So, what is a vampire, an
d how has it changed through the centuries?
I'm glad you asked.
The myth has been round for quite a while, certainly in ancient Greek and Rome, and ranging from Assyria to India to Malaya. The legends are diverse, though all involve humans returning from the dead, needing fresh blood to survive. Unsurprisingly, the most important source for 'our' vampire is central Europe.
There are several possibilities which can account for such a widespread myth. Along with the related condition of lycanthropy, the cumulative effect of several diseases such as porphyria may be the answer. This genetic liver affliction affects the biosynthesis of blood and can affect its victim in such ways as severe reactions to sunlight, the receding of the gums and lips to create a fang-like effect, and possibly even extensive hair growth. Not only this, but the only possible way of relieving the problem back then was the ingestion of large amounts of blood, which can be absorbed into the bloodstream through the stomach wall and replace the victim's depleted heme supplies (just how the afflicted actually knows that this will work is a different matter, but there's at least one modern case documented). Another explanation is the possibly large number of premature burials that took place due to unreliable medical practices. If you find yourself awake in a coffin, and actually manage to get out, you're not going to stroll in and say 'Hi Honey, I'm home'. You're going to believe yourself to be a vampire and perpetrate the myth.
But even this isn't strictly a necessary cause. All that is really needed is a large and widespread dose of fear, superstition and bloodshed, and voilà, one creature of the night.
What is most interesting, though, is the large amount of detail that has sprung up around the basic grain of truth, and while you may believe that a vampire has a fairly standard set of characteristics, you may be surprised at the sheer volume of the traditional monster's idiosyncrasies.
The basic idea is that the vampire is the animated corpse of a human returned to prey on his former race, a body not constrained by the ravages of time as we are. Such a condition is 'passed on' from a vampire to his prey and thus becomes doubly feared. It is up to the individual source whether or not such contamination is automatic or requires a further step, usually the drinking of the vampire's own blood by the victim. But whatever the case, the 'parent' vampire must be killed before his 'child's' death to prevent the metamorphosis. Once the change is permanent there is only one cure -- a stake through the heart, perhaps followed by decapitation and the stuffing of garlic or the host into the vampire's mouth to make it permanent (it's always embarrassing to pick up a wooden stake 'just in case' and later realise you've freed the monster by this very act). At this point time catches up with the body, any cheated decay occurs incredibly fast, perhaps dissolving the remains into constituent dust. And the trapped and tormented soul is freed of its earthly constraints, now able to find heaven or hell as is its deserve.
You know all this, of course.
What else do we know? Vampires are affected, and finally killed, by sunlight, often trapping them in their coffins from sun-up till sun-down (though it is rarely the actual coffin that provides the protection, it seems any old box will do as long as it also contains a portion of the vampire's 'native soil'). Garlic affects them, as do crucifixes and other sacred items such as holy water. They cannot cross running water under their own power, though they may be carried across. They will not enter a home unless invited by the real owner. They cast no reflection or shadow, and indeed are repelled by mirrors. They can become a wolf, bat or mist at will.
Is that it? Nope. Depending once again on your source a vampire may also be affected by dog roses, may not pass through cross-roads, is affected by black dogs with white patches round the eyes, and can be detected by the bucking of a white horse being led over its grave. They can control the weather (perhaps only to the extent of summoning wind and rain), and the best material to stake them with is aspen, though wild hawthorn and whitethorn work almost as well. To prevent a vampire returning to its tomb a good solution is to sprinkle large amounts of mustard seeds outside. The vampire, constrained to count every last seed before he passes, is soon caught by the dawn and perishes.
There's more, but that will do for now.
All this gives writers a great deal of freedom as different aspects can be used, ignored or changed, depending on the need. A good example is from The Lost Boys, where the 'standard' fact that a vampire must be invited to enter a home was changed so as the vampire may enter freely, but you lose all power to affect him once invited. When setting up the rules for vampires in the Buffy TV show, it came down to budget (no flying, for a start), but they have also managed to do some interesting things with the whole invite-thing.
