Vampires: A Brief History

Illustration of a vampire from Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)

 Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.

                                                 - Montague Summers, The Vampire His Kith and Kin, p. 1 

Welcome to the last week of 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at the vampire: perhaps the most infamous of all monsters to come from human history. Some form of the vampire myth has existed worldwide, ranging from the jiangshi in China or the wazimamtoto from colonial Kenya. Today we'll only be looking at the vampires of Europe, but get ready when we look at vampires of Africa in the future. From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Anne Rice's Lestat vampires have remained a enduring and sinister figure in folklore and popular culture of Europe.

Origins of a Myth

Lamia and a Soldier

Stories of vampires have been found across the world for millennia. The ancient Greeks had the stories of the striges, creatures who would eat the flesh of mortals at night, and in ancient Jewish beliefs shape-shifting women called estries were blood-drinking demons who came out at night. It was later in history that the vampires which we are more familiar with began emerging, with there being a spike from the 1500s to the late-1700s. This time period also coincided with spikes of reports of other demonically associated beings - namely werewolves and witches. It is no coincidence that vampires are often associated with these beings - the strigoi of Romania, for example, was seen as a living vampire and also happened to be a witch with two hearts. The planet was going through a climate crisis known as the Little Ice Age where intense weather conditions - snow during the spring, hail storms, and heavy rains - were blamed in Europe as either punishment from God or due to supernatural forces. Some of the most intense witch hunts occurred during this period for this reason. A string of wars and plagues further added to an air of hysteria over the supernatural. Many hundreds were tried and murdered for witchcraft, and bodies were mutilated through fear that they may rise as a vampire.

Archaeologists and historians have put forward several theories about why the tales of vampires emerged during this period. A case study shows one theory really well, Matteo Borrini unearthed a mass grave in Venice dating from sometime from the late-1500s and early-1600s where the skeleton of an elderly woman showed signs of an anti-vampire exhumation had taken place - the remains of her clothing indicated that she may have also been accused of witchcraft. Prior to the development about how corpses decay the natural process of decomposition was blamed on vampirism. As the corpse decays the skin shrinks making the teeth and nails appear longer, and the decomposition of organs creates a 'dark fluid' which leaks out from orifices - the ones most notable being the mouth and nose. As these mass graves were unearthed to make room for more plague victims grave diggers seeing these signs of decomposition linked this to their knowledge of vampires - fluids from decomposition was seen as being fresh blood from victims. Saul Epstein and Sara Libby Robinson also explain the escape of gas from decomposing bodies as sounding like 'groans' and 'moans' which could be mistaken as the rustling of the undead. Furthermore, poor living quarters meant that tuberculosis, often referred to as 'consumption', was interpreted as being due to vampires. Tuberculosis causes the victim to grow pale and waste away - something seen as being due to a vampire slowly draining the blood from a victim.

What causes Vampirism?

The Werewolf or the Cannibal

 by Lucas Cranach the Elder

There are many different ways about how an individual could become a vampire. Most of these are related to interactions with a vampire itself. In Romania, it was believed that if a vampire stared at a pregnant woman would cause the newborn to become a vampire. In Germany, the Nachzehrer never left the ground but used the occult to harm surviving family members. Of course we all know the best known aspect of the vampire myth. If you are bitten by a vampire, or die because of a vampire drinking your blood, you become a vampire. A common trait among vampires, especially in Romania which went on to inspire wider vampire stories thanks to Bram Stoker's Dracula, was that when a child was born with something out of the ordinary this would case vampirism. Being born with a caul, being the seventh child, a third nipple, polydactylism, or extra hair were seen as portraying signs that the child would become a vampire. Another common theme was an individual committing sin - the period coincided with the Reformation and the Wars of Religion meant that salvation and faith became increasingly tense. This is also seen by how vampirism was largely documented in only Christian communities - in 1554 Rabbi Radbaz's tale of a woman resurrected as a vampire remains one of the few instances of vampirism reported in Jewish literature. Quite interesting, the Catholic Church tried to discourage the belief in witches and vampires - in 1749 Pope Benedict XIV officially declared the belief in vampires to be due to 'imagination, terror and fear.'

Faith and sacrilege were key parts of what could cause vampirism. Witches were often seen as being resurrected as vampires - the strigoi of Romania were witches seen as 'living vampires' until their death when they became moroi, literally meaning death. Witches and werewolves were seen as becoming vampires when they died, and it was widely believed that they could turn people still living into vampires. In Romania, not only could a pregnant woman's infant become a vampire when one looked at her, but also a witch staring at her could also do. Around the time of the Salem Witch Trials New England saw a vampire panic for several years - witchcraft and vampirism were intrinsically linked. Sin, excommunication, and dying before being baptised were seen as also causing vampirism - those unable to enter the Kingdom of Heaven were cursed to rise from the dead as a vampire. An unfortunate aspect of life is that the most marginalised were often accused of being witches, werewolves, and vampires. Isolated individuals from communities, religious minorities, and ethnic minorities were seen as being prone to the supernatural - it is no coincidence that Jews were regularly blamed for the supernatural as they were cast out from hegemonic society. Elderly, widowed women who no longer produced commodities for wider society were regularly accused of witchcraft - the 'vampire woman' discovered in Venice was believed to be around the age of 61. In Russia, it was believed that Romani became vampires when they died - the Romani have regularly been cast out and persecuted in European history. Just as hysteria today often affects the vulnerable the most, the hysteria over witchcraft and vampires is no exception.

Stopping Vampires

The 'Vampire of Venice'

There were several ways to slay a vampire, or prevent one from attacking. Of course there are the universally known ones, garlic, religious imagery, having to invite them inside, a stake through the heart, and decapitation. However, there are many often overlooked methods. Vampires were often seen as unable to cross moving water, and apparently could not resist counting - spreading seed on the floor or throwing down a net could halt a vampire in its tracks. It would spend its time counting the seed or the holes in the net. Archaeologists have also unearthed quite gruesome ways how locals tried to prevent vampires from rising from the grave. In Gliciwe, Poland a suspected vampire grave site was found where the occupants of the graves were decapitated and the heads placed on their legs to prevent them from rising. Placing a stake through the body was a common way as it physically prevented vampires from rising - in the 1990s a male skeleton was found dating from the 1800s on the Greek island of Lesbos with stakes placed through the pelvis, neck, and ankles, and in some areas of present-day Romania still stake bodies to the ground. Across Europe, those who had died through suicide, if they had seen as being a witch or werewolf, or died with some great sin or after being excommunicated were often buried with a stake through them to prevent a vampire from rising. With the Venetian woman she was exhumed and a heavy brick was placed in her mouth - this was seen as preventing vampires from being able to feed. German Protestants also filled the mouths of corpses with dirt as this was seen as another way to prevent them from feeding. As late as 1892 when 19-year-old Mary Brown died of tuberculosis in Rhode Island, and when her brother fell sick, it was believed that she became a vampire. Her body was exhumed, burned, and her ashes mixed into a potion for her brother to drink; this was a Hessian belief how to stop a vampire, her brother died anyway. As late as 1968 a supposed vampire was sighted in London's Highgate Cemetery, the infamous 'Highgate Vampire', which had self-proclaimed vampire hunters being arrested for staking, beheading, and burning corpses on the suspicion that they were vampires.

The Modern Vampire

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

Vampires as we now know them emerged with Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1871) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), although both built on earlier works. In their works, vampires moved away from Christian fears, although both works still heavily rely on Christian theology, and more towards seductive icons portraying fears of sex. Carmilla depicts the fears over female sexuality with the titular vampire being a woman seducing another woman - in a time where homosexuality was illegal lesbian vampires were seen as breaking the natural order. Meanwhile, in Dracula Stoker built upon centuries of folklore, history, and Carmilla as well. Count Dracula combined older myths with those of his own creation - he had long nails and climbed on walls, could manipulate dogs and bats, went against God, and had to rest in the soil in which he was buried, but he also had Vlad Tepes becoming a vampire, turning into bats, dogs and mist, and was sexualised. Reflecting contemporary Victorian fears Dracula shows many aspects of fears concerning sex, and especially sexually transmitted diseases. Largely absent from adaptations Dracula's palms are hairy - a reference to the Victorian belief that masturbation caused you to have hairy palms - combining modern and earlier Christian taboos over sex. Furthermore, Dracula spreading his vampirism, largely to middle-class women, represents the contemporary fears over syphilis and the corruption of the English middle-class. Dracula becomes the transgression of Victorian sensibilities, as the vampires of the past represented transgressions of Christian sensibilities. One of the first adaptations, the German silent film Nosferatu (1922), further built upon the vampire mythos. Vampires had always been weak to sunlight being creatures of darkness, but they were not killed by sunlight. Nosferatu was the first time that vampires specifically died thanks to sunlight. Thanks to Stoker's departure the modern vampire was born, and has evolved continuously. Now we have a wide range of vampires in popular media - from the teenage heartthrobs of the Twilight series, to the tragic and homoerotic vampires of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, to the classic depiction of Dracula by Bela Lugosi in Universal's Dracula.

Vampires have evolved over the centuries reflecting changes and hysterias in society. Which is why they are the perfect way to end 2019's Month of Horror. The sources I have used are as follows:

-Nick Groom, The Vampire: A New History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018)

-Jan Perkowski, The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism, (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1989)

-Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, (New York: University Books, 1969)

-Saul Epstein and Sara Libby Robinson, 'The Soul, Evil Spirits, and the Undead: Vampires, Death, and Burial in Jewish Folklore and Law', Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 1:2, (2012), 232-251

-Paul Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni, 'Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 94:2, (1994), 269-274

-Christine Dell'amore, '"Vampire of Venice" Unmasked: Plague Victim and Witch?', National Geographic News, (26/02/2010), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

-Heather Pringle, 'Archaeologists Suspect Vampire Burial; An Undead Primer', National Geographic, (15/07/2013), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

-Becky Little, 'The Bloody Truth about Vampires', National Geographic, (26/10/2016), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

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