Vampire

The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones, 1897

In modern day, the term Vampires usually refers to mythological or folkloric beings that subsist on human and/or animal life-force, in most cases, represented as reanimated corpses who feed by draining and consuming the blood of living beings. Although such practices occur in nature, Vampirism, the practice of drinking blood from a person or animal, most often refers to the folkloric and pop cultural belief of creatures that live off the life-force of others.

Etymology

The English word vampire is a derivative of the German vampir, which became vampire when passed into French, and stayed the same when it was assimilated into English. The German form came Slavic and Slovak variants, such as the Polish upior, the Belarussian upyr, Ukrainian and Russianupir' , and Bulgarian vapir. The first recorded use of the English variation vampire comes from a police report in Austrian controlled Serbia in the sixteenth century, in which police were investigating vampire claims made by local peasants.

In zoology and botany, the term vampirism is used in reference to leeches, mosquitos, mistletoe, vampire bats, and other organisms that subsist on the bodily fluids of others.

Ancient Origins

Nearly every ancient culture considered blood to be sacred. It was often thought of as not only a physical requirement for life, but also as the life-force of humanity, and as such, rituals involving both animal and human blood (although human blood was usually held in higher esteem than the blood of animals). It is therefore, not surprising that ideas of creatures which lived off of blood were popular in ancient times. Vampire-like spirits called the Lilu are mentioned in early Babylonian demonology, and the even more ancient bloodsucking Akhkharu in Sumerian mythology. These female demons were said to roam during the hours of darkness, hunting and killing newborn babies and pregnant women. One of the demons, named Lilitu, was later adapted to Jewish demonology as Lilith.

In India, tales of vetalas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses, who like the bat associated with modern day vampirism, hangs upside down on trees found in cremation grounds and cemeteries, are found in old Sanskrit folklore. A prominent story tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive vetala. The vetala legends have been compiled in the book Baital Pachisi. The hopping corpse is an equivalent of the vampire in Chinese tradition; however, the creature fed on a person's qi, or life force, which in China was understood as separate from the blood, but keeps in the tradition of vampiric behavior. The Ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet in one myth became full of bloodlust after slaughtering humans and was only sated after drinking alcohol colored as blood. The strix, a nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood is mentioned in Roman tales.

These are but a few examples of the numerous traditions that believe in creatures that practice vampirism; however, the anthropomorphic and demonic version of the vampire that is common today did not come around until centuries later, in Eastern Europe folklore.

Folk beliefs in vampires

The modern day representation of vampires owes itself directly to the folklore of Eastern Europe in the later half of the millennia. It is probable that the ancient beliefs in creatures that fed off human life (discussed above) carried over into this area of the world and mixed with other beliefs that produced the vampire. Some scholars have suggested the belief in vampires arose because of a series of deaths due to unidentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community. The rare blood disorder Porphyria, which caused increased sensitivity of the skin to direct sunlight and makes teeth appear larger than normal, as well as rabies, which can make a human act similar to a feral animal, have been cited by some as perhaps misunderstood disorders that helped spur the belief in the vampires Beliefs regarding death and morality may also have played an important role. Often in old folklore, those who committed suicide or were brutually murdered were susceptible to becoming vampires, since the natural course of their life was interrupted.

It is difficult to make a single description of the folkloric vampire, because its properties vary widely between different cultures. However, here are some of the more common characteristics among vampire legends:

• The appearance of the European folkloric vampire contained mostly features by which one was supposed to tell a vampiric corpse from a normal one, when the grave of a suspected vampire was opened. The vampire has a "healthy" appearance and ruddy skin, he is often plump, his nails and hair have grown and, above all, he/she is not in the least decomposed.
• The most common ways to destroy the vampire are driving a wooden stake through the heart, decapitation, and incinerating the body completely. Ways to prevent a suspected vampire from rising from the grave in the first place include burying it upside-down, severing the tendons at the knees, or placing poppy seeds on the ground at the gravesite of a presumed vampire in order to keep the vampire occupied all night counting.
• Apotropaics, i.e. objects intended to inhibit or ward off vampires (as well as other evil supernatural creatures), include garlic (confined mostly to European legends), sunlight, a branch of wild rose, the hawthorn plant, and all things sacred (e.g., holy water, a crucifix, a rosary).
• Vampires are sometimes considered to be shape-shifters not limited to the common bat stereotype depicted in cartoons and movies. (Rather, vampires are said to morph into a wide variety of animals such as wolves, rats, moths, spiders, and so on).
• Vampires in European folklore are said to cast no shadow and no reflection, perhaps arising from folklore regarding the vampire's lack of a soul.
• Some traditions hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited, although they only have to be invited once after this they can come and go as they please without further permission.
• Christian tradition holds that vampires cannot enter a church or holy place, as they are servants of the devil.

