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Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life
essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of
whether they are undead or a living
person. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures and
according to speculation by literary historian Brian Frost that the "belief in
vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself", and may go back to
"prehistoric times", the term
vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx
of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends
were frequent, such as the Balkans and
Eastern Europe, although local
variants were also known by different names, such as vampir (вампир) in
Serbia and Bulgaria, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition
in Europe led to mass
hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and
people being accused of vampirism. The Oxford English Dictionary dates
the first appearance of the word vampire in English from 1734, in a
travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen published in the
Harleian
Miscellany in 1745. Vampires had already been discussed in German literature.
After
Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia in 1718, officials noted the local
practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These
reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.
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. when Arnold Paole, a
purported vampire in Serbia was
described during the time Serbia was incorporated into the Austrian Empire
The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian вампир
(vampir), Croatian upir /upirina, 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'). (Note that 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.) The exact
etymology is unclear. Among the
proposed proto-Slavic forms are *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь.
Another,
less widespread theory, is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from
a Turkic term for
"witch" (e.g., Tatar
ubyr).
The first recorded use of the Old Russian form Упирь (Upir') is
commonly believed to be in a document dated 6555 (1047 AD).
It is a colophon in a manuscript of the
Book of Psalms written by a priest who transcribed the book from Glagolitic into
Cyrillic for the
Novgorodian Prince
Volodymyr
Yaroslavovych. The priest
writes that his name is "Upir' Likhyi " (Оупирь Лихыи), which
means something like "Wicked Vampire" or "Foul Vampire".
This
apparently strange name has been cited as an example both of surviving paganism and of the use of nicknames as
personal names.
Another early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word
of Saint Grigoriy", dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of
upyri is reported The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are
considered precursors to modern vampires. However, despite the occurrence of
vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the
entity we know 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
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. Indeed, blood 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
Paul Barber in his book Vampires, Burial and Death has described 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. However, 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, ironically, 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 Peter Plogojowitz 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
Plogojowitz case—the dermis and nail
beds emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".
It has also been hypothesized that vampire legends were 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 robbing.
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 Peter Plogojowitz
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.
Rabies has been linked with vampire
folklore. Dr Juan Gómez-Alonso, a neurologist at Xeral Hospital in Vigo, Spain, examined this possibility in a report in
Neurology. The susceptibility to garlic
and light could be due to hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of rabies. The
disease 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.
In his 1931 treatise On the Nightmare, Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones noted that
vampires are symbolic of several unconscious drives and defence mechanisms.
Love, guilt, and hate are emotions that 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. However 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 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.
The innate sexuality of bloodsucking can be seen in its intrinsic connection
with cannibalism and folkloric one with incubus-like behaviour.
Many legends report various beings draining other fluids from victims, an
unconscious association with semen being obvious. Finally Jones notes 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.
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
regime. Werner
Herzog, in his Nosferatu the Vampyre, gives this
political interpretation an extra ironic twist when his young estate agent hero
becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.
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. Similarly, 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 particularly
infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims'
blood in order to retain beauty or youth.
Vampire
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
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