This standard is simply the way things are or, more precisely, the way things were. Because in 1954 it all changed. Not overnight, for the cinema especially has proved resilient against disturbing the status quo. This essay is mostly about that change, and the effects it has had, but let's look at some history first.
The first vampire to appear in English fiction seems to be from Johann Tieck's 1800 story Wake Not the Dead, but the genre only became popular with the publication of Dr John Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819. This novel centred round one Lord Rutven, the vampire of the title, and was incredibly popular in its day, perhaps because the monster was a thinly disguised caricature of Lord Byron. As you may be aware, this book is one of the results of that evening, by the lake in Switzerland from which Frankenstein also came.
Quite some time later, 1847 to be precise, the next most influential figure came along, Varney. Told in 108 episodes, totalling over eight hundred pages, Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood satisfied perfectly the public's desire for the macabre and was a great success. Written anonymously, it was long thought that the tale was penned by one Thomas Pecket Prest, though in the 1970s new evidence was revealed to show the author was almost certainly James Malcolm Rymer. At the end of this epic Varney committed suicide by throwing himself into a volcano (for some more info on Varney's life and times see my article on Penny Bloods).
There were other serials of course, for example The Vampire Demon; Or, The Martyred Virgins in 1849, and a great many short stories written on the subject, many of which are certainly lost. The most influential is probably Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), and the writing of them was a tradition passed on to the budding American literary scene in the new century.
But preceding the century by some three years was, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula.
As a novel Dracula was perhaps most successful in its timing, making it certain material for use in the fledgling film industry. But whatever the reason (and there are many people who consider it badly written) it is the most important book in the field. Nor have its adaptations been confined to the cinema. I have seen a stage production (the best bit was when Dracula smashed a mirror by throwing a bottle the width of the stage), heard the BBC radio play (the scene where they stake Lucy Westenra was brilliant) and even own the Ladybird version (this is not a joke).
Also, Dracula is, theoretically at least, the standard from which vampire mythos is taken. This isn't quite true, the most obvious discrepancy is that the Count could walk round in full sunlight without ill-effect, though it implied strongly his powers such as shape-shifting and the like only worked after dark. Another lesser known fact from the novel is that Dracula had white hair and a long moustache; though his hair blackened, and he become younger-looking, once he'd spent a few weeks in London (Apple comic's adaptation and Hilderbrant's illustrated version are two of the rare examples which portray Dracula as written).
Bram Stoker's influences in creating his novel have been much discussed, though naturally the legend of Vlad the Impaler is among the most significant. As an example, Michael Parry argues that Stoker wouldn't have had ready access to Varney, but is more likely to have read Carmilla and a rather more obscure work called The Mysterious Stranger, author unknown.
After Dracula things slowed down a little, and indeed I have record of only one novel written between 1897 and 1954 -- Bram Stoker's The Lady of the Shroud in 1908. It was his second foray into the field (though The Lair of the White Worm had many similar themes) and, like White Worm, was a truly bad book. (Well, I've read White Worm, but only managed to get two chapters into Lady of the Shroud before giving up.)
Short stories continued being written, of course, and Kyla's article details the genre's excursion into movieland but, really, as a genre to be taken seriously it had died somewhat (snobbish as that statement might seem). Now the original mythos is a very good one, and there is enough latent sexuality and genuinely macabre ideas to easily explain the genre's mass appeal, but most of what could be done with it had been done.
The standard characteristics are even internally consistent, and if you think about it we can come up with a fairly decent theory that links it all together. Consider that light passes through a vampire (the trick with the mirror and, interestingly, an actual scene in Dracula where Jonathan Harker sees a strong light unimpeded by the Count's body). It is able to change its physical appearance, if only to a limited number of forms, including mist. It can only be killed by injury to a specific part of the body.