File:Munch vampire.jpg

Vampyren "The Vampire," by Edvard Munch

Slavic vampires

In Slavic lore, causes of vampirism include being born with a caul (the remnants of the amniotic sac seen as a shimmery coating of the head and face immediately after birth), teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, "unnatural" death, excommunication, and improper burial rituals. Many Serbians believed that having red hair was a vampiric trait. Preventive measures included placing a crucifix in the coffin, placing blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, putting sawdust in the coffin (so that the vampire awakens in the evening and compelled to count every grain of sawdust, which occupies the entire evening, so he will die when at dawn) or piercing the body with thorns or stakes. In the case of stakes, the general idea was to pierce through the vampire and into the ground below, pinning the body down. Certain people would bury those believed to be potential vampires with scythes above their necks, so the dead would decapitate themselves as they rose. Evidence that a vampire was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbors; an exhumed body being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair; a body swelled up like a drum; or blood on the mouth coupled with a ruddy complexion. Vampires, like other Slavic legendary monsters, were afraid of garlic and were compelled to count particles of grain, sawdust, and the like. The most famous Serbian vampire was Sava Savanovic, famous from a folklore-inspired novel by Milovan Glišić.

Romanian vampires

Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it is not surprising that Romanian and Slavic vampires are similar. Romanian vampires are called Strigoi, based on the ancient Greek term strix for screech owl, which also came to mean demon or witch.

There are different types of Strigoi. Live Strigoi are live witches who will become vampires after death. They have the ability to send out their souls at night to meet with other witches or with Strigoi, which are reanimated bodies that return to suck the blood of family, livestock, and neighbors. Other types of vampires in Romanian folklore include Moroi and Pricolici. Romanian tradition described a myriad of ways of bringing about a vampire. A person born with a caul, an extra nipple, a tail, or extra hair was doomed to become a vampire. The same fate applied to someone born too early, someone whose mother encountered black cat cross her path, and someone who was born out of wedlock. Others who became vampires were those who died an unnatural death or before baptism, the seventh child in any family (presuming all of his or her previous siblings were of the same sex), the child of a pregnant woman who avoided eating salt, and a person who was looked upon by a vampire or a witch. Moreover, being bitten by a vampire meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.

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 St George's Day (April 22 on the Gregorian, and May 6 on the Julian calendar), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St George's Day is still celebrated in Europe.A vampire in the grave could be discerned by holes in the earth, an un-decomposed corpse with a red face, or with one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were identified by distributing garlic in church and observing who would refuse to eat it. Graves were often opened three years after the 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.

Measures to prevent a person from becoming a vampire included removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat 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 George's and St Andrew's day. To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body, followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century, one would also shoot a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure.

Greek vampires

Belief in vampires was common in nineteenth century Greece. Greek customs may have propagated this belief, notably a ritual that entailed exhuming the deceased after three years of death, and observing the extent of decay. If the body was fully decayed, the remaining bones were put in a box by relatives and wine poured over them, a priest would then read from scriptures. However, if the body had not sufficiently decayed, the corpse would be labelled a vampire. According to Greek beliefs, vampirism could occur through various means: excommunication or desecrating a religious day, committing a great crime, or dying alone. Other more superstitious causes include having a cat jump across the grave, eating meat from a sheep killed by a wolf or having been cursed. It was also believed in more remote regions of Greece that unbaptized people would be doomed to vampirism in the afterlife.

The appearance of vampires varied throughout Greece and were usually thought to be indistinguishable from living people, giving rise to many folk tales with this theme. However, this was not the case everywhere: on Mount Pelion vampires glowed in the dark, while on the Saronic islands vampires were thought to be hunchbacks with long nails; on the island of Lesbos vampires were thought to have long canine teeth much like wolves. Vampires could be harmless, sometimes returning to support their widows by their work. However, they were usually thought to be ravenous predators, killing their victims who would be condemned to become vampires. Vampires were so feared for their potential for great harm, that a village or an island would occasionally be stricken by a mass panic if a vampire invasion were believed imminent. Nicholas Dragoumis records such a panic on Naxos in the 1930s, following a cholera epidemic.

Varieties of wards were employed for protection in different places, including blessed bread (antidoron) from the church, crosses and black-handled knives. To prevent vampires from rising from the dead, their hearts were pierced with iron nails whilst resting in their graves, or their bodies burned and the ashes scattered. Because the Church opposed burning people who had received the myron of chrismation in the baptism ritual, cremation was considered a last resort.

Roma vampire beliefs

Even today, Roma frequently feature in vampire fiction and film, no doubt influenced by the Bram Stoker's Dracula, in which the Szgany Roma served Dracula, carrying his boxes of earth and guarding him.

Traditional Romani beliefs claim that the dead soul enters a world similar to ours except that there is no death. The soul lingers next to the body and sometimes wants to return to life. The Roma legends of the living dead have indeed enriched the vampire legends of Hungary, Romania and the Slavic world.

The ancient home of the Roma, India describe many vampire entities. The Bhut or Prét is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wanders around animating dead bodies at night, attacking the living much like a ghoul. In northern India, there is the BrahmarākŞhasa, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood. Vetala and pishacha are other creatures who resemble vampires to an extent. Since Hinduism believes in reincarnation of the soul, it is supposed that leading an unholy or immoral life, sin or suicide, will lead the soul to reincarnate into such evil spirits. This kind of reincarnation does not arise out of birth from a womb, but is achieved directly, and such evil spirits' fate is predetermined as to how they shall achieve liberation from that yoni, and re-enter the world of mortal flesh in the next incarnation. The most famous Indian deity associated with drinking blood is Kali, who has fangs, wears a garland of corpses or skulls and has four arms. Her temples are located near cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga 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 him. Sara, or the Black Goddess, is the form in which Kali survived among Roma. Some Roma believe that the three Marys from the New Testament went to France and baptised a Gypsy called Sara. They still hold a ceremony every May 24 in the French village where this is supposed to have occurred. Some refer to their Black Goddess as "Black Cally" or "Black Kali."

One form of vampire in Romani folklore 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 did not properly observe the burial ceremonies, or who kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was proper). Female vampires could return, lead a normal life and even marry but would eventually exhaust the husband. Anyone who had a horrible appearance, was missing a finger, or had appendages similar to those of an animal, was believed to be a vampire. If a person died unseen, he would become a vampire, likewise if a corpse swelled before burial. Dogs, cats, plants or even agricultural tools 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 vampire watermelons.)

To get rid of a vampire, one could hire a Dhampir (the son of a vampire and his widow) or a Moroi 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, as well as decapitating or burning the corpse.

Modern belief in vampires

Belief in vampires persists to this day. While some cultures preserve their original traditions about the immortal, most modern-day believers are more influenced by the fictional image of the vampire as it occurs in films and literature. In the 1970s, there were rumors (spread by the local press) that a vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters flocked in large numbers in 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 the modern folklore of Puerto Rico and Mexico, the chupacabra (goat-sucker) 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. During late 2002 and early 2003, hysteria about alleged attacks of vampires swept through the African country of Malawi. Mobs stoned one individual to death and attacked at least four others, including Governor Eric Chiwaya, based on the belief that the government was colluding with vampires. In Romania during February of 2004, several relatives of the late 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. In January 2005, rumors began to circulate that an attacker had bitten a number of people in Birmingham, England, fueling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. However, local police stated that no such crime had been reported. This case appears to be an urban legend. In recent times, vampire style cults have developed, where vampire behavior is practiced, such as a preference for night time and darkness, and the drinking of blood. However, it should be noted that a majority of these people do not believe they are vampires in the folkloric sense, but believe that drinking blood is a scared ritual, and will often drink small amounts of their own or other member's blood. Mainstream culture often frowns on such behavior, and it is often seen as a perverse sub-culture and Satanic or evil in nature, even though many who practice such culture disenvowal any maliscious intentions.

Vampires in fiction and popular culture

Main articles: Vampire fiction and Vampire films

File:Orlock.jpg

Count Orlock, a well-known example of vampire fiction, from the 1922 film Nosferatu.

Lord Byron arguably introduced the vampire theme to Western literature in his epic poem The Giaour (1813), but it was John Polidori who authored the first "true" vampire story called "The Vampyre." Polidori was the personal physician of Byron and the vampire of the story, Lord Ruthven, is based partly on him — making the character the first of our now familiar romantic vampires. The "ghost story competition" that spawned this piece was the same competition that motivated Mary Shelley to write her novel Frankenstein, another archetypal monster story.Other examples of early vampire stories are Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel and Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire story, Carmilla. However, it was undoubtedly Bram Stoker's Dracula that has been the definitive version 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 Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. Stoker's writings are also adapted in many later works. In modern popular culture, Anne Rice's book series, Laurell K. Hamilton's book series and many other popular novels feature vampires.

Vampires were among the first cinematic creations of the early twentieth century, with the silent classic Nosferatu, followed by a string of Dracula inspired movies. Soon, vampires became staples of horror genre, for both TV and film, often depicted in similar representations to Stoker's. Television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Konami's Castlevania and Crystal Dynamics' Legacy of Kain video game series, role-playing games such as Vampire: the Masquerade, and Kouta Hirano's Hellsing manga have been especially successful and influential.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Barber, Paul : Vampires, Burial and Death : Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press.1988. ISBN 0-300-04859-9
• Bell, Michael E.: Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-7867-0899-9
• Bunson, Matthew: The Vampire Encyclopedia. Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1993. ISBN 0-517-88100-4
• Faivre, Tony [i. e. Faivre, Antoine]: Les Vampires. Essai historique, critique et littéraire. [Préface de Robert Amadou.] Paris: Le Terrain Vague - Eric Losfeld, 1962.
• Frayling, Christopher: Vampyres, Lord Byron to Count Dracula. 1991. ISBN 0-571-16792-6
• Introvigne, Massimo: La stirpe di Dracula. Indagine sul vampirismo dall'antichità ai nostri giorni. Milano: A. Mondadori, 1997 (Antropologia).
• Jaramillo Londoño, Agustín: Testamento del paisa. Medellín. Editorial Bedout, 1967. ISBN 958-95125-0-X
• Jennings, Lee Byron: An Early German Vampire Tale: Wilhelm Waiblinger’s “Olura" (first-published in 1986), in: Suevica. Beiträge zur schwäbischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte 9 (2001/2002), Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademischer Verlag Stuttgart 2004 [2005], S. 295–306 ISBN 3-88099-428-5
• McNally, Raymond T.: Dracula Was a Woman. McGraw Hill, 1983. ISBN 0-07-045671-2
• McNally, Raymond T. & Florescu, Radu. In Search of Dracula. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994. ISBN 0-395-65783-0
• Melton, J. Gordon.: The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead Visible Ink Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8103-2295-1
• Nyarlathotep, Frater & Jesse Lindsay : Ardeth - The Made Vampire. Lulu Press. 2006. ISBN 1-84728-516-3
• Montague Summers: The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, 1928 (reprinted with alternate title: Vampires and Vampirism ISBN 0-486-43996-8), The Vampire in Europe, 1929 (reprinted ISBN 0-517-14989-3) (reprinted with alternate title: The Vampire in Lore and Legend ISBN 0-486-41942-8)
• Tomkinson, John L., Haunted Greece: Nymphs, Vampires and other Exotika, Anagnosis, Athens 2004 ISBN 960-88087-0-7
• Wright, Dudley: The Book of Vampires. 1914 (available in various reprints)

External link

• Journal of Dracula Studies

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