained a semblance of life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had arisen after His death and burial and appeared before His followers. The transformation of vampire myths to include Christian elements happened throughout Europe; as various regions converted to Christianity, their vampires also became "Christianized" (Beresford 42, 44–51).}}</ref> As various regions of the continent ], the vampire was viewed as "a dead person who retained a semblance of life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had risen after His death and burial and appeared before His followers."<ref name="Hansen2011"/> In the ], the ]es reinterpreted vampires from their previous folk existence into minions of ], and used an ] to communicate a doctrine to ]: "Just as a vampire takes a sinner's very spirit into itself by drinking his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ's blood take the divine spirit into himself."<ref name="Joshi2010">{{cite book|author= S. T. Joshi=|title=Encyclopædia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture|date=4 November 2010|publisher=]|language=English|isbn=978-0313378331|quote=The church had by this time co-opted vampires from their previous folk existence and reinterpreted them as minions of the Christian devil, so it was an easy enough analogy to draw: Just as a vampire takes a sinner's very spirit into itself by drinking his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ's blood take the divine spirit into himself.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author= Regina Hansen|title=Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery|date=3 May 2011|publisher=]|language=English|isbn=978-0786464746|quote=Perhaps the strongest link between vampires and Christianity is the importance of blood in the Christian, especially the Roman Catholic, tradition. Just as the vampire must consume blood in order to continue its unnaturally eternal life, so Christians must consume the blood of Jesus to be granted salvation and life after death.}}</ref> The interpretation of vampires under the Christian Churches established connotations that are still associated in the vampire genre today.<ref name="LarssonSteiner2011">{{cite book|author= Mariah Larsson, Ann Steiner|title=Interdisciplinary Approaches to Twilight: Studies in Fiction, Media and a Contemporary Cultural Experience|date=1 December 2011|publisher=Nordic Academic Press|language=English|isbn=978-9185509638|quote=The fear of vampirism embodied in these early conceptions was used by the Church in order to impose its fundamental values on soviety. The Church therefore changed some of the typical vampire traits and gave them more religious connotations that are still very much in evidence in the vampire genre today. For example, the destruction of the vampire became a religious rite; crucifixes and holy water bestowed protection; and drinking the blood of a sinner strengthened the power of the Devil, while taking Communion afforded the communicant protection. Besides their roots in folklore and the influence of Christianity, vampire traits were shaped in the development of vampire literature.}}</ref> For example, the "ability of the cross to hurt and ward off vampires is distinctly due to its Christian association."<ref name="Stevenson2003">{{cite book|author= Gregory Stevenson|title=Televised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer|year=2003|publisher=]|language=English|isbn=0761828338|quote=If so, then the ability of the cross to hurt and ward off vampires is distinctly due to its Christian association.}}</ref><ref name="Holte1997">{{cite book|author= James Craig Holte|title=Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations|year=1997|publisher=]|language=English|isbn=0313292159|quote=Christian belief played an important part in the development of vampire lore. According to Montague Summers, who describes the Christian position in detail in ''The Vampire: His Kith and Kin'', Christianity accepts the existence of vampires and sees the power of the devil behind their creation. Since vampires are servants of Satan, the Church has power over them. Thus vampires flee from and can be destroyed by the crucifix, relics of saints, the sign of the cross, holy water, and above all, a consecrated host.}}</ref> | |||
The 12th-century British historians and chroniclers ] and ] recorded accounts of revenants,{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=271–274}}<ref>{{cite web|author=William of Newburgh|author2=Paul Halsall|author-link=William of Newburgh|title=Book 5, Chapter 22–24|website=Historia rerum Anglicarum|publisher=Fordham University|year=2000|access-date=16 October 2007|url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html|archive-date=19 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140219150159/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html|url-status=live}}</ref> though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant.{{sfn|Jones|1931|p=121}} The ] '']'' is another medieval example of an undead creature with similarities to vampires.<ref>{{cite journal | first=Ármann | last=Jakobsson |year=2009 | title=The Fearless Vampire Killers: A Note about the Icelandic ''Draugr'' and Demonic Contamination in ''Grettis Saga'' | journal=Folklore | issue=120 | page=309}}</ref> Vampiric beings were rarely written about in Jewish literature; the 16th-century rabbi ] (Radbaz) wrote of an uncharitable old woman whose body was unguarded and unburied for three days after she died and rose as a vampiric entity, killing hundreds of people. He linked this event to the lack of a '']'' (guarding) after death as the corpse could be a vessel for evil spirits.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Soul, Evil Spirits, and the Undead: Vampires, Death, and Burial in Jewish Folklore and Law|last1=Epstein|first1=Saul|last2=Robinson|first2=Sara Libby|journal=Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural|year=2012|volume=1|issue=2|pages=232–51|doi=10.5325/preternature.1.2.0232|issn=2161-2188}}</ref> | |||
To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the ] people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and given to family members as a cure. | |||
In 1645, the Greek librarian of the Vatican, ], produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work ''De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus'' ("On certain modern opinions among the Greeks").<ref>{{cite book| last = Melton| first= J. Gordon | title= The Vampire Book: The encyclopedia of the Undead | pages=9–10 | isbn=978-1-57859-350-7| publisher= Visible Ink Press | year= 2010}}</ref> Vampires properly originating in folklore were widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=5–9}} An early recording of the time came from the region of ] in modern ], in 1672; Local reports described a panic among the villagers inspired by the belief that ] had become a vampire after dying in 1656, drinking blood from victims and sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be driven through his heart. Later, his corpse was also beheaded.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bohn |first1=Thomas M. |title=The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth |date=2019 |publisher=Berghahn Books |location=Cologne |isbn=978-1-78920-293-9 |pages=47–49}}</ref><!-- cites previous 3 sentences --> | |||
===Roma and vampires=== | |||
].]] | |||
Even today, ] frequently feature in vampire fiction and film, no doubt influenced by ]'s book "]" in which the Szgany Roma served ], carrying his boxes of earth and guarding him. | |||
From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, a subject resumed by Otto in 1732, and then by ] in 1734. The subject was based on the observation that when digging up graves, it was discovered that some corpses had at some point either devoured the interior fabric of their coffin or their own limbs.<ref name=marigny93>{{cite book|last1=Marigny|first1=Jean|title=Sang pour Sang, Le Réveil des Vampires, Gallimard, coll|date=1993|isbn=978-2-07-053203-2|pages=50–52|publisher=Gallimard }}</ref> Ranft described in his treatise of a tradition in some parts of Germany, that to prevent the dead from masticating they placed a mound of dirt under their chin in the coffin, placed a piece of money and a stone in the mouth, or tied a handkerchief tightly around the throat.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Calmet|first1=Augustin|title=Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2015|date=1751|isbn=978-1-5331-4568-0|pages=442–443|title-link=Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform }}</ref> In 1732 an anonymous writer writing as "the doctor Weimar" discusses the non-putrefaction of these creatures, from a theological point of view.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lecouteux|first1=Claude|title=Historie des vampires: Autopsie d'un mythe|date=1993|publisher=Imago|location=Paris|isbn=978-2-911416-29-3|pages=9–10}}</ref> In 1733, Johann Christoph Harenberg wrote a general treatise on vampirism and the ] cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen also address the topic.<ref name=marigny93/> | |||
Some theological disputes arose. The non-decay of vampires' bodies could recall the incorruption of the bodies of the saints of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Indeed, vampires were traditionally considered highly problematic within Christianity, as their apparent immortal existence ran against the Christian belief that all true believers may look forward to an eternal existence with body and soul as they were ], but only at the end of time when Jesus ]. Those who are resurrected as immortal before this are thus in no way part of the divine plan of salvation. The imperfect state of the vampire body and how they, in spite of their immortal nature, still needed to feed of the blood of the living, further reflected the problematic aspect of the vampires. Contrary to how the incorruptible saints foreshadowed the immortality promised all true Christians at the end of time, the immortality of the undead vampires was thus not a sign of salvation, but of perdition.<ref name=Endsjø>{{cite book|last=Endsjø|first=Dag Øistein|title=Flesh and Bones Forever: A History of Immortality|year=2023|publisher=Apocryphile Press|location=Hannacroix|isbn=978-1-958061-36-7|pages=178–179}}</ref> The unholy dimension of vampirism may also be reflected in how, in parts of Russia, the very word ], ''eretik'', was synonymous with a vampire. Whoever denied God or his commandments became an ''eretik'' after his death, the improperly immortal figure that wandered the night in search of people to feed on.<ref>Felix J. Oinas 1978. "Heretics as vampires and demons in Russia" in The Slavic and East European Journal 22:4 (1978):433</ref> A paragraph on vampires was included in the second edition (1749) of ''De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione'', On the ] of the servants of God and on ] of the blessed, written by Prospero Lambertini (]).<ref>{{cite book|author=Lambertini, P.|year=1749|title=De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione|volume=Pars prima|chapter= XXXI|pages=323–24}}</ref> In his opinion, while the ] of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear". In other words, vampires did not exist.<ref>{{cite journal|author=de Ceglia F.P.|title=The Archbishop's Vampires. Giuseppe Davanzati's Dissertation and the Reaction of Scientific Italian Catholicism to the Moravian Events|journal= Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences|volume=61|issue=166/167|year=2011|pages=487–510|doi=10.1484/J.ARIHS.5.101493}}</ref> | |||
Traditional Romani beliefs include the idea that the dead soul enters a world similar to ours except that there is no death. The soul stays around the body and sometimes wants to come back. The Roma myths of the living dead added to and enriched the vampire myths of Hungary, Romania, and Slavic lands. | |||
====18th-century vampire controversy==== | |||
The ancient home of the Roma, India, has many mythical vampire figures. The Bhuta is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wanders around animating dead bodies at night and attacks the living like a ghoul. In northern India could be found the brahmaparusha, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood. | |||
] (1750)]] | |||
In the early 18th century, despite the decline of many popular folkloric beliefs during the ], there was a dramatic increase in the popular belief in vampires, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout much of Europe.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=271–274}} The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in ] in 1721 and in the ] from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. The first infamous vampire case involved the corpses of ] from Serbia. Blagojević was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Blagojević supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=5–9}} | |||
In the second case, ], an ex-soldier-turned-farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while ]ing. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area; it was widely believed that Miloš had returned to prey on the neighbours.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283318599|title=Vampire Evolution|last=Jøn|first=A. Asbjørn|date=2003|journal=METAphor|access-date=20 November 2015|issue=3|page=20|archive-date=12 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210112222202/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283318599_Vampire_Evolution|url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=15–21}} | |||
The most famous Indian deity associated with blood-drinking is ] who has fangs, wears a garland of corpses or skulls and has four arms. Her temples are near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess ] battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby winning the battle and killing Raktabija. | |||
The Blagojević and Čečar incidents were well-documented. Government officials examined the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=15–21}} The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=101-106}} Even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of vampires.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=5–9}} | |||
Sara, or the Black Goddess, is the form in which Kali survived among Gypsies. Gypsies have a belief that the three Marys from the New Testament went to ] and baptised a Gypsy called Sara. They still hold a ceremony each ] in the French village where this is supposed to have occurred. Some refer to their Black Goddess as "Black Cally" or "Black Kali". | |||
The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "vampire controversy,"<ref name="Melton1994">{{cite encyclopedia |entry=Vampire |title=The Vampire Book |author=J. Gordon Melton |publisher=Visible Ink Press |year=1994 |page=630 |url=https://archive.org/details/vampirebookencyc0000melt/page/630 |quote=the vampire controversy of the 1730s ... the eighteenth-century vampire controversy }}</ref> continued for a generation. At least sixteen contemporary treatises discussed the theological and philosophical implications of the vampire epidemic.<ref name="Frayling1978">{{cite book |chapter=From the orang-utan to the vampire: towards an anthropology of Rousseau |title=Rousseau after two hundred years (Proceedings of the Cambridge Bicentennial Colloqium) |author1=Christopher Frayling |author2=Robert Wokler |editor=R. A. Leigh |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Bristol |year=1982 |page=122 |quote=For details of the sixteen formal treatises and dissertations that discussed the implications of the 1731–32 'epidemic' (most of them written by German doctors and theologians), see Tony Faivre, ''Les Vampires'' (Paris, 1962), pp. 154–9; Dieter Sturm and Klaus Völker, ''Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern'' (München, 1973), pp. 519–23; and Frayling's introduction to ''The Vampyre'' (London, 1978), pp. 31–4.}}</ref> | |||
One form of vampire in Romani myth is called a mullo (one who is dead). This vampire is believed to return and do malicious things and/or suck the blood of a person (usually a relative who had caused their death, or not properly observed the burial ceremonies, or who kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was proper). | |||
], a French theologian and scholar, published a comprehensive treatise in 1751 titled '']'' which investigated and analysed the evidence for vampirism.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=101-106}}{{efn|1=Calmet conducted extensive research and amassed judicial reports of vampiric incidents and extensively researched theological and mythological accounts as well, using the scientific method in his analysis to come up with methods for determining the validity for cases of this nature. As he stated in his treatise:<ref>{{cite book|last1=Calmet|first1=Augustin|title=Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. Translated by Rev Henry Christmas & Brett Warren. 2015|date=1751|isbn=978-1-5331-4568-0|pages=303–304|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform }}</ref> | |||
<blockquote>They see, it is said, men who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, make them ill, and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out the heart, or burning them. These revenants are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, ]es; and such particulars are related of them, so singular, so detailed, and invested with such probable circumstances and such judicial information, that one can hardly refuse to credit the belief which is held in those countries, that these revenants come out of their tombs and produce those effects which are proclaimed of them.</blockquote>}} Numerous readers, including both ] (critical) and numerous ]s (supportive), interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=101-106}}{{efn|1=In the ''],'' Voltaire wrote:<ref>{{cite book|title=Philosophical Dictionary|author=Voltaire|year=1984|orig-year=1764|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-14-044257-1|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/philosophicaldic0000volt}}</ref> | |||
Female vampires could return, lead a normal life and even marry but would exhaust the husband. | |||
{{blockquote|These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into ]; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, ], ], Austria, and ], that the dead made this good cheer.}} }} | |||
Anyone who had a hideous appearance, was missing a finger, or had animal appendages, etc., was believed to be a vampire. Even plants or dogs, cats, or farm animals could become vampires. Pumpkins or melons kept in the house too long would start to move, make noises or show blood. ''(See the article on ]s.)'' | |||
The controversy in Austria ceased when Empress ] sent her personal physician, ], to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. Van Swieten concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and the desecration of bodies, thus ending the vampire epidemic. Other European countries followed suit. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local folklore.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=101-106}} | |||
To get rid of a vampire people would hire a Dhampire (the son of a vampire and his widow) to detect the vampire. To ward off vampires, gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. Further measures included driving stakes into the grave, pouring boiling water over it, decapitating the corpse, or burning it. | |||
=== |
=== Non-European beliefs === | ||
Beings having many of the attributes of European vampires appear in the folklore of Africa, Asia, North and South America, and India. Classified as vampires, all share the thirst for blood.<ref name=attwater>{{cite journal|author=Atwater, Cheryl|year=2000|title=Living in Death: The Evolution of Modern Vampirism|journal=Anthropology of Consciousness|volume=11|issue=1–2|pages=70–77|doi=10.1525/ac.2000.11.1-2.70}}</ref> | |||
==== Africa ==== | |||
*In ] and ] ] the ] had the upper body of a woman, the lower body of a winged ] and craved blood (especially the blood of women). | |||
Various regions of Africa have folktales featuring beings with vampiric abilities: in ] the ] tell of the iron-toothed and tree-dwelling '']'',{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=11}} and the ] of the ''],'' which can take the form of a ] and hunts children.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=2}} The eastern ] region has the ''],'' which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the ] people of ] tell of the ''ramanga'', an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=219}} In colonial East Africa, rumors circulated to the effect that employees of the state such as firemen and nurses were vampires, known in Swahili as ''wazimamoto''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=White|first=Luise|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/9780520922297|title=Speaking with Vampires|date=31 December 2000|publisher=University of California Press|doi=10.1525/9780520922297|isbn=978-0-520-92229-7|s2cid=258526552 |access-date=15 December 2020|archive-date=15 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715155012/https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520922297/html|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
==== Americas ==== | |||
*In ], vampires were fond of throwing off their shrouds and attacking their victims in the nude. | |||
The '']'' is an example of how a vampire belief can result from a combination of beliefs, here a mixture of French and African Vodu or ]. The term ''Rougarou'' possibly comes from the French {{lang|fr|]}} (meaning "werewolf") and is common in the ]. The stories of the ''Rougarou'' are widespread through the ] and ] in the United States.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|pp=162–163}} Similar female monsters are the '']'' of ], and the '']'' and '']'' of ], while the ] of southern ] have the bloodsucking snake known as the '']''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Martinez Vilches, Oscar|title=Chiloe Misterioso: Turismo, Mitologia Chilota, leyendas|year=1992|page=179|publisher=Ediciones de la Voz de Chiloe|location=Chile|oclc=33852127|language=es}}</ref> '']'' hung backwards behind or near a door was thought to ward off vampiric beings in South American folklore.<ref name=Jaramillo/> ] described tales of the ], skull-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them mad.<ref name="Strange & Amazing"/> | |||
During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was ], particularly in ] and eastern ]. There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for sickness and death in the family, although the term "vampire" was never used to describe the dead. The deadly disease ], or "consumption" as it was known at the time, was believed to be caused by nightly visitations on the part of a dead family member who had died of consumption themselves.<ref name=sledzik>{{cite journal|last=Sledzik|first=Paul S.|author2=Nicholas Bellantoni|year=1994|title=Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief|journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology|volume=94|issue=2|pages=269–274|doi=10.1002/ajpa.1330940210 |pmid=8085617}}</ref> The most famous, and most recently recorded, case of suspected vampirism is that of nineteen-year-old ], who died in ] in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb two months after her death, cut out her heart and burned it to ashes.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892|author=Bell, Michael E.|journal=Anthropology and Humanism|year=2006|volume=31|issue=2|pages=124–40|doi=10.1525/ahu.2006.31.2.124}}</ref> | |||
*In ], a type of vampire known as the ] was suppossed to be the reanimated corpse of Albanians of Turkish descent. It was covered in a shroud and wore high heeled shoes. The only way to vanquish it was to have a wolf bite its legs off so it would never rise again from its grave. | |||
] (1872–1913) was an Englishwoman who died and was buried in ]. After her death, a legend evolved that she was a vampire and bride of Dracula. On June 9 1993, the 80th anniversary of her death, locals in Pisco feared she would come back to life and take her revenge.<ref name="lanc"> {{cite news |last1=Henfield |first1=Sally |title=The 'Peruvian vampire' – from East Lancashire |url=https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/4385196.peruvian-vampire---east-lancashire/ |access-date=3 October 2024 |work=Lancashire Telegraph |date=21 May 2009}}</ref> | |||
*In ], a vampire had only one nostril and slept with his left eye open and his thumbs linked. It was held responsible for cattle plagues. | |||
=== |
==== Asia ==== | ||
Vampires have appeared in ] since the late 1950s; the folklore behind it is western in origin.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|pp=137–138}} The ] is a being whose head and neck detach from its body to fly about seeking human prey at night.<ref>{{cite book|title=Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things|url=https://archive.org/details/kwaidanstories00hearrich|last=Hearn|first=Lafcadio|author-link=Lafcadio Hearn|year=1903|publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company|location=Boston|isbn=978-0-585-15043-7}}</ref> Legends of female vampiric beings who can detach parts of their upper body also occur in the ], ], and ]. There are two main vampiric creatures in the Philippines: the ] '']'' ("blood-sucker") and the ] '']'' ("self-segmenter"). The mandurugo is a variety of the ] that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings and a long, hollow, threadlike tongue by night. The tongue is used to suck up blood from a sleeping victim.<ref name="ramos"/> The ''manananggal'' is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge batlike wings and prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes. They use an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck ]es from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails (specifically the ] and the ]) and the phlegm of sick people.<ref name="ramos">{{cite book|last=Ramos|first=Maximo D.|title=Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology|orig-year=1971|year=1990|publisher=Phoenix Publishing|location=Quezon|isbn=978-971-06-0691-7}}</ref> | |||
The Malaysian '']'' is a woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of ] or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local folklore to be dark or demonic in nature. She is able to detach her fanged head which flies around in the night looking for blood, typically from pregnant women.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=197}} Malaysians hung ''jeruju'' (thistles) around the doors and windows of houses, hoping the ''Penanggalan'' would not enter for fear of catching its intestines on the thorns.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=34}} The ] is a similar being from ] of Indonesia.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Witchcraft, Grief, and the Ambivalence of Emotions|journal=American Ethnologist|volume=26|issue=3|year=1999|pages=711–737|doi=10.1525/ae.1999.26.3.711|first=Michele|last=Stephen}}</ref> A '']'' or ''Matianak'' in Indonesia,{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=208}} or '']'' or '']'' in Malaysia,{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=150}} is a woman who ] and became undead, seeking revenge and terrorising villages. She appeared as an attractive woman with long black hair that covered a hole in the back of her neck, with which she sucked the blood of children. Filling the hole with her hair would drive her off. Corpses had their mouths filled with glass beads, eggs under each armpit, and needles in their palms to prevent them from becoming ''langsuir.'' This description would also fit the ].{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|p=35}} | |||
*In ], the ] was a sort of vampire, created when a noblewoman died in childbirth. | |||
] ethnic minority of Vietnam, whose communities were said to be terrorized by the blood-sucking ''ma cà rồng''.|alt=See caption]] | |||
*Later ] vampires were easily recognizable by their fleshless skulls. | |||
In ], the word used to translate Western vampires, "ma cà rồng", originally referred to a type of demon that haunts modern-day ], within the communities of the ] ]. The word was first mentioned in the chronicles of 18th-century ] scholar ],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lê Quý Đôn |title=Kiến văn tiểu lục |date=2007 |publisher=NXB Văn hóa-Thông tin |page=353}}</ref> who spoke of a creature that lives among humans, but stuffs its toes into its ] at night and flies by its ears into houses with pregnant women to suck their blood. Having fed on these women, the ''ma cà rồng'' then returns to its house and cleans itself by dipping its toes into barrels of ] water. This allows the ''ma cà rồng'' to live undetected among humans during the day, before heading out to attack again by night.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trương Quốc Dụng |title=Thoái thực ký văn |date=2020 |publisher=Writers' Association Publishing House}}</ref> | |||
], sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (]) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 ]) fails to leave the deceased's body.<ref>{{cite book|last=Suckling|first=Nigel|title=Vampires|year=2006|publisher=Facts, Figures & Fun|location=London|isbn=978-1-904332-48-0|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/vampires0000suck/page/31}}</ref> ''Jiangshi'' are usually represented as mindless creatures with no independent thought.<ref>{{cite book|last=劉|first=天賜|title=僵屍與吸血鬼|year=2008|publisher=Joint Publishing (H.K.)|location=Hong Kong|isbn=978-962-04-2735-0|page=196}}</ref> This monster has greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or ] growing on corpses.<ref>{{cite book|last=de Groot|first=J.J.M.|title=The Religious System of China|year=1910|publisher=]|oclc=7022203}}<!--many recent editions for this--></ref> Jiangshi legends have inspired a ] and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia. Films like '']'' and '']'' were released during the jiangshi cinematic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lam|first=Stephanie|year=2009|title=Hop on Pop: Jiangshi Films in a Transnational Context|journal=CineAction|issue=78|pages=46–51}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hudson|first=Dave|title=Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms|year=2009|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-0-8108-6923-3|page=215}}</ref> | |||
*In the ], vampires known as Soucoyant in ], Ol' Higue in ], and Loogaroo in ], take the form of old women during the day, and at night shed their skin to become flying balls of flame who seek blood. They were said to be notoriously obsessive compulsive, and could be thwarted by sprinkling salt or rice at entrances, crossroads and near beds. The vampire would feel compelled to pick up every grain. They could also be killed by rubbing salt into their discarded skin, which would burn them upon returning to it before morning. | |||
=== Modern beliefs === | |||
*The ] vampires sucked the blood out of its victim's ears using its pointed nose. | |||
In modern fiction, the vampire tends to be depicted as a suave, charismatic ].{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=2}} Vampire hunting societies still exist, but they are largely formed for social reasons.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=271–274}} Allegations of vampire attacks swept through ] during late 2002 and early 2003, with mobs stoning one person to death and attacking at least four others, including Governor ], based on the belief that the government was colluding with vampires.<ref>{{cite news|first=Raphael|last=Tenthani|title='Vampires' strike Malawi villages|work=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2602461.stm|date=23 December 2002|access-date=29 December 2007|archive-date=18 August 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100818193930/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2602461.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> Fears and violence recurred in late 2017, with 6 people accused of being vampires killed.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/j5jxnx/mobs-in-malawi-have-killed-six-people-for-being-vampires|title=Mobs in Malawi have killed six people for being "vampires"|date=19 October 2017|work=VICE News|access-date=2 January 2018|language=en|archive-date=2 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180102020221/https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/j5jxnx/mobs-in-malawi-have-killed-six-people-for-being-vampires|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
*]ian vampires had ]-covered feet. | |||
In early 1970, local press spread rumours that a vampire haunted ] in London. Amateur ]s flocked in large numbers to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case, notably by Sean Manchester, a local man who was among the first to suggest the existence of the "]" and who later claimed to have ] and destroyed a whole nest of vampires in the area.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Highgate Vampire: The Infernal World of the Undead Unearthed at London's Highgate Cemetery and Environs|last=Manchester|first=Sean|year=1991|location=London|publisher=Gothic Press|isbn=978-1-872486-01-7}}</ref> In January 2005, rumours circulated that an attacker had bitten a number of people in ], England, fuelling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. Local police stated that no such crime had been reported and that the case appears to be an ].<ref name=guardian1>{{cite news|title=Reality Bites|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,1392607,00.html|date=18 January 2005|access-date=29 December 2007|location=London|first=Stuart|last=Jeffries|archive-date=15 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715154949/https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jan/18/britishidentity.stuartjeffries|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
The '']'' ("goat-sucker") of ] and ] is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of ]s, leading some to consider it a kind of vampire. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the mid-1990s.<ref name="trail">{{cite web|author=Stephen Wagner|url=http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa051898.htm|title=On the trail of the Chupacabras|access-date=5 October 2007|archive-date=19 September 2005|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050919215215/http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa051898.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
===Asia and the Pacific=== | |||
In Europe, where much of the vampire folklore originates, the vampire is usually considered a fictitious being; many communities may have embraced the revenant for economic purposes. In some cases, especially in small localities, beliefs are still rampant and sightings or claims of vampire attacks occur frequently. In Romania during February 2004, several relatives of Toma Petre feared that he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to drink it.<ref>{{cite news|last=Taylor | first= T.|date=28 October 2007|title=The real vampire slayers|work=The Independent|url=http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3096920.ece|access-date=14 December 2007|location=London|archive-date=19 December 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071219095645/http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3096920.ece|url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
*In ] (especially in the southern state of ]) vampires (known as ''Yakshis'') were beautiful women who seduced men in order to kill or eat them. They are said to be averse to ] objects in addition to other religious symbols, and could be killed by driving an iron nail through the head. They could also be imprisoned in trees using blessed objects. India is also home to the ], a wraithly vampire that can leave its host body to feed. | |||
== Origins of vampire beliefs == | |||
*Japanese vampire myths include a river demon called the Kappa, a mischevious creature who could be a deadly enemy, a benign creature who would heal broken bones and limbs with amazing skill, or a horrible prankster. They derived strength from water in a bowl-shaped indentation on their head, which would tip and empty when they returned the traditional Japanese greeting (a bow). Their primary method of draining blood from the victim was through the anus rather than the neck. Certain Japanese ] myths also have similarities with Western vampire legends. Other Japanese myths include vampire foxes. | |||
Commentators have offered many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs and related ]. Everything ranging from ] to the early ignorance of the body's ] cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=1–4}} | |||
=== Pathology === | |||
*The ] vampire, the ] (jiāngshī), has more in common with Western ideas of corporeal zombies or ghouls but is still depicted as draining the victim of blood. | |||
==== Decomposition ==== | |||
Author Paul Barber stated that belief in vampires resulted from people of ] attempting to explain the natural, but to them inexplicable, process of death and decomposition.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=1–4}} People sometimes suspected vampirism when a cadaver did not look as they thought a normal corpse should when disinterred. Rates of decomposition vary depending on temperature and soil composition, and many of the signs are little known. This has led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead body had not decomposed at all or to interpret signs of decomposition as signs of continued life.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.csicop.org/si/show/staking_claims_the_vampires_of_folklore_and_fiction/|title=Staking Claims: The Vampires of Folklore and Fiction|last=Barber|first=Paul|date=March–April 1996|journal=]|access-date=29 June 2015|volume=20|issue=2|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701000450/http://www.csicop.org/si/show/staking_claims_the_vampires_of_folklore_and_fiction/|archive-date=1 July 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso and the increased pressure forces blood to ooze from the nose and mouth. This causes the body to look "plump", "well-fed", and "ruddy"—changes that are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. In the ], an old woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbours to look more plump and healthy than she had ever looked in life.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=117}} The exuding blood gave the impression that the corpse had recently been engaging in vampiric activity.{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=114–115}} Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=105}} The staking of a swollen, decomposing body could cause the body to bleed and force the accumulated gases to escape the body. This could produce a groan-like sound when the gases moved past the vocal cords, or a sound reminiscent of ] when they passed through the anus. The official reporting on the ] case speaks of "other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect".{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=119}} After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the roots of the hair, nails, and teeth, even teeth that were concealed in the jaw. This can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels away, as reported in the Blagojevich case—the ] and ] emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=119}} | |||
*In ] folklore, the ] was a female vampire whose entire upper body could separate from her lower body and who could fly using wings. She sucked the blood of ]es. The ] was believed to always be a female of considerable beauty by day and, by night, a fearsome flying fiend. She lived in a house, could marry and have children, and was a seemingly normal human during the daylight hours. | |||
==== Premature burial ==== | |||
*In ]n folklore, the Penanggalan was a vampire whose head could separate from its body, with its entrails dangling from the base of its neck. The ] was a female vampire that sucked the blood of newborn babies and sometimes that of young children or pregnant women. | |||
Vampire legends may have also been influenced by individuals being ] because of shortcomings in the medical knowledge of the time. In some cases in which people reported sounds emanating from a specific coffin, it was later dug up and fingernail marks were discovered on the inside from the victim trying to escape. In other cases the person would hit their heads, noses or faces and it would appear that they had been "feeding".{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=48–49}} A problem with this theory is the question of how people presumably buried alive managed to stay alive for any extended period without food, water or fresh air. An alternate explanation for noise is the bubbling of escaping gases from natural decomposition of bodies.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=128}} Another likely cause of disordered tombs is ].{{sfn|Barber|1988|pp=137–138}} | |||
==== Disease ==== | |||
*In ] mythology, the "Yara-Ma-Yha-Who" was a vampire with suckers on his fingers that lurked in ] trees. | |||
Folkloric vampirism has been associated with clusters of deaths from unidentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community.<ref name=sledzik/> The epidemic allusion is obvious in the classical cases of Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole, and even more so in the case of ] and in the vampire beliefs of New England generally, where a specific disease, tuberculosis, was associated with outbreaks of vampirism. As with the pneumonic form of ], it was associated with breakdown of lung tissue which would cause blood to appear at the lips.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=115}} | |||
In 1985, biochemist ] proposed a link between the rare blood disorder ] and vampire folklore. Noting that the condition is treated by intravenous ], he suggested that the consumption of large amounts of blood may result in haem being transported somehow across the stomach wall and into the bloodstream. Thus vampires were merely sufferers of porphyria seeking to replace haem and alleviate their symptoms.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cox |first1=Ann M. |title=Porphyria and vampirism: another myth in the making |journal=Postgraduate Medical Journal |date=1995 |volume=71 |issue=841 |pages=643–644 |doi=10.1136/pgmj.71.841.643-a|pmid=7494765 |pmc=2398345 |s2cid=29495879 }}</ref> | |||
The theory has been rebuffed medically as suggestions that porphyria sufferers crave the haem in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based on a misunderstanding of the disease. Furthermore, Dolphin was noted to have confused fictional (bloodsucking) vampires with those of folklore, many of whom were not noted to drink blood.{{sfn|Barber|1988|p=100}} Similarly, a parallel is made between sensitivity to sunlight by sufferers, yet this was associated with fictional and not folkloric vampires. In any case, Dolphin did not go on to publish his work more widely.<ref>{{cite web|last=Adams|first=Cecil|title=Did vampires suffer from the disease porphyria—or not?|website=The Straight Dope|publisher=Chicago Reader|date=7 May 1999|access-date=25 December 2007|url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990507.html|archive-date=20 July 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080720115852/http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990507.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Despite being dismissed by experts, the link gained media attention<ref>{{Cite news|last=Pierach|first=Claus A.|title=Vampire Label Unfair To Porphyria Sufferers|newspaper=The New York Times|date=13 June 1985|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E4D71239F930A25755C0A963948260|access-date=25 December 2007|archive-date=21 April 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080421062059/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E4D71239F930A25755C0A963948260|url-status=live}}</ref> and entered popular modern folklore.<ref>{{cite web|last=Kujtan|first=Peter W.|title=Porphyria: The Vampire Disease|publisher=The Mississauga News online|date=29 October 2005|url=http://www.bydewey.com/drkporphyria.html|access-date=9 November 2009|archive-date=24 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124132104/https://www.bydewey.com/drkporphyria.html|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
Juan Gómez-Alonso, a neurologist, examined the possible link of rabies with vampire folklore. The susceptibility to garlic and light could be due to hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of rabies. It can also affect portions of the brain that could lead to disturbance of normal sleep patterns (thus becoming nocturnal) and ]. Legend once said a man was not rabid if he could look at his own reflection (an allusion to the legend that vampires have no reflection). ] and ]s, which are often associated with vampires, can be carriers of rabies. The disease can also lead to a drive to bite others and to a bloody frothing at the mouth.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Gómez-Alonso|first=Juan|year=1998|title=Rabies: a possible explanation for the vampire legend|journal=Neurology|volume=51|issue=3|pages=856–59|pmid=9748039|doi=10.1212/WNL.51.3.856|s2cid=219202098}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|date=24 September 1998|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/178623.stm|title=Rabies-The Vampire's Kiss|work=BBC News|access-date=18 March 2007|archive-date=17 March 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060317102944/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/178623.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
==Eighteenth century vampire controversy== | |||
Today everyone is familiar with vampires, but in Britain very little was known of vampires prior to the 18th century. What brought the vampire to the attention of the general public? During the 18th century there was a major vampire scare in Eastern Europe. Even government officials frequently got dragged into the hunting and staking of vampires. | |||
=== Psychodynamic theories === | |||
This controversy was directly responsible for England's current vampire myths. In fact, the word Vampire only came into English language in 1732 via an English translation of a ] report of the much publicized Arnold Paole vampire staking in Serbia. Western scholars seriously considered the existence of vampires for the first time rather than just brushing them off as superstition. | |||
In his 1931 treatise ''On the Nightmare'', Welsh ] ] asserted that vampires are symbolic of several unconscious drives and ]s. Emotions such as love, guilt, and hate fuel the idea of the return of the dead to the grave. Desiring a reunion with loved ones, mourners may ] the idea that the recently dead must in return yearn the same. From this arises the belief that folkloric vampires and revenants visit relatives, particularly their spouses, first.{{sfn|Jones|1931|pp=100–102}} | |||
In cases where there was unconscious guilt associated with the relationship, the wish for reunion may be subverted by anxiety. This may lead to ], which ] had linked with the development of morbid dread.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Jones|first=Ernest|year=1911|title=The Pathology of Morbid Anxiety|journal=Journal of Abnormal Psychology|volume=6|issue=2|pages=81–106|doi=10.1037/h0074306|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1429155|access-date=5 July 2019|archive-date=3 October 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201003143621/https://zenodo.org/record/1429155|url-status=live}}</ref> Jones surmised in this case the original wish of a (sexual) reunion may be drastically changed: desire is replaced by fear; love is replaced by sadism, and the object or loved one is replaced by an unknown entity. The sexual aspect may or may not be present.{{sfn|Jones|1931|p=106}} Some modern critics have proposed a simpler theory: People identify with immortal vampires because, by so doing, they overcome, or at least temporarily escape from, their ].<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202044326/https://books.google.com/books?id=KXOUiGfJ8_oC&pg=PT205&lpg=PP1&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html |date=2 February 2017 }}</ref> | |||
It all started with an outbreak of vampire attacks in ] in 1721 and in the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1725-1734. | |||
Jones linked the innate sexuality of bloodsucking with ], with a folkloric connection with ]-like behaviour. He added that when more normal aspects of sexuality are repressed, regressed forms may be expressed, in particular ]; he felt that ] is integral in vampiric behaviour.{{sfn|Jones|1931|pp=116–120}} | |||
Two famous cases involved Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole. Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of times after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the next day. Soon Plogojowitz returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood. | |||
=== Political interpretations === | |||
In the other famous case Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who had been attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death people began to die and it was believed by everyone that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours. | |||
] from 1885, depicting the ] as the "Irish Vampire" preying on a sleeping woman.|alt=See caption]] | |||
The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones.<ref>{{cite book|last=Glover|first=David|year=1996|title=Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics of Popular Fiction|publisher=Duke University Press|place=Durham, NC.|isbn=978-0-8223-1798-2 }}</ref> The aristocratic Count Dracula, alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers, appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry, is symbolic of the parasitic '']''. In his entry for "Vampires" in the ''Dictionnaire philosophique'' (1764), Voltaire notices how the mid-18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now "there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/voltaire/dictionary/complete.html |title=Vampires. – Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. VII (Philosophical Dictionary Part 5) (1764) |access-date=11 June 2019 |archive-date=18 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170318065646/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/voltaire/dictionary/complete.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
These two incidents were extremely well documented. Government officials examined the cases and the bodies, wrote them up in reports, and books were published afterwards of the Paole case and distributed around Europe. The controversy raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of vampire attacks and locals digging up bodies all over the place. Many scholars said vampires didn't exist - they attributed reports to premature burial, or rabies which causes thirst, animal-like behaviours, and can prompt the attacking - including biting - of humans. Nonetheless, Dom Augustine Calmet, a well respected French ] and scholar, put together a carefully thought out treatise in ] which said vampires did exist. This had considerable influence on other scholars at the time. | |||
Marx defined capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks".{{efn|1=An extensive discussion of the different uses of the vampire metaphor in Marx's writings can be found in {{cite web |last=Policante |first=A. |url=http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Policante.pdf |title=Vampires of Capital: Gothic Reflections between horror and hope |year=2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120128025458/http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Policante.pdf |archive-date=28 January 2012 }} in {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151206054043/http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/2010.html |date=6 December 2015 }}, 2010.}} ], in his '']'', gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist ], a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist ] becomes the next parasitic class.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Brass|first=Tom|journal=Dialectical Anthropology|volume=25|pages=205–237|year=2000|title=Nymphs, Shepherds, and Vampires: The Agrarian Myth on Film|doi=10.1023/A:1011615201664|issue=3/4|s2cid=141136948}}</ref> | |||
Eventually, Austrian Empress Marie Theresa sent her personal physician to investigate. He said vampires didn't exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies. This was the end of the vampire epidemics. By then, though, everyone knew about vampires and it was only a matter of time before authors would preserve and mould the vampire into something new and much more accessible to the general public. | |||
=== Psychopathology === | |||
==Contemporary belief in vampires== | |||
A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims. ]s ] and ] were both called "vampires" in the ] after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. In 1932, an unsolved murder case in ], Sweden, was nicknamed the "]", because of the circumstances of the victim's death.<ref name=Stig1>{{cite book|last=Linnell|first=Stig|title=Stockholms spökhus och andra ruskiga ställen|orig-year=1968|year=1993|publisher=Raben Prisma|isbn=978-91-518-2738-4|language=sv}}</ref> The late-16th-century Hungarian countess and mass murderer ] became infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth.{{sfn|Hoyt|1984|pp=68–71}} | |||
Belief in vampires still persists across the globe. During January of ], mobs in ] stoned to death one individual and attacked four others, including Governor ], due to a belief that the government is colluding with vampires. | |||
=== Vampire bats === | |||
In ] ], it was reported that an attacker had bitten a number of people in ], ], fuelling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. However, local ] stated that no such ]s had been reported to them, and this case appears to be an ]. | |||
{{main|Vampire bat}} | |||
] in Peru.|alt=See caption]] | |||
Although many cultures have stories about them, ]s have only recently become an integral part of the traditional vampire lore. Vampire bats were integrated into vampire folklore after they were discovered on the South American mainland in the 16th century.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=95–96}} There are no vampire bats in Europe, but ]s and ]s have long been associated with the supernatural and omens, mainly because of their nocturnal habits.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=95–96}}<ref name="Cooper92">{{cite book|last=Cooper|first=J.C.|title=Symbolic and Mythological Animals|pages=25–26|year=1992|publisher=Aquarian Press|location=London|isbn=978-1-85538-118-6}}</ref> | |||
The three species of vampire bats are all ] to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any ] relatives within human memory. It is therefore impossible that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the vampire bat. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the '']'' records their folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. The danger of ] infection aside, the vampire bat's bite is usually not harmful to a person, but the bat has been known to actively feed on humans and large prey such as cattle and often leaves the trademark, two-prong bite mark on its victim's skin.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=95–96}} | |||
In the modern folklore of ], the ] (goat-sucker) is a vampiric creature that feeds upon ]s. | |||
The literary ] transforms into a bat several times in the novel, and vampire bats themselves are mentioned twice in it. The 1927 stage production of ''Dracula'' followed the novel in having Dracula turn into a bat, as did the ], where ] would transform into a bat.{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=95–96}} The bat transformation scene was used again by ] in 1943's '']''.{{sfn|Skal|1996|pp=19–21}} | |||
==Fictional and/or Folkloric attributes of Vampires== | |||
===Strengths and weaknesses=== | |||
== In modern culture == | |||
The abilities and limitations of vampires vary significantly from early folklore to modern fictional accounts. However, Bram Stoker’s ''Dracula'' (1897) is principally the foundation for the modern european vampire. In his novel, Stoker outlines some general strengths and weaknesses of vampires. In this section, quotes from Stoker's novel can be found alongside the corresponding ability and limitation, as well as a few other references. '''Note, these abilities and limitations are not universal, and not all vampire tales share these strengths and weaknesses!''' In fact, there are extremely few vampire tales in which the vampire possesses all the strengths and weaknesses listed. | |||
{{see also|List of vampires}} | |||
<!--**This section is a general overview, do not add cultural references here, add them to the subarticles... Thanks.*****--> | |||
The vampire is now a fixture in popular fiction. Such fiction began with 18th-century poetry and continued with 19th-century short stories, the first and most influential of which was ]'s "]" (1819), featuring the vampire ].<ref name=":1">{{cite journal|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280805194|title=From Nosteratu to Von Carstein: shifts in the portrayal of vampires|last=Jøn|first=A. Asbjørn|date=2001|journal=Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies|access-date=1 November 2015|issue=16|pages=97–106|archive-date=25 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151125163106/http://www.researchgate.net/publication/280805194_From_Nosteratu_to_Von_Carstein_shifts_in_the_portrayal_of_vampires|url-status=live}}</ref> Lord Ruthven's exploits were further explored in a series of vampire plays in which he was the ]. The vampire theme continued in ] serial publications such as '']'' (1847) and culminated in the pre-eminent vampire novel in history: '']'' by ], published in 1897.<ref name="Christopher">{{cite book |last=Frayling |first=Christopher |title=Vampyres, Lord Byron to Count Dracula |year=1991 |location=London |publisher=Faber |isbn=978-0-571-16792-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780571167920 |url-access=registration }}</ref> | |||
Over time, some attributes now regarded as integral became incorporated into the vampire's profile: fangs and vulnerability to sunlight appeared over the course of the 19th century, with Varney the Vampire and Count Dracula both bearing protruding teeth,{{sfn|Skal|1996|p=99}} and ] of ] '']'' (1922) fearing daylight.{{sfn|Skal|1996|p=104}} The cloak appeared in stage productions of the 1920s, with a high collar introduced by playwright ] to help Dracula 'vanish' on stage.{{sfn|Skal|1996|p=62}} Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to be healed by moonlight, although no account of this is known in traditional folklore.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|pp=38–39}} Implied though not often explicitly documented in folklore, ] is one attribute which features heavily in vampire films and literature. Much is made of the price of eternal life, namely the incessant need for the blood of former equals.{{sfn|Bunson|1993|p=131}} | |||
====Abilities==== | |||
=== Literature === | |||
*Vampires are ]. ''"The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time... When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality. They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world."'' Other legends suggest that vampires do age, but very slowly, dependening on their ability to feed. Most tales indicate that the Vampire, despite apparent immortality, will die of starvation eventually if restrained or otherwise prevented from feeding. | |||
{{main|Vampire literature}} | |||
]''|alt=See caption]] | |||
The vampire or revenant first appeared in poems such as ''The Vampire'' (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, '']'' (1773) by ], ''Die Braut von Corinth'' (''The Bride of Corinth'') (1797) by ], ]'s ''Thalaba the Destroyer'' (1801), ]'s "The Vampyre" (1810), ]'s ] (1810) ("Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore") and "Ballad" in '']'' (1811) about a reanimated corpse, Sister Rosa, ]'s unfinished '']'' and ]'s '']''.{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=114–115}} | |||
Byron was also credited with the first prose fiction piece concerned with vampires: "The Vampyre" (1819). This was in reality authored by Byron's personal physician, ], who adapted an enigmatic fragmentary tale of his illustrious patient, "]" (1819), also known as "The Burial: A Fragment".{{sfn|Cohen|1989|pp=271–274}}<ref name="Christopher"/> Byron's own dominating personality, mediated by his lover ] in her unflattering ''roman-a-clef'' ''Glenarvon'' (a Gothic fantasia based on Byron's wild life), was used as a model for Polidori's undead protagonist ]. ''The Vampyre'' was highly successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|pp=37–38}} | |||
*Vampires have superhuman strength. ''"The ] are strong. He have always the strength in his hand of twenty men."'' The degree of strength depends on the myth; commonly, legends suggest a broad range of strength among the undead, often depending on the age of the vampire, how often over time the vampire has fed on human blood, or how ''recently'' the vampire has fed on human blood. The increased strength of undead creatures is a common theme in almost all human folklore concerning them. Vampire folklore also includes multiple ways to sap or hinder the Vampire's superhuman strength; according to myth, the Japanese practice of bowing to say hello was developed to trick the ultra-polite Kappa into tipping his head and spilling his water, thus robbing him of his superhuman strength . | |||
'']'' was a popular mid-] ] story by ] and ], which first appeared from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as '']s'' because of their low price and gruesome contents.<ref name=":1"/> Published in book form in 1847, the story runs to 868 double-columned pages. It has a distinctly suspenseful style, using vivid imagery to describe the horrifying exploits of Varney.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|pp=38–39}} Another important addition to the genre was ]'s ] story '']'' (1871). Like Varney before her, the vampiress Carmilla is portrayed in a somewhat sympathetic light as the compulsion of her condition is highlighted.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|pp=40–41}} | |||
*In many tales, vampires have superhuman speed and reflexes, often faster than human eyes can see or able to catch arrows. This ability is sometimes referred to as "flitting." Examples include vampires found in the ] '']''. Certain mythical vampires (such as variations on ''Dracula'') gained this power not from Vampirism but because their immortality gave them the time needed to study and master magical spells and powers. | |||
]'' by ], illustrated by ], 1872.|alt=A person is lying in a bed while another person is reaching on the bed towards them.]] | |||
*Vampires are ]. ''"He can grow and become small, and he can at times vanish and come unknown... Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger... He can transform himself to wolf... he can be as bat... He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust."'' Some tales grant vampires limitless power to transform, while other vampire tales restrict a vampire to only a few shapes or sizes. Common forms include animals (e.g., ], ]), forms that grant vampires the ability to bypass obstacles (e.g., ], ]), or forms that better conceal themselves in human society or attract members of the opposite gender. Other notable vampire shapeshifting examples are found in '']'' (1872) as a monstrous ], in '']'' (1922) as a ], and in '']'' (1992) as a ]. | |||
No effort to depict vampires in popular fiction was as influential or as definitive as Bram Stoker's ''Dracula'' (1897).{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|p=43}} Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in ] Europe where ] and ] were common. The vampiric traits described in Stoker's work merged with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.<ref name=":1"/> | |||
*Vampires can to a degree control the weather and the elements. ''"He can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder... He can come in mist which he create."'' | |||
Drawing on past works such as ''The Vampyre'' and ''Carmilla'', Stoker began to research his new book in the late 19th century, reading works such as ''The Land Beyond the Forest'' (1888) by ] and other books about ] and vampires. In London, a colleague mentioned to him the story of ], the "real-life Dracula", and Stoker immediately incorporated this story into his book. The first chapter of the book was omitted when it was published in 1897, but it was released in 1914 as "]".{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=82–85}} | |||
*Vampires can fly. Sometimes this is wholly supernatural, sometimes it is connected to the vampire's ability to turn into flying creatures (e.g., ], ], ]) or into lightweight forms (e.g. ], ], ]) and then create winds as a means of propulsion. | |||
*Vampires have the ] of influence and suggestion. ''"He can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf."'' In many tales, this ability is so powerful that those of weak willpower cannot disobey it. | |||
The latter part of the 20th century saw the rise of multi-volume vampire epics as well as a renewed interest in the subject in books. The first of these was Gothic romance writer ]'s '']'' series (1966–71), loosely based on the contemporary American TV series '']''. It also set the trend for seeing vampires as poetic ]es rather than as the more traditional embodiment of evil. This formula was followed in novelist Anne Rice's highly popular '']'' (1976–2003),{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|p=205}} and ]'s ] series (2005–2008).<ref name="slate">{{cite web|url=http://www.slate.com/id/2205143/|title=I Vant To Upend Your Expectations: Why film vampires always break all the vampire rules|last=Beam|first=Christopher|date=20 November 2008|website=Slate Magazine|access-date=17 July 2009|archive-date=16 September 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110916173859/http://www.slate.com/id/2205143/|url-status=live}}</ref> In the 2006 ]'s novel '']'', vampires are depicted as a subspecies of ] that predated on humanity until the dawn of civilization. The various supernatural characteristics and abilities traditionally assigned to vampires by folklore are justified on naturalistic and scientific basis.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Galaxy |first=Geek's Guide to the |title='Blindsight' Is the Epitome of Science Fiction Horror |url=https://www.wired.com/2023/10/geeks-guide-peter-watts/ |access-date=2024-06-30 |magazine=Wired |language=en-US |issn=1059-1028 |archive-date=30 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240630080300/https://www.wired.com/2023/10/geeks-guide-peter-watts/ |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
*Vampires can see in the dark, ''"no small power this, in a world which is one half shut from the light."'' This power is normally only granted in tales which render the Vampire vulnerable to sunlight, and force it to operate at night and in the dark. | |||
=== Film and television === | |||
*Vampires cast no shadow and have no reflection. ''"He throws no shadow, he make in the mirror no reflect."'' This mythical power is largely confined to European vampiric myths and may be tied to folklore regarding the vampire's lack of a soul. | |||
{{main|Vampire film|List of vampire films|List of vampire television series}} | |||
]'s '']'', 1922.|alt=A shadow of a vampire and a railing.]] | |||
*Vampires can enter and exit anything, ''"slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door... He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire, solder you call it."'' Sometimes this is explained by the aforementioned shapeshifting powers, which allow vampires to exploit the tiniest passage to escape from confinement or gain entry into forbidden locations. | |||
Considered one of the preeminent figures of the classic horror film, the vampire has proven to be a rich subject for the film, television, and gaming industries. ] in more films than any other but ], and many early films were either based on the novel ''Dracula'' or closely derived from it. These included the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film '']'', directed by ] and featuring the first film portrayal of Dracula—although names and characters were intended to mimic ''Dracula''{{'}}s.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Keatley |first=Avery |title=Try as she might, Bram Stoker's widow couldn't kill 'Nosferatu' |language=en |work=NPR.org |url=https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086605684/try-as-she-might-bram-stokers-widow-couldnt-kill-nosferatu |access-date=20 April 2022 |archive-date=4 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220404182540/https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086605684/try-as-she-might-bram-stokers-widow-couldnt-kill-nosferatu |url-status=live }}</ref> Universal's '']'' (1931), starring ] as the Count and directed by ], was the first ] to portray Dracula. Both Lugosi's performance and the film overall were influential in the blossoming ] genre, now able to use sound and special effects much more efficiently than in the ]. The influence of this 1931 film lasted throughout the rest of the 20th century and up through the present day. ], ], ], and ] each have at one time or another derived inspiration from this film directly either through staging or even through directly quoting the film, particularly how Stoker's line "''Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!''" is delivered by Lugosi; for example Coppola paid homage to this moment with Gary Oldman in his interpretation of the tale in 1992 and King has credited this film as an inspiration for his character Kurt Barlow repeatedly in interviews.<ref>{{cite web |last=Eisenberg |first=Eric |url=https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2567212/adapting-stephen-king-salems-lot-vampiric-terror-tv-miniseries-tobe-hooper |title=Adapting Stephen King's Salem's Lot: How Does The Vampiric Terror Of 1979's TV Miniseries Hold Up? |publisher=Cinemablend |date=12 May 2021 |access-date=5 May 2022 |archive-date=27 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427163847/https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2567212/adapting-stephen-king-salems-lot-vampiric-terror-tv-miniseries-tobe-hooper |url-status=live }}</ref> It is for these reasons that the film was selected by the US ] to be in the ] in 2000.<ref>{{cite web |title=Complete National Film Registry Listing |url=https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/ |access-date=20 April 2022 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=28 July 2019 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20190728162129/https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/ |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
*Vampires are skilled in ], the conjuration of the spirits of the dead. ''"All the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command."'' This is common in myths where the vampire is either the creation of powerful magic or else is himself a human mystic who sought vampiric unlife. It also tends toward appearance in myths where the Vampire is not a savage outcast but rather a converted aristocrat or mystic. | |||
] as portrayed by ] in 1931's '']''.|alt=See caption]] | |||
*Vampires are very fierce and savage like animals, without heart or conscience, with no emotion or sympathy. ''"He is brute, and more than brute, he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not."'' Most vampire myths portray the vampire as being evil, but not all portray the vampire as savage. Many tales revolve around nobles who have later become vampires, and enjoy (and seek to continue) a life of opulence as well as a cultured existence, with only their feeding habits to mark them as savage. In some tales, such as the '']'' ], the vampire may lose all control if pressed too long without feeding, lashing out at anyone or anything with blood. It should be noted that this myth is not universal, and some modern tales portray Vampires as hapless victims of a curse who merely do what they must to live. | |||
The legend of the vampire continued through the film industry when Dracula was reincarnated in the pertinent ] series of films, starring ] as the Count. The successful 1958 '']'' starring Lee was followed by seven sequels. Lee returned as Dracula in all but two of these and became well known in the role.{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=92–95}} By the 1970s, vampires in films had diversified with works such as '']'' (1970), an African Count in 1972's '']'', the BBC's '']'' featuring French actor ] as Dracula and ] as ], and a Nosferatu-like vampire in 1979's '']'', and a remake of ''Nosferatu'' itself, titled ] with ] the same year. Several films featured the characterization of a female, often lesbian, vampire such as Hammer Horror's '']'' (1970), based on ''Carmilla'', though the plotlines still revolved around a central evil vampire character.{{sfn|Marigny|1994|pp=92–95}} | |||
*Vampires are very intelligent and are more cunning than man, ''"he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages."'' This attribute is many times associated with the Vampiric immortality; the older and more experienced a Vampire, the more time they have to study and the more experiences they have learned from. | |||
]'s ] vampire character.|alt=See caption]] | |||
*Vampires become more powerful each time they feed. ''"The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil."'' Subsequently, the older the vampire the more powerful it usually is. The above abilities can increase with age or decrease with youth. ''"Therefore I shall fix some things she like not... She is young as UnDead, and will heed."'' | |||
The ] ] '']'', on American television from 1966 to 1971, featured the vampire character ], portrayed by ], which proved partly responsible for making the series one of the most popular of its type, amassing a total of 1,225 episodes in its nearly five-year run. The pilot for the later 1972 television series '']'' revolved around a reporter hunting a vampire on the ]. Later films showed more diversity in plotline, with some focusing on the vampire-hunter, such as ] in the ]' '']'' films and the film '']''.<ref name=":1"/> ''Buffy'', released in 1992, foreshadowed a vampiric presence on television, with its adaptation to a ] and its spin-off '']''. Others showed the vampire as a protagonist, such as 1983's '']'', 1994's '']'' and its indirect sequel '']'', and the 2007 series '']''. The 1992 film '']'' by ] became the then-highest grossing vampire film ever.{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|1997|p=208}} | |||
====Limitations==== | |||
This increase of interest in vampiric plotlines led to the vampire being depicted in films such as '']'' and '']'', the Russian '']'' and a TV miniseries remake of '']'', both from 2004. The series '']'' premiered on ] in 2007, featuring a character portrayed as Henry Fitzroy, an illegitimate-son-of-]-turned-vampire, in modern-day ], with a female former Toronto detective in the starring role. A 2008 series from HBO, entitled '']'', gives a ] take on the vampire theme, while taking on the discussion on what the actual existence of vampires would mean to for instance ] and religious beliefs.<ref name="slate" /> In 2008 '']'' premiered in Britain and featured a vampire that shared a flat with a werewolf and a ghost.<ref>Germania, Monica (2012): Being Human? Twenty-First-Century Monsters. In: Edwards, Justin & Monnet, Agnieszka Soltysik (Publisher): The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth. New York: Taylor, pp. 57–70</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cleveland.com/tv-blog/index.ssf/2014/06/top-10_most_important_vampire_programs_in_tv_history.html|author=Dan Martin|title=Top-10 most important vampire programs in TV history|date=19 June 2014|publisher=Cleveland.com|access-date=8 August 2014|archive-date=21 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181021111509/https://www.cleveland.com/tv-blog/index.ssf/2014/06/top-10_most_important_vampire_programs_in_tv_history.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The continuing popularity of the vampire theme has been ascribed to a combination of two factors: the representation of ] and the perennial dread of mortality.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bartlett|first=Wayne|author2=Flavia Idriceanu|title=Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth|year=2005|publisher=NPI Media Group|location=London|isbn=978-0-7509-3736-8|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/legendsofbloodva0000bart/page/46}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
=== Games === | |||
*Vampire powers are limited during the day. ''"His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day...We have on our side power...a power denied to the vampire kind...the hours of the day and the night are ours equally."'' The level of debilitation depends on the tale. Some vampires do not lose their powers at all, but must avoid sunlight to avoid being burned or killed by it. Others lose their powers entirely during the day, or even enter a state of ] as long as daylight remains. | |||
{{main|Vampires in games}} | |||
The ] '']'' has been influential upon modern vampire fiction and elements of its terminology, such as ''embrace'' and ''sire'', appear in contemporary fiction.<ref name=":1"/> Popular ] include '']'', which is an extension of the original Bram Stoker novel ''Dracula'', and '']''.<ref name=joshi>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=stJxdpZVl_wC&pg=PA646|title=Icons of horror and the supernatural|volume=2|author=Joshi, S. T.|pages=645–646|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|location=Westport, Connecticut|date=2007|isbn=978-0-313-33782-6|access-date=30 October 2020|archive-date=25 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225150423/https://books.google.com/books?id=stJxdpZVl_wC&pg=PA646|url-status=live}}</ref> The role-playing game '']'' features vampires.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/how-dungeons-and-dragons-imagines-and-customizes-its-unique-monsters|title=How Dungeons and Dragons reimagines and customizes iconic folklore monsters|first=James|last=Grebey|publisher=]|date=3 June 2019|access-date=22 March 2020|archive-date=22 March 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200322023827/https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/how-dungeons-and-dragons-imagines-and-customizes-its-unique-monsters|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
*Vampires may not trespass without permission. ''"He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please."'' Some tales extend this even to a vampire not being able to harm a visitor who does not enter the vampire's lair of their own free will. | |||
=== Modern vampire subcultures === | |||
*Vampires may be reluctant to enter or cross bodies of water. ''"It is said, too, that he can only pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide...The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so cannot leave the ship."'' Another example is found in the film '']'' (2000), in which the main vampire, ], refuses to travel by sea. However, other vampire tales have vampires living in water (the Kappa), or occupying large medieval castles complete with surrounding moats. | |||
{{Main|Vampire lifestyle}} | |||
{{See also|Psychic vampirism}} | |||
'']'' is a term for a contemporary subculture of people, largely within the ], who consume the blood of others as a pastime; drawing from the rich recent history of popular culture related to cult symbolism, ]s, the fiction of ], and the styles of Victorian England.<ref>{{cite book |last=Skal |first=David J. |title=The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror | pages=342–343 |year=1993 |publisher=Penguin |location=New York |isbn=978-0-14-024002-3}}</ref> Active vampirism within the vampire subculture includes both blood-related vampirism, commonly referred to as ''sanguine vampirism'', and '']'', or supposed feeding from ] energy.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|last=Jøn|first=A. Asbjørn|year=2002|title=The Psychic Vampire and Vampyre Subculture|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283273380|journal=Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies|issue=12|pages=143–148|issn=0819-0852|access-date=9 November 2015|archive-date=15 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715154950/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283273380_The_Psychic_Vampire_and_Vampyre_Subculture|url-status=live}}<!-- ISBN 1-86389-831-X--></ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Benecke|first1=Mark|last2=Fischer|first2=Ines|date=2015|title=Vampyres among us! – Volume III: Quantitative Study of Central European 'Vampyre' Subculture Members|url=http://www.roterdrache.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=138|publisher=Roter Drache|isbn=978-3-939459-95-8|access-date=2 February 2016|archive-date=10 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170710053810/http://www.roterdrache.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=138|url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
*Some tales maintain that vampires must return to their native soil before sunrise to safely take their rest. This convention is maintained in some stories in which the vampire keeps native soil in his coffin, no matter where he may travel. This mythical property may be related to phenomena involving digging up corpses to see if they were vampires (see the Natural Phenomena section below). Other tales ignore this convention entirely, allowing vampires to rest in any dark place. | |||
== Notes == | |||
*Vampires are often portrayed as ]. Some myths portray Vampires as being possessed of a high libido, but unable to procreate except by infecting others with the properties of Vampirism. Some stories depcit them as experiencing sexual pleasure by feeding on the opposite sex. However, other tales portray them as able to procreate with other vampires and/or humans. | |||
{{notelist}} | |||
==References== | |||
*Vampires in some tales have very specific dietary requirements while others do not. Some stories such as '']'' suggest that a vampire may subsist on animal blood, but not enjoy full vitality unless it feeds on human blood. ]'s Dracula stated "I never drink ... wine", but the vampires from '']'' can only ingest blood and wine, to the exclusion of all other nourishment. The vampires of the TV series '']'' occasionally ingest regular food and beverages on a recreational basis. Spike, for example, enjoys cookies, nachos, and other junk food. Spike also enjoys beer and whiskey, and they have the same intoxicating effect on him as they do on humans. Angel also occasionally ingests regular food and beverages, but usually subsists on a diet of pigs blood. However, most tales of the undead feature vampires that cannot eat (or at least cannot gain nourishment from) normal human food. In some stories, vampires are able to feed on the blood of other vampires, and may gain some portion of the other vampire's strength by doing so. | |||
{{Reflist}} | |||
===Cited texts=== | |||
*There are things in which vampires have no power against such as ], a branch of ], and all things sacred (e.g., ], a ], a ], or sacred objects from other ]). ''"I had laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the ] cannot bear, and other things which they shun....I shall fix some things she like not, garlic and a crucifix, and so seal up the door of the tomb...The branch of wild rose on his coffin keep him that he move not from it."'' | |||
{{Refbegin}} | |||
**This weakness fluctuates depending on the the tale. The vampire may be unable to attack someone holding such an item, or may be burned by it, or even be unable to tolerate being in the same room as it. | |||
* {{cite book |last=Barber |first=Paul |title=Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality |year=1988 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-300-04126-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/vampiresburialde0000barb_n4n9 |url-access=registration}} | |||
**Garlic is confined mostly to European vampire myths; the plant also has other properties depending on the legend. In myths of other regions, other plants of holy or mythical properties sometimes have similar effects. | |||
* {{cite book |last=Bunson |first=Matthew |title=The Vampire Encyclopedia |year=1993 |publisher=Thames & Hudson |location=London |isbn=978-0-500-27748-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/vampireencyclope0000buns |url-access=registration}} | |||
**Holy water and other holy symbols are normally only effective in myths containing strong religious overtones; many modern vampire tales have included vampires who scoff at such items when wielded by "superstitious" vampire hunters. In other stories, any religious symbol wielded by a sincere adherant of the relevant faith is effective in warding off a vampire. In Eastern vampiric myths, vampires are often similarly warded by Eastern holy devices such as ] seals. | |||
* {{cite book |last=Cohen |first=Daniel |title=]: Bigfoot, Chinese Wildman, Nessie, Sea Ape, Werewolf and many more … |year=1989 |publisher=Michael O'Mara Books Ltd |location=London |isbn=978-0-948397-94-3}}<!-- This book is in the Internet Archive, but you might need to check the attribution more thoroughly. --> | |||
**In some cases, the vampire cannot enter consecrated ground, even if no holy symbols are present. | |||
* {{cite book|last=Graves|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Graves|title=The Greek Myths|orig-year=1955|year=1990|publisher=Penguin|location=London|isbn=978-0-14-001026-8}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Hoyt |first=Olga |title=Lust for Blood: The Consuming Story of Vampires |year=1984 |chapter=The Monk's Investigation |publisher=Scarborough House |location=Chelsea |isbn=978-0-8128-8511-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/lustforbloodcons0000hoyt |url-access=registration}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Jones |first=Ernest |title=On the Nightmare |chapter=The Vampire |year=1931 |publisher=Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis |location=London |oclc=2382718 |isbn=978-0-394-54835-7}}<!-- This book is in the Internet Archive, but you might need to check the attribution more thoroughly. --> | |||
* {{cite book |last=Marigny |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Marigny |title=Vampires: The World of the Undead |series="]" series |year=1994 |publisher=Thames & Hudson |location=London |isbn=978-0-500-30041-1|title-link=Vampires: The World of the Undead}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Skal |first=David J. |title=V is for Vampire |year=1996 |location=New York |publisher=Plume |isbn=978-0-452-27173-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/visforvampirethe00skal |url-access=registration }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Silver |first=Alain |author2=James Ursini |title=The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula |year=1993 |publisher=Limelight |location=New York |isbn=978-0-87910-170-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/vampirefilmfromn0000silv |url-access=registration}} | |||
{{Refend}} | |||
== External links == | |||
*Some tales imply that the metal ], when worked into weapons or items, such as a blade or a bullet, is damaging to a vampire. This is primarily a cross-contamination of many European myths concerning ] or other ], who are often reputed to be killed by items made of silver. This limitation is sometimes depicted in films, as in the recent ''Blade'' series (], ], ]), as well as literature, like ] popular vampire novel '']'' (1975), ''"He touched the heavy shape of his father's target pistol in his jacket pocket. Bullets were no good against them except maybe silver ones..."'' | |||
{{Library resources box | |||
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* {{Wiktionary-inline}} | |||
* {{Commons-inline}} | |||
* {{Wikiquote-inline}} | |||
* {{Wikisource-inline|Category:Vampires|Vampire}} | |||
{{Horror fiction}} | |||
*In Bram Stoker's ''Dracula'' (1892), there are three ''referenced'' ways to permanently kill a vampire: a sacred bullet, a wooden ] through the heart, or ]. ''"A sacred bullet fired into the coffin kill him so that he be true dead, and as for the stake through him, we know already of its peace, or the cut off head that giveth rest."'' | |||
{{Authority control}} | |||
**This includes other means of death that effectively removes a vampire's head, such as incinerating the body completely, as portrayed in the novel '']'' (1845), where the main character, the vampire Sir Francis Varney, commits suicide by throwing himself into the active ] ], ''"Varney took one tremendous leap, and disappeared into the burning mouth of the mountain."'' | |||
**In many representations, a wooden arrow or spear through the heart will work just as well as a stake, provided the wood is lodged in the heart and doesn't completely pass through the body. Some stories even suggest that vampires may be killed by multiple shots of wooden bullets to the heart; this was featured in numerous ] comics of the 1970s. Other tales suggest that a vampire can be killed by penetrating the heart with bone or antler; this method was successful in the film '']'' (1987) when a vampire was impaled on a deer head trophy. In the '']'' video game series, the important portion was the mere impalement of the heart; the material piercing it did not matter. | |||
] | |||
*Old folklore from Eastern Europe suggests that many vampires suffered from a form of ], being fascinated with counting. Millet or poppy seeds were placed on the ground at the gravesite of a presumed vampire, in order to keep the vampire occupied all night counting. Aside from the counting "Count" on ] this characteristic seems to have largely disappeared from modern vampire fiction and films. | |||
] | |||
] | |||
== Natural phenomena that propagate the vampire myth== | |||
] | |||
=== Pathology and vampirism === | |||
] | |||
Some people argue that vampire stories might have been influenced by a rare illness called ]. The disease disrupts the production of ]. People with extreme cases of this hereditary disease can be so sensitive to sunlight that they can get a sunburn through heavy cloud cover, causing them to be nocturnal and avoid all light. People with porphyria can also have red eyes and teeth, resulting from buildup of red heme intermediates (]s). Certain forms of porphyria are also associated with neurological symptoms, which can create psychiatric disorders. However, the hypotheses that porphyria sufferers "crave" the heme in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based in ignorance. | |||
] | |||
] | |||
Others argue that there is a relationship between vampirism and ]. The legend of vampirism is known to have existed in the 19th century ], where there were massive rabies outbreaks. Rabies causes high fever, loss of appetite, and fatigue as initial symptoms. In later stages, patients try to avoid the sunlight and prefer walking at night. Strong light and ]s can cause episodes characterized by violent and animal-like behaviors and a tendency to attack people and bite them. Concomitant facial spasms might give the patient an animal-like (or a vampire-like) expression. In a furious form of the disease, patients might have an increased urgency for sexual activity or occasionally vomit blood. Rabies is contagious. | |||
] | |||
] | |||
=== Fountain of blood when staked === | |||
] | |||
As a body decomposes, the internal organs rot first because the food that is fermenting there continues fermenting and gases produced cannot get out. As a result, a body can swell like a balloon. Put pressure on this and the pressure seeks a way to escape. | |||
=== Finding vampires in graves === | |||
When the coffin of an alleged vampire was opened, people sometimes found the cadaver in a "healthy state" and beautiful, meaning that the corpse was a | |||
well-fed vampire. Folkloric accounts almost universally represent the vampire as having ruddy or dark skin, not the pale skin of vampires in literature and film. Reasons for this appearance include: | |||
*In the past, people were often malnourished and therefore thin in life. Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso. The implication was that the corpse was not famished and, because blood was sometimes found in the corners of the mouth, it was assumed that the "vampire" had been drinking blood. | |||
*Natural processes of decomposition, absent embalming, tend to darken the skin of a corpse — hence the black, blue, or red complexion of the folkloric vampire. | |||
=== Drinking blood === | |||
There have been a number of murderers who performed this seemingly vampiric ritual upon their victims. ]s ] and ] were both called "vampires" in the ]s after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered, for example. Legends that ], a medieval Hungarian ], murdered hundreds of women in bizarre ]s involving blood, helped mold contemporary vampire legends. | |||
Some psychologists in modern times recognize a disorder called clinical vampirism (or ]'s syndrome, from ]'s insect-eating henchman in the novel by ]), where the victim is obsessed with drinking blood, either from animals or humans. | |||
Also, the lust for blood (and sexual lusts) which is characteristic of vampires, especially Dracula, is known as "]", or the ] from a dead person towards a living person. It is the opposite of ]. | |||
===Vampire bats=== | |||
No discussion of vampires is even thinkable without talking about ]s. They are integral to the modern day concept of the vampire, but this was not always the case. Many cultures have various myths about bats. In ], Camazotz was a bat god of the caves living in the Bathouse of the Underworld. In Europe, bats and owls were long associated with the supernatural, mainly because they were night creatures. On the other hand, the Gypsies thought them lucky - they wore charms made of bat bones; in ], the Wakefield crest and some others have bats on them. | |||
The three species of ] are all ] to ], and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any ] relatives within human memory. It is therefore unlikely that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the bat. During the ] the ] conquistadors first came into contact with them and recognized the similarity between the feeding habits of the bats and those of their mythical vampires. It wasn't long before they began to associate bats with their vampire legends. | |||
The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the '']'' records the folkloric use in English from ] and the zoological not until ]. Over the following centuries the association became stronger and was used by various people, including James Malcom Rhymer who wrote "Varney the Vampyre" in the ]. Stoker cemented the linkage of bats and vampires in the minds of the general public, and it is common for vampires to be represented as bat-like in one way or another and have the ability to transform into one when desired which in turns grants the ability to fly. | |||
== Vampires in literature, art, and pop culture == | |||
] introduced many common elements of the vampire theme to Western literature in his ] '']'' (1813). These include the combination of horror and lust that the vampire feels and the concept of the undead passing its inheritance to the living. | |||
Bram Stoker's '']'' has been the definitive description of the vampire in popular fiction for the last century. Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession), with its undertones of sex, blood, and death, struck a chord in a Victorian England where ] and ] were common. | |||
See ] for more information. | |||
== The "Vampire subculture" == | |||
The vampire subculture describes a contemporary ] marked by an obsessive fascination with, and emulation of, contemporary vampire lore, including everything from ] and ] to, in the more extreme cases, the actual exchange of blood. Members of the subculture ("vampirists") often prefer the spelling "vampyre" to distinguish themselves from the "fictional" vampire while simultaneously lending a ] flair to their activities. These contemporary consumers of blood typically appeal to myths about vampires for legitimacy. | |||
For more information, see ]. | |||
==Further reading== | |||
* Christopher Frayling - ''Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula'' 1992. ISBN 0571167926 | |||
==See also== | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* The ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ]s | |||
* ] | |||
==External links== | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* <br/> from: | |||
* from: | |||
* from: | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* has written books and articles on Stoker's Dracula and Vlad Tepes. | |||
* Interactive real vampire society and occult practitioners | |||
* is a place for real blood drinkers and blood donors to communicate. | |||
* is a page providing support for a presumed group of real vampires. | |||
* is another site providing support for a presumed group of real vampires. | |||
* “Test Everything. Believe Nothing.” | |||
* is a massive community for vampires and other alternative lifestyles | |||
* is a fun French place about vampires. Literature, cinema, society, art, geography. | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* is a site by Catherene NightPoe containing a vast amount of information regarding vampires. | |||
* The web's first link portal devoted entirely to John William Polidori, author of "The Vampyre". | |||
] | |||
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Latest revision as of 11:52, 13 January 2025
Undead creature from folklore For other uses, see Vampire (disambiguation).
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods which they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.
Vampiric entities have been recorded in cultures around the world; the term vampire was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in Southeastern and Eastern Europe that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism. Local variants in Southeastern Europe were also known by different names, such as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania, cognate to Italian strega, meaning 'witch'.
In modern times, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures (such as the chupacabra) still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.
The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of "The Vampyre" by the English writer John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend, even though it was published after fellow Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel Carmilla. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, television shows, and video games. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.
Etymology and word distribution
The exact etymology is unclear. The term "vampire" is the earliest recorded in English, Latin and French and they refer to vampirism in Russia, Poland and North Macedonia. The English term was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn, derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian вампир (vampir). Though this being a popular explanation, a pagan worship of upyri was already recorded in Old Russian in the 11–13th century. Some claim an origin from Lithuanian. Oxford and others maintain a Turkish origin (from Turkish uber, meaning "witch"), which passed to English via Hungarian and French derivation. In addition, others sustain that the modern word "Vampire" is derived from the Old Slavic and Turkic languages form "онпыр (onpyr)", with the addition of the "v" sound in front of the large nasal vowel (on), characteristic of Old Bulgarian. Parallels are found in virtually all Slavic and Turkic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian вампир (vampir), Turkish: Ubır, Obur, Obır, Tatar language: Убыр (Ubır), Chuvash language: Вупăр (Vupăr), Bosnian: вампир (vampir), Croatian vampir, Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upiór, Ukrainian упир (upyr), Russian упырь (upyr'), Belarusian упыр (upyr), from Old East Slavic упирь (upir') (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). In Albanian the words lu(v)gat and dhampir are used; the latter seems to be derived from the Gheg Albanian words dham 'tooth' and pir 'to drink'. The origin of the modern word Vampire (Upiór means Hortdan, Vampire or witch in Turkic and Slavic myths.) comes from the term Ubir-Upiór, the origin of the word Ubir or Upiór is based on the regions around the Volga (Itil) River and Pontic steppes. Upiór myth is through the migrations of the Kipchak-Cuman people to the Eurasian steppes allegedly spread. The Bulgarian format is впир (vpir, other names: onpyr, vopir, vpir, upir, upierz).
Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb vrepiť sa 'stick to, thrust into', or its hypothetical anagram vperiť sa (in Czech, the archaic verb vpeřit means 'to thrust violently') as an etymological background, and thus translates upír as 'someone who thrusts, bites'. The term was introduced to German readers by the Polish Jesuit priest Gabriel Rzączyński in 1721.
The word vampire (as vampyre) first appeared in English in 1732, in news reports about vampire "epidemics" in eastern Europe. After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.
Folk beliefs
See also: List of vampiric creatures in folkloreThe notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, Manipuri and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.
Description and common attributes
It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire, though there are several elements common to many European legends. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood, which was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin, and its left eye was often open. It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature. Chewing sounds were reported emanating from graves.
Creating vampires
The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. In Slavic and Chinese traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead. A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was also at risk. In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the Russian Orthodox Church while they were alive.
In Albanian folklore, the dhampir is the hybrid child of the karkanxholl (a lycanthropic creature with an iron mail shirt) or the lugat (a water-dwelling ghost or monster). The dhampir sprung of a karkanxholl has the unique ability to discern the karkanxholl; from this derives the expression the dhampir knows the lugat. The lugat cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the dhampir, who himself is usually the son of a lugat. In different regions, animals can be revenants as lugats; also, living people during their sleep. Dhampiraj is also an Albanian surname.
Prevention
Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles, 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 resembles the ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld. The coin may have also been intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore. This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the vrykolakas, in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire.
Other methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampiric being came across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a theme encountered in myths from the Indian subcontinent, as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings.
Identifying vampires
Many rituals were used to identify a vampire. One method of finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse would supposedly balk at the grave in question. Generally a black horse was required, though in Albania it should be white. Holes appearing in the earth over a grave were taken as a sign of vampirism.
Corpses thought to be vampires were generally described as having a healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs of 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. 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-styled activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects, and pressing on people in their sleep.
Protection
Garlic, Bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, holy water, and mirrors have all been seen in various folkloric traditions as means of warding against or identifying vampires.Apotropaics—items able to ward off revenants—are common in vampire folklore. Garlic is a common example; a branch of wild rose and hawthorn are sometimes associated with causing harm to vampires, and in Europe, mustard seeds would be sprinkled on the roof of a house to keep them away. Other apotropaics include sacred items, such as crucifix, rosary, or holy water. Some folklore also states that vampires are unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as that of churches or temples, or cross running water.
Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire's lack of a soul or their weakness to silver). This attribute is not universal (the Greek vrykolakas/tympanios was capable of both reflection and shadow), but was used by Bram Stoker in Dracula and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.
Some traditions also hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited by the owner; after the first invitation they can come and go as they please. Though folkloric vampires were believed to be more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to sunlight.
Reports in 1693 and 1694 concerning citings of vampires in Poland and Russia claimed that when a vampire's grave was recognized, eating bread baked with its blood mixed into the flour, or simply drinking it, granted the possibility of protection. Other stories (primarily the Arnold Paole case) claimed the eating of dirt from the vampire's grave would have the same effect.
Methods of destruction
Methods of destroying suspected vampires varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in South Slavic cultures. Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states, or hawthorn in Serbia, with a record of oak in Silesia. Aspen was also used for stakes, as it was believed that Christ's cross was made from aspen (aspen branches on the graves of purported vampires were also believed to prevent their risings at night). Potential vampires were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany and the stomach in north-eastern Serbia. Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated vampire. This is similar to a practice of "anti-vampire burial": burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.
Decapitation was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the buttocks or away from the body. This act was seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul, which in some cultures was said to linger in the corpse. The vampire's head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to prevent rising.
Romani people drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. In a 16th-century burial near Venice, a brick forced into the mouth of a female corpse has been interpreted as a vampire-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006. In Bulgaria, over 100 skeletons with metal objects, such as plough bits, embedded in the torso have been discovered.
Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In Southeastern Europe, a vampire could also be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by sprinkling holy water on the body, or by exorcism. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 19th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure. In Saxon regions of Germany, a lemon was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires.
Ancient beliefs
Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood or flesh of the living have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries. The term vampire did not exist in ancient times. Blood drinking and similar activities were attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the devil was considered synonymous with the vampire. Almost every culture associates blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India tales of vetālas, ghoulish beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the Baitāl Pacīsī; a prominent story in the Kathāsaritsāgara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one. Piśāca, the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes.
The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of the mythical Lilitu, synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith (Hebrew לילית) and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies, and estries, female shapeshifting, blood-drinking demons, were said to roam the night among the population, seeking victims. According to Sefer Hasidim, estries were creatures created in the twilight hours before God rested. An injured estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given to her by her attacker.
Greco-Roman mythology described the Empusae, the Lamia, the Mormo and the striges. Over time the first two terms became general words to describe witches and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and was described as a demonic, bronze-footed creature. She feasted on blood by transforming into a young woman and seduced men as they slept before drinking their blood. The Lamia preyed on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood, as did the gelloudes or Gello. Like the Lamia, the striges feasted on children, but also preyed on adults. They were described as having the bodies of crows or birds in general, and were later incorporated into Roman mythology as strix, a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.
In Turkic mythology, an ubır is a vampiric creature characterized by various regional depictions. According to legends, individuals heavily steeped in sin and practitioners of black magic transform into ubırs upon their death, taking on a bestial form within their graves. Ubırs possess the ability to shape-shift, assuming the forms of both humans and various animals. Furthermore, they can seize the soul of a living being and exert control over its body. Someone inhabited by a vampire constantly experiences hunger, becoming increasingly aggressive when unable to find sustenance, ultimately resorting to drinking human blood.
Medieval and later European folklore
Main article: Vampire folklore by regionMany myths surrounding vampires originated during the medieval period. With the arrival of Christianity in Greece, and other parts of Europe, the vampire "began to take on decidedly Christian characteristics." As various regions of the continent converted to Christianity, the vampire was viewed as "a dead person who retained a semblance of life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had risen after His death and burial and appeared before His followers." In the Middle Ages, the Christian Churches reinterpreted vampires from their previous folk existence into minions of Satan, and used an allegory to communicate a doctrine to Christians: "Just as a vampire takes a sinner's very spirit into itself by drinking his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ's blood take the divine spirit into himself." The interpretation of vampires under the Christian Churches established connotations that are still associated in the vampire genre today. For example, the "ability of the cross to hurt and ward off vampires is distinctly due to its Christian association."
The 12th-century British historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants, though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant. The Old Norse draugr is another medieval example of an undead creature with similarities to vampires. Vampiric beings were rarely written about in Jewish literature; the 16th-century rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) wrote of an uncharitable old woman whose body was unguarded and unburied for three days after she died and rose as a vampiric entity, killing hundreds of people. He linked this event to the lack of a shmirah (guarding) after death as the corpse could be a vessel for evil spirits.
In 1645, the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus ("On certain modern opinions among the Greeks"). Vampires properly originating in folklore were widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized. An early recording of the time came from the region of Istria in modern Croatia, in 1672; Local reports described a panic among the villagers inspired by the belief that Jure Grando had become a vampire after dying in 1656, drinking blood from victims and sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be driven through his heart. Later, his corpse was also beheaded.
From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, a subject resumed by Otto in 1732, and then by Michael Ranft in 1734. The subject was based on the observation that when digging up graves, it was discovered that some corpses had at some point either devoured the interior fabric of their coffin or their own limbs. Ranft described in his treatise of a tradition in some parts of Germany, that to prevent the dead from masticating they placed a mound of dirt under their chin in the coffin, placed a piece of money and a stone in the mouth, or tied a handkerchief tightly around the throat. In 1732 an anonymous writer writing as "the doctor Weimar" discusses the non-putrefaction of these creatures, from a theological point of view. In 1733, Johann Christoph Harenberg wrote a general treatise on vampirism and the Marquis d'Argens cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen also address the topic.
Some theological disputes arose. The non-decay of vampires' bodies could recall the incorruption of the bodies of the saints of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Indeed, vampires were traditionally considered highly problematic within Christianity, as their apparent immortal existence ran against the Christian belief that all true believers may look forward to an eternal existence with body and soul as they were resurrected, but only at the end of time when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. Those who are resurrected as immortal before this are thus in no way part of the divine plan of salvation. The imperfect state of the vampire body and how they, in spite of their immortal nature, still needed to feed of the blood of the living, further reflected the problematic aspect of the vampires. Contrary to how the incorruptible saints foreshadowed the immortality promised all true Christians at the end of time, the immortality of the undead vampires was thus not a sign of salvation, but of perdition. The unholy dimension of vampirism may also be reflected in how, in parts of Russia, the very word heretic, eretik, was synonymous with a vampire. Whoever denied God or his commandments became an eretik after his death, the improperly immortal figure that wandered the night in search of people to feed on. A paragraph on vampires was included in the second edition (1749) of De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione, On the beatification of the servants of God and on canonization of the blessed, written by Prospero Lambertini (Pope Benedict XIV). In his opinion, while the incorruption of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear". In other words, vampires did not exist.
18th-century vampire controversy
In the early 18th century, despite the decline of many popular folkloric beliefs during the Age of Enlightenment, there was a dramatic increase in the popular belief in vampires, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout much of Europe. The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg monarchy from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. The first infamous vampire case involved the corpses of Petar Blagojević from Serbia. Blagojević was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Blagojević supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.
In the second case, Miloš Čečar, an ex-soldier-turned-farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area; it was widely believed that Miloš had returned to prey on the neighbours.
The Blagojević and Čečar incidents were well-documented. Government officials examined the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them. Even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of vampires.
The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "vampire controversy," continued for a generation. At least sixteen contemporary treatises discussed the theological and philosophical implications of the vampire epidemic. Dom Augustine Calmet, a French theologian and scholar, published a comprehensive treatise in 1751 titled Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants which investigated and analysed the evidence for vampirism. Numerous readers, including both Voltaire (critical) and numerous demonologists (supportive), interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed.
The controversy in Austria ceased when Empress Maria Theresa sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. Van Swieten concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and the desecration of bodies, thus ending the vampire epidemic. Other European countries followed suit. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local folklore.
Non-European beliefs
Beings having many of the attributes of European vampires appear in the folklore of Africa, Asia, North and South America, and India. Classified as vampires, all share the thirst for blood.
Africa
Various regions of Africa have folktales featuring beings with vampiric abilities: in West Africa the Ashanti people tell of the iron-toothed and tree-dwelling asanbosam, and the Ewe people of the adze, which can take the form of a firefly and hunts children. The eastern Cape region has the impundulu, which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the Betsileo people of Madagascar tell of the ramanga, an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles. In colonial East Africa, rumors circulated to the effect that employees of the state such as firemen and nurses were vampires, known in Swahili as wazimamoto.
Americas
The Rougarou is an example of how a vampire belief can result from a combination of beliefs, here a mixture of French and African Vodu or voodoo. The term Rougarou possibly comes from the French loup-garou (meaning "werewolf") and is common in the culture of Mauritius. The stories of the Rougarou are widespread through the Caribbean Islands and Louisiana in the United States. Similar female monsters are the Soucouyant of Trinidad, and the Tunda and Patasola of Colombian folklore, while the Mapuche of southern Chile have the bloodsucking snake known as the Peuchen. Aloe vera hung backwards behind or near a door was thought to ward off vampiric beings in South American folklore. Aztec mythology described tales of the Cihuateteo, skull-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them mad.
During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was widespread in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for sickness and death in the family, although the term "vampire" was never used to describe the dead. The deadly disease tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was known at the time, was believed to be caused by nightly visitations on the part of a dead family member who had died of consumption themselves. The most famous, and most recently recorded, case of suspected vampirism is that of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown, who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb two months after her death, cut out her heart and burned it to ashes.
Sarah Roberts (1872–1913) was an Englishwoman who died and was buried in Pisco, Peru. After her death, a legend evolved that she was a vampire and bride of Dracula. On June 9 1993, the 80th anniversary of her death, locals in Pisco feared she would come back to life and take her revenge.
Asia
Vampires have appeared in Japanese cinema since the late 1950s; the folklore behind it is western in origin. The Nukekubi is a being whose head and neck detach from its body to fly about seeking human prey at night. Legends of female vampiric beings who can detach parts of their upper body also occur in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There are two main vampiric creatures in the Philippines: the Tagalog Mandurugo ("blood-sucker") and the Visayan Manananggal ("self-segmenter"). The mandurugo is a variety of the aswang that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings and a long, hollow, threadlike tongue by night. The tongue is used to suck up blood from a sleeping victim. The manananggal is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge batlike wings and prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes. They use an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck fetuses from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails (specifically the heart and the liver) and the phlegm of sick people.
The Malaysian Penanggalan is a woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local folklore to be dark or demonic in nature. She is able to detach her fanged head which flies around in the night looking for blood, typically from pregnant women. Malaysians hung jeruju (thistles) around the doors and windows of houses, hoping the Penanggalan would not enter for fear of catching its intestines on the thorns. The Leyak is a similar being from Balinese folklore of Indonesia. A Kuntilanak or Matianak in Indonesia, or Pontianak or Langsuir in Malaysia, is a woman who died during childbirth and became undead, seeking revenge and terrorising villages. She appeared as an attractive woman with long black hair that covered a hole in the back of her neck, with which she sucked the blood of children. Filling the hole with her hair would drive her off. Corpses had their mouths filled with glass beads, eggs under each armpit, and needles in their palms to prevent them from becoming langsuir. This description would also fit the Sundel Bolongs.
In Vietnam, the word used to translate Western vampires, "ma cà rồng", originally referred to a type of demon that haunts modern-day Phú Thọ Province, within the communities of the Tai Dam ethnic minority. The word was first mentioned in the chronicles of 18th-century Confucian scholar Lê Quý Đôn, who spoke of a creature that lives among humans, but stuffs its toes into its nostrils at night and flies by its ears into houses with pregnant women to suck their blood. Having fed on these women, the ma cà rồng then returns to its house and cleans itself by dipping its toes into barrels of sappanwood water. This allows the ma cà rồng to live undetected among humans during the day, before heading out to attack again by night.
Jiangshi, sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 pò) fails to leave the deceased's body. Jiangshi are usually represented as mindless creatures with no independent thought. This monster has greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or mould growing on corpses. Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia. Films like Encounters of the Spooky Kind and Mr. Vampire were released during the jiangshi cinematic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.
Modern beliefs
In modern fiction, the vampire tends to be depicted as a suave, charismatic villain. Vampire hunting societies still exist, but they are largely formed for social reasons. Allegations of vampire attacks swept through Malawi during late 2002 and early 2003, with mobs stoning one person to death and attacking at least four others, including Governor Eric Chiwaya, based on the belief that the government was colluding with vampires. Fears and violence recurred in late 2017, with 6 people accused of being vampires killed.
In early 1970, local press spread rumours that a vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters flocked in large numbers to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case, notably by Sean Manchester, a local man who was among the first to suggest the existence of the "Highgate Vampire" and who later claimed to have exorcised and destroyed a whole nest of vampires in the area. In January 2005, rumours circulated that an attacker had bitten a number of people in Birmingham, England, fuelling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. Local police stated that no such crime had been reported and that the case appears to be an urban legend.
The chupacabra ("goat-sucker") of Puerto Rico and Mexico is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of domesticated animals, leading some to consider it a kind of vampire. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the mid-1990s.
In Europe, where much of the vampire folklore originates, the vampire is usually considered a fictitious being; many communities may have embraced the revenant for economic purposes. In some cases, especially in small localities, beliefs are still rampant and sightings or claims of vampire attacks occur frequently. In Romania during February 2004, several relatives of Toma Petre feared that he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to drink it.
Origins of vampire beliefs
Commentators have offered many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs and related mass hysteria. Everything ranging from premature burial to the early ignorance of the body's decomposition cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.
Pathology
Decomposition
Author Paul Barber stated that belief in vampires resulted from people of pre-industrial societies attempting to explain the natural, but to them inexplicable, process of death and decomposition. People sometimes suspected vampirism when a cadaver did not look as they thought a normal corpse should when disinterred. Rates of decomposition vary depending on temperature and soil composition, and many of the signs are little known. This has led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead body had not decomposed at all or to interpret signs of decomposition as signs of continued life.
Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso and the increased pressure forces blood to ooze from the nose and mouth. This causes the body to look "plump", "well-fed", and "ruddy"—changes that are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. In the Arnold Paole case, an old woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbours to look more plump and healthy than she had ever looked in life. The exuding blood gave the impression that the corpse had recently been engaging in vampiric activity. Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition. The staking of a swollen, decomposing body could cause the body to bleed and force the accumulated gases to escape the body. This could produce a groan-like sound when the gases moved past the vocal cords, or a sound reminiscent of flatulence when they passed through the anus. The official reporting on the Petar Blagojevich case speaks of "other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect". After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the roots of the hair, nails, and teeth, even teeth that were concealed in the jaw. This can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels away, as reported in the Blagojevich case—the dermis and nail beds emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".
Premature burial
Vampire legends may have also been influenced by individuals being buried alive because of shortcomings in the medical knowledge of the time. In some cases in which people reported sounds emanating from a specific coffin, it was later dug up and fingernail marks were discovered on the inside from the victim trying to escape. In other cases the person would hit their heads, noses or faces and it would appear that they had been "feeding". A problem with this theory is the question of how people presumably buried alive managed to stay alive for any extended period without food, water or fresh air. An alternate explanation for noise is the bubbling of escaping gases from natural decomposition of bodies. Another likely cause of disordered tombs is grave robbery.
Disease
Folkloric vampirism has been associated with clusters of deaths from unidentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community. The epidemic allusion is obvious in the classical cases of Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole, and even more so in the case of Mercy Brown and in the vampire beliefs of New England generally, where a specific disease, tuberculosis, was associated with outbreaks of vampirism. As with the pneumonic form of bubonic plague, it was associated with breakdown of lung tissue which would cause blood to appear at the lips.
In 1985, biochemist David Dolphin proposed a link between the rare blood disorder porphyria and vampire folklore. Noting that the condition is treated by intravenous haem, he suggested that the consumption of large amounts of blood may result in haem being transported somehow across the stomach wall and into the bloodstream. Thus vampires were merely sufferers of porphyria seeking to replace haem and alleviate their symptoms.
The theory has been rebuffed medically as suggestions that porphyria sufferers crave the haem in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based on a misunderstanding of the disease. Furthermore, Dolphin was noted to have confused fictional (bloodsucking) vampires with those of folklore, many of whom were not noted to drink blood. Similarly, a parallel is made between sensitivity to sunlight by sufferers, yet this was associated with fictional and not folkloric vampires. In any case, Dolphin did not go on to publish his work more widely. Despite being dismissed by experts, the link gained media attention and entered popular modern folklore.
Juan Gómez-Alonso, a neurologist, examined the possible link of rabies with vampire folklore. The susceptibility to garlic and light could be due to hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of rabies. It can also affect portions of the brain that could lead to disturbance of normal sleep patterns (thus becoming nocturnal) and hypersexuality. Legend once said a man was not rabid if he could look at his own reflection (an allusion to the legend that vampires have no reflection). Wolves and bats, which are often associated with vampires, can be carriers of rabies. The disease can also lead to a drive to bite others and to a bloody frothing at the mouth.
Psychodynamic theories
In his 1931 treatise On the Nightmare, Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones asserted that vampires are symbolic of several unconscious drives and defence mechanisms. Emotions such as love, guilt, and hate fuel the idea of the return of the dead to the grave. Desiring a reunion with loved ones, mourners may project the idea that the recently dead must in return yearn the same. From this arises the belief that folkloric vampires and revenants visit relatives, particularly their spouses, first.
In cases where there was unconscious guilt associated with the relationship, the wish for reunion may be subverted by anxiety. This may lead to repression, which Sigmund Freud had linked with the development of morbid dread. Jones surmised in this case the original wish of a (sexual) reunion may be drastically changed: desire is replaced by fear; love is replaced by sadism, and the object or loved one is replaced by an unknown entity. The sexual aspect may or may not be present. Some modern critics have proposed a simpler theory: People identify with immortal vampires because, by so doing, they overcome, or at least temporarily escape from, their fear of dying.
Jones linked the innate sexuality of bloodsucking with cannibalism, with a folkloric connection with incubus-like behaviour. He added that when more normal aspects of sexuality are repressed, regressed forms may be expressed, in particular sadism; he felt that oral sadism is integral in vampiric behaviour.
Political interpretations
The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones. The aristocratic Count Dracula, alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers, appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry, is symbolic of the parasitic ancien régime. In his entry for "Vampires" in the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), Voltaire notices how the mid-18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now "there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces".
Marx defined capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks". Werner Herzog, in his Nosferatu the Vampyre, gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist Jonathan Harker, a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.
Psychopathology
A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims. Serial killers Peter Kürten and Richard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in the tabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. In 1932, an unsolved murder case in Stockholm, Sweden, was nicknamed the "Vampire murder", because of the circumstances of the victim's death. The late-16th-century Hungarian countess and mass murderer Elizabeth Báthory became infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth.
Vampire bats
Main article: Vampire batAlthough many cultures have stories about them, vampire bats have only recently become an integral part of the traditional vampire lore. Vampire bats were integrated into vampire folklore after they were discovered on the South American mainland in the 16th century. There are no vampire bats in Europe, but bats and owls have long been associated with the supernatural and omens, mainly because of their nocturnal habits.
The three species of vampire bats are all endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any Old World relatives within human memory. It is therefore impossible that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the vampire bat. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the Oxford English Dictionary records their folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. The danger of rabies infection aside, the vampire bat's bite is usually not harmful to a person, but the bat has been known to actively feed on humans and large prey such as cattle and often leaves the trademark, two-prong bite mark on its victim's skin.
The literary Dracula transforms into a bat several times in the novel, and vampire bats themselves are mentioned twice in it. The 1927 stage production of Dracula followed the novel in having Dracula turn into a bat, as did the film, where Béla Lugosi would transform into a bat. The bat transformation scene was used again by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1943's Son of Dracula.
In modern culture
See also: List of vampiresThe vampire is now a fixture in popular fiction. Such fiction began with 18th-century poetry and continued with 19th-century short stories, the first and most influential of which was John Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819), featuring the vampire Lord Ruthven. Lord Ruthven's exploits were further explored in a series of vampire plays in which he was the antihero. The vampire theme continued in penny dreadful serial publications such as Varney the Vampire (1847) and culminated in the pre-eminent vampire novel in history: Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897.
Over time, some attributes now regarded as integral became incorporated into the vampire's profile: fangs and vulnerability to sunlight appeared over the course of the 19th century, with Varney the Vampire and Count Dracula both bearing protruding teeth, and Count Orlok of Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) fearing daylight. The cloak appeared in stage productions of the 1920s, with a high collar introduced by playwright Hamilton Deane to help Dracula 'vanish' on stage. Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to be healed by moonlight, although no account of this is known in traditional folklore. Implied though not often explicitly documented in folklore, immortality is one attribute which features heavily in vampire films and literature. Much is made of the price of eternal life, namely the incessant need for the blood of former equals.
Literature
Main article: Vampire literatureThe vampire or revenant first appeared in poems such as The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, Lenore (1773) by Gottfried August Bürger, Die Braut von Corinth (The Bride of Corinth) (1797) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), John Stagg's "The Vampyre" (1810), Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Spectral Horseman" (1810) ("Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore") and "Ballad" in St. Irvyne (1811) about a reanimated corpse, Sister Rosa, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished Christabel and Lord Byron's The Giaour.
Byron was also credited with the first prose fiction piece concerned with vampires: "The Vampyre" (1819). This was in reality authored by Byron's personal physician, John Polidori, who adapted an enigmatic fragmentary tale of his illustrious patient, "Fragment of a Novel" (1819), also known as "The Burial: A Fragment". Byron's own dominating personality, mediated by his lover Lady Caroline Lamb in her unflattering roman-a-clef Glenarvon (a Gothic fantasia based on Byron's wild life), was used as a model for Polidori's undead protagonist Lord Ruthven. The Vampyre was highly successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.
Varney the Vampire was a popular mid-Victorian era gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, which first appeared from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as penny dreadfuls because of their low price and gruesome contents. Published in book form in 1847, the story runs to 868 double-columned pages. It has a distinctly suspenseful style, using vivid imagery to describe the horrifying exploits of Varney. Another important addition to the genre was Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire story Carmilla (1871). Like Varney before her, the vampiress Carmilla is portrayed in a somewhat sympathetic light as the compulsion of her condition is highlighted.
No effort to depict vampires in popular fiction was as influential or as definitive as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. The vampiric traits described in Stoker's work merged with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.
Drawing on past works such as The Vampyre and Carmilla, Stoker began to research his new book in the late 19th century, reading works such as The Land Beyond the Forest (1888) by Emily Gerard and other books about Transylvania and vampires. In London, a colleague mentioned to him the story of Vlad Ţepeş, the "real-life Dracula", and Stoker immediately incorporated this story into his book. The first chapter of the book was omitted when it was published in 1897, but it was released in 1914 as "Dracula's Guest".
The latter part of the 20th century saw the rise of multi-volume vampire epics as well as a renewed interest in the subject in books. The first of these was Gothic romance writer Marilyn Ross's Barnabas Collins series (1966–71), loosely based on the contemporary American TV series Dark Shadows. It also set the trend for seeing vampires as poetic tragic heroes rather than as the more traditional embodiment of evil. This formula was followed in novelist Anne Rice's highly popular Vampire Chronicles (1976–2003), and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (2005–2008). In the 2006 Peter Watts's novel Blindsight, vampires are depicted as a subspecies of homo sapiens that predated on humanity until the dawn of civilization. The various supernatural characteristics and abilities traditionally assigned to vampires by folklore are justified on naturalistic and scientific basis.
Film and television
Main articles: Vampire film, List of vampire films, and List of vampire television seriesConsidered one of the preeminent figures of the classic horror film, the vampire has proven to be a rich subject for the film, television, and gaming industries. Dracula is a major character in more films than any other but Sherlock Holmes, and many early films were either based on the novel Dracula or closely derived from it. These included the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau and featuring the first film portrayal of Dracula—although names and characters were intended to mimic Dracula's. Universal's Dracula (1931), starring Béla Lugosi as the Count and directed by Tod Browning, was the first talking film to portray Dracula. Both Lugosi's performance and the film overall were influential in the blossoming horror film genre, now able to use sound and special effects much more efficiently than in the Silent Film Era. The influence of this 1931 film lasted throughout the rest of the 20th century and up through the present day. Stephen King, Francis Ford Coppola, Hammer Horror, and Philip Saville each have at one time or another derived inspiration from this film directly either through staging or even through directly quoting the film, particularly how Stoker's line "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!" is delivered by Lugosi; for example Coppola paid homage to this moment with Gary Oldman in his interpretation of the tale in 1992 and King has credited this film as an inspiration for his character Kurt Barlow repeatedly in interviews. It is for these reasons that the film was selected by the US Library of Congress to be in the National Film Registry in 2000.
The legend of the vampire continued through the film industry when Dracula was reincarnated in the pertinent Hammer Horror series of films, starring Christopher Lee as the Count. The successful 1958 Dracula starring Lee was followed by seven sequels. Lee returned as Dracula in all but two of these and became well known in the role. By the 1970s, vampires in films had diversified with works such as Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), an African Count in 1972's Blacula, the BBC's Count Dracula featuring French actor Louis Jourdan as Dracula and Frank Finlay as Abraham Van Helsing, and a Nosferatu-like vampire in 1979's Salem's Lot, and a remake of Nosferatu itself, titled Nosferatu the Vampyre with Klaus Kinski the same year. Several films featured the characterization of a female, often lesbian, vampire such as Hammer Horror's The Vampire Lovers (1970), based on Carmilla, though the plotlines still revolved around a central evil vampire character.
The Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, on American television from 1966 to 1971, featured the vampire character Barnabas Collins, portrayed by Jonathan Frid, which proved partly responsible for making the series one of the most popular of its type, amassing a total of 1,225 episodes in its nearly five-year run. The pilot for the later 1972 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker revolved around a reporter hunting a vampire on the Las Vegas Strip. Later films showed more diversity in plotline, with some focusing on the vampire-hunter, such as Blade in the Marvel Comics' Blade films and the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy, released in 1992, foreshadowed a vampiric presence on television, with its adaptation to a series of the same name and its spin-off Angel. Others showed the vampire as a protagonist, such as 1983's The Hunger, 1994's Interview with the Vampire and its indirect sequel Queen of the Damned, and the 2007 series Moonlight. The 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola became the then-highest grossing vampire film ever.
This increase of interest in vampiric plotlines led to the vampire being depicted in films such as Underworld and Van Helsing, the Russian Night Watch and a TV miniseries remake of Salem's Lot, both from 2004. The series Blood Ties premiered on Lifetime Television in 2007, featuring a character portrayed as Henry Fitzroy, an illegitimate-son-of-Henry-VIII-of-England-turned-vampire, in modern-day Toronto, with a female former Toronto detective in the starring role. A 2008 series from HBO, entitled True Blood, gives a Southern Gothic take on the vampire theme, while taking on the discussion on what the actual existence of vampires would mean to for instance equality before the law and religious beliefs. In 2008 Being Human premiered in Britain and featured a vampire that shared a flat with a werewolf and a ghost. The continuing popularity of the vampire theme has been ascribed to a combination of two factors: the representation of sexuality and the perennial dread of mortality.
Games
Main article: Vampires in gamesThe role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade has been influential upon modern vampire fiction and elements of its terminology, such as embrace and sire, appear in contemporary fiction. Popular video games about vampires include Castlevania, which is an extension of the original Bram Stoker novel Dracula, and Legacy of Kain. The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons features vampires.
Modern vampire subcultures
Main article: Vampire lifestyle See also: Psychic vampirismVampire lifestyle is a term for a contemporary subculture of people, largely within the Goth subculture, who consume the blood of others as a pastime; drawing from the rich recent history of popular culture related to cult symbolism, horror films, the fiction of Anne Rice, and the styles of Victorian England. Active vampirism within the vampire subculture includes both blood-related vampirism, commonly referred to as sanguine vampirism, and psychic vampirism, or supposed feeding from pranic energy.
Notes
- Vampires had already been discussed in French and German literature.
- Calmet conducted extensive research and amassed judicial reports of vampiric incidents and extensively researched theological and mythological accounts as well, using the scientific method in his analysis to come up with methods for determining the validity for cases of this nature. As he stated in his treatise:
They see, it is said, men who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, make them ill, and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out the heart, or burning them. These revenants are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches; and such particulars are related of them, so singular, so detailed, and invested with such probable circumstances and such judicial information, that one can hardly refuse to credit the belief which is held in those countries, that these revenants come out of their tombs and produce those effects which are proclaimed of them.
- In the Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote:
These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.
- An extensive discussion of the different uses of the vampire metaphor in Marx's writings can be found in Policante, A. (2010). "Vampires of Capital: Gothic Reflections between horror and hope" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 January 2012. in Cultural Logic Archived 6 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine, 2010.
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{{cite book}}
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After the arrival of Christianity in Greece, however, the vampire began to take on decidedly Christian characteristics. The vampire was now no longer a demon from a supernatural realm but a reanimated corpse, a dead person who retained a semblance of life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had arisen after His death and burial and appeared before His followers. The transformation of vampire myths to include Christian elements happened throughout Europe; as various regions converted to Christianity, their vampires also became "Christianized" (Beresford 42, 44–51).
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The church had by this time co-opted vampires from their previous folk existence and reinterpreted them as minions of the Christian devil, so it was an easy enough analogy to draw: Just as a vampire takes a sinner's very spirit into itself by drinking his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ's blood take the divine spirit into himself.
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Perhaps the strongest link between vampires and Christianity is the importance of blood in the Christian, especially the Roman Catholic, tradition. Just as the vampire must consume blood in order to continue its unnaturally eternal life, so Christians must consume the blood of Jesus to be granted salvation and life after death.
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The fear of vampirism embodied in these early conceptions was used by the Church in order to impose its fundamental values on soviety. The Church therefore changed some of the typical vampire traits and gave them more religious connotations that are still very much in evidence in the vampire genre today. For example, the destruction of the vampire became a religious rite; crucifixes and holy water bestowed protection; and drinking the blood of a sinner strengthened the power of the Devil, while taking Communion afforded the communicant protection. Besides their roots in folklore and the influence of Christianity, vampire traits were shaped in the development of vampire literature.
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If so, then the ability of the cross to hurt and ward off vampires is distinctly due to its Christian association.
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Christian belief played an important part in the development of vampire lore. According to Montague Summers, who describes the Christian position in detail in The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, Christianity accepts the existence of vampires and sees the power of the devil behind their creation. Since vampires are servants of Satan, the Church has power over them. Thus vampires flee from and can be destroyed by the crucifix, relics of saints, the sign of the cross, holy water, and above all, a consecrated host.
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the vampire controversy of the 1730s ... the eighteenth-century vampire controversy
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For details of the sixteen formal treatises and dissertations that discussed the implications of the 1731–32 'epidemic' (most of them written by German doctors and theologians), see Tony Faivre, Les Vampires (Paris, 1962), pp. 154–9; Dieter Sturm and Klaus Völker, Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern (München, 1973), pp. 519–23; and Frayling's introduction to The Vampyre (London, 1978), pp. 31–4.
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Cited texts
- Barber, Paul (1988). Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality. New York: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-04126-2.
- Bunson, Matthew (1993). The Vampire Encyclopedia. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-27748-5.
- Cohen, Daniel (1989). The Encyclopedia of Monsters: Bigfoot, Chinese Wildman, Nessie, Sea Ape, Werewolf and many more …. London: Michael O'Mara Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-948397-94-3.
- Graves, Robert (1990) . The Greek Myths. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-001026-8.
- Hoyt, Olga (1984). "The Monk's Investigation". Lust for Blood: The Consuming Story of Vampires. Chelsea: Scarborough House. ISBN 978-0-8128-8511-8.
- Jones, Ernest (1931). "The Vampire". On the Nightmare. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis. ISBN 978-0-394-54835-7. OCLC 2382718.
- Marigny, Jean (1994). Vampires: The World of the Undead. "New Horizons" series. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-30041-1.
- Skal, David J. (1996). V is for Vampire. New York: Plume. ISBN 978-0-452-27173-9.
- Silver, Alain; James Ursini (1993). The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula. New York: Limelight. ISBN 978-0-87910-170-1.
External links
Library resources aboutVampire
- The dictionary definition of vampire at Wiktionary
- Media related to Vampire at Wikimedia Commons
- Quotations related to Vampire at Wikiquote
- Works related to Vampire at Wikisource
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