Doesn't this suggest a non-corporal body? Something that only seems, to us, to be a physically walking corpse. Maybe, maybe not.
More importantly is the aspect of a vampire's will. He cannot pass where we don't want him to. If we believe ourselves Masters of our house he cannot enter unless invited. If we believe strongly in the power of a crucifix to ward, or holy water to harm, it will happen. We can beat a vampire, but only if we are physically, and mentally, strong. And if we are weak... well, it could easily be that the vampire is our weakness given external strength (with the surface appeal that has of allaying the blame somewhat).
This makes the vampire a more personal villain then just about any other kind and that is, perhaps even more than sex, the reason for its success.
So, you ask. Why can't vampires cross running water? Traditionally running water is pure, and cannot hold magic. But when we come to mustard seeds I'm immediately in trouble (I have heard one theory -- and I'll just say Freud has a lot to answer for).
Despite the fact that this discorporal theory is at odds with the strong idea of a walking corpse, it is fairly appealing to me, and I think if I was ever to write a vampire novel that would be the tack I'd take, because to the best of my knowledge no-one else has used it.
That is something that might have happened, based on the old ideas, but something else happened instead. In 1954 Richard Matheson released his novel I Am Legend, and that was the pivotal point of change.
From then on, vampires were treated as real, and the difference is astounding.
By real I don't necessarily mean non-fantastic, though Matheson was certainly the first to attempt a rigorous scientific explanation for vampirism. In his attempt to survive in a world where he is the only remaining human, Matheson's hero, Robert Neville, studies the vampire to determine why the stake, the crucifix, garlic, sun-light and the like are so effective. The answer is partly attributable to a germ he christens Vampiris, finally able to affect an overwhelming percentage of the population after a world-spanning series of dust-storms. The few symptoms not able to be pinned down physically, the crucifix and such, were a sort of mass psychosis -- to the extent certain of the vampires would climb lamp-posts and jump off, believing themselves capable of turning into bats.
Perhaps it isn't the most credible theory possible, but given Matheson's skill as a story-teller it reads as more than plausible (and vampire mythos aside, it's a fantastic book).
That was the first vampire novel in forty-eight years, and the last for twenty-one. The only oasis in a long-stretching desert. But Matheson's significance is perhaps greater in that he must have been read by many, if not all, of those coming later on, and at a youngish age at that. Stephen King is quoted as saying:
"Richard Matheson is the guy who taught me what I'm doing. When I read I Am Legend I realised that horror... could appear in the suburbs, on the street, or even in the house next door."
And this quote is particularly apt, because in 1975 King released his second novel, 'salem's Lot, the next in our list.
At the tender age of fifteen I read 'salem's Lot and was scared shitless. It has remained the only book ever to do that to me. This may explain a great deal.
Admittedly, it isn't that good a vampire novel, in fact its actual ideas about vampirism are, in hindsight, badly handled. The traditions are introduced without -- seemingly -- much thought to how they affect the creature's survival in the 'real world' that King evokes so well.
What 'salem's Lot did do is open the flood-gates, make the vampire fashionable again. It probably wasn't an influence on Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire which turned up only a year later, though may have made publication easier. Thereafter there was a whole slew of novels that, with various trends (vampire hunters are big at the moment), show no signs of abating. And not only is there quantity, but quality as well, even if you have to sift a lot more carefully.
I said the pivotal point was in 1954 when the vampire became real. This credibility could be scientific, but not necessarily. The other great leap is in vampires with personalities (or, perhaps more accurately, personalities that weren't simply a reflection of aristocratic traits). Buffy encompasses this transition, showing vampires as soulless monsters that can be staked without remorse, a stance somewhat contradicted by the sheer charisma of Spike and Dru.
So let's look at some individual novels where the authors are using a bit of real-world logic and characterisation to get their point across. Tanith Lee's Sabella is one of my favourites. It's a deliberate mix of style and genre, a horror story in a Science Fiction setting, but its strength is in its characters.
Closer to home, Brian Stableford is an interesting example. He decided that if vampires did exist, they wouldn't spend their time skulking round half ruined castles, but exert their power to rule the planet. The result is his alternate-history novel Empire of Fear. Another, more intricate alternate history starts in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, in which Dracula comes to London and marries Queen Victoria. Under the Fang, an anthology edited by Robert R McCammon, shows a variety of stories with the same basic idea.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's writing also embeds her vampires in the real world. The Chronicles of Saint Germain follow the extensive travels of le Comte de Saint Germain, who despite his need for blood is usually a great deal more civilised then the humans around him. Saint Germain is an actual figure, well known in France in the eighteenth century. This is a man who claimed to be three thousand years old, and able to grow his own diamonds. What we do know about him is that he always wore black or white, never ate or drank in public, could speak at least twelve languages, and several sources, including documents signed by his own hand, suggest that his apparent death in 1786 never happened. He evidently worked as a spy for several European governments, and Frederick the Great called him 'the man who does not die'.
Yarbro took the man and his setting and made them into a vampire novel, then in subsequent books placed the same character in various times and settings, ranging from Ancient Babylon to Nazi Germany.
And while we're quoting huge slabs out of Yarbro's notes from her own novel, it is interesting to see her own approach to vampire mythology. She concluded that blood provides physical sustenance only in a very limited manner, if at all, and is far more important for its intimacy with the life of the victim. 'Thus, it is not the blood itself, but the act of taking it that gives the vampire nourishment.'
But there are three main works that really continue Matheson's idea of combining the modern (scientific) world with myth: Whitley Strieber's The Hunger, Dan Simmon's Children of the Night and the BBC mini-series Ultraviolet.
The Hunger is about Miriam, a beautiful and deadly creature, thousands of years old. In that time she has had many human lovers -- people with whom she has shared the blood in her veins, granting perhaps a couple of centuries extra life. But, inevitably, each of her lovers decays, cheated time catches up, and their bodies, if not their minds, die.
This, then, is the story of John and Sarah, one Miriam's latest companion, the other a Doctor whose research may hold the key to human aging. And, of course, it is the story of Miriam, told both in the present and the past, and her quest to find someone to truly share eternity.
In a much noted move, Strieber refrained from using the word 'vampire' once in his novel, but it falls squarely within the genre. The science is also impressive, and a great deal of research has obviously gone into the work.
But not as much as Children of the Night. This uses the historical figure of Vlad Dracula, and combines it with state of the art work on retro-viruses, presenting the biological means for a dependence on blood. This time the doctor is Kate Newman (no relation to Kim, presumably), a haematologist searching for a cure for AIDS, coming up against powerful social and political forces that have had centuries to protect themselves. As Dracula himself says, the 20th century knows nothing about the destructive potential of war. I was less satisfied with the structure of this novel than some of the other examples I've used here, but the research into Dracula's life and the medical basis for vampirism are fascinating (my Vlad Dracula article contains more info on the novel, if you are interested).
Ultraviolet is a little different. It again has a (female) doctor studying the physical processes of the undead, although this time she is part of a government team set up to hunt and destroy the 'Code V' phenomena. (Strangely enough, the doctor is played by a Susannah Harker, a descendant of Joseph Harker who Stoker's hero was allegedly based upon.) There is less hard science, but instead we get a solid look at some of the aspects of the myth that science usually passes over, such as the dissolution to dust -- and ability to reassemble from such a state. Garlic and sunlight are analysed and concentrated into their essential ingredients, as the narrative gleeful treats fantasy conventions with the gravitas of modern Brit drama. There is perhaps little of great originality in its study of vampirism, but the combination of those elements in such a well-executed package is great.
Of course, there are plenty of people who take one or two elements of the myth and do something fun with it, perhaps taking things to their logical conclusion. The sheer weight of the genre is going to give you that, along with the dross. I'm going to make special mention of David J Schow's story 'Bagged', but you're going to have to read it to find out why...
But the final example I'm going to give started back in '76, as already mentioned -- Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. More then anybody else, Rice is credited for giving her vampires a life of their own. Without as much of a scientific base, she has taken the old myths and created something new and wonderful -- the story of gentle Louis, the brat prince Lestat, and Akasha, the Original Vampire, Queen of the Damned.
There is a lot more to it that that, and I've stopped reading her various excursions into the stories of the minor characters. It is certainly interesting to see the direction she takes Lestat's adventures -- having apparently decided he is much more interesting than Louis. Instead of the usual historical and gothic tropes, subsequent books has used different genre ideas -- body swapping being the obvious one. And of the surprising number of people who have put Jesus and vampires together, she is perhaps the most adventurous. Certainly, without the grandeur of Interview and the energy of Lestat, the vampire sub-genre would be a sorrier thing.
And of course this is hardly a complete roster, even of the good stuff. Meredith Anne Pierce's The Darkangel series, Les Daniel's The Black Castle and subsequent Chronicles of Don Sebastian, George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream, all come immediately to mind, all with different and dignified takes on your basic undead beastie.
The same changes I've been talking about for novels has also been evident on the movie screen -- but only fleetingly. Neil Jordan's adaptation of Interview with the Vampire was unexpectedly rather good, and John Landis' earlier Innocent Blood surely deserves an award for not feeling constrained to staking the vampire in the final act. George Romero's Martin (back in 1977) gives a fascinating psychological slant to the whole thing. There have also been a fair number of stylish vampire flicks, although perhaps not as many as might be expected. Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark is one of our favourites (part of a surprising trend towards vampires in the American desert).
Perhaps two TV shows have provided the most interesting 'live-action' look at vampires as evolving characters. Forever Knight and Angel share some similarities -- both centred about a vampire working for or with the law in search of personal redemption, complete with flashbacks. The former approached the subject somewhat more seriously, whereas Angel uses its strange combination of humour and drama to show more sides of the equation (but I can't help wishing for the show in its originally conceived -- much darker -- form). Both played around with its conventions -- simply because you have to when you're providing twenty-something hours of television a year.
Is the whole thing done with, or are there more permutations to explore? I suspect people haven't finished quite yet -- the whole congruence of sexuality and death is far too primal to die out, even if the foreign Count with his strange accent and dark cape has moved beyond even parody. After the exhaustive study of the mythos, all the reinterpretations of the 'true history of Dracula' (Judas of Iscariot, anyone?), all the bleeding-edge science applied to the task, it is hard to know what is left to actually talk about. But someone will find a way.
Vampires in England
During the twelfth century, belief in undead vampires flourished in many parts of England. We know of this from the writings of three chroniclers who lived at the time: William of Newburgh (1136 - c.a. 1200), William of Malmesbury (d. ca. 143), and Walter Map (d. ca. 1208). The belief at the time was that a corpse which left its grave at night to trouble the living was possessed and animated by a demon. This was usually the corpse of a person who had lived a sinfull life.
The villagers finally destroyed this creature by exhuming the corpse and cremating it. They found the corpse to be ruddy and swollen. They attributed this condition to being due to the corpse being bloated with the blood that it had drank from his victims. The people then dragged the corpse to a place outside their village and cremated it. After that, both the appearances of the vampire and the plague ended. In this account, William of Newburgh applies the Latin name sanguisuga, which literary means "blood sucker", to the revenant.
The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers
Vampires in Russia, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine
The most common name for an undead vampire in Russia is upir, sometimes spelled as upyr. In the Ukraine the word is upior, and in Byelorussia it is upar. In all of these regions, the undead vampire was sometimes said to be a corpse possessed by the devil. The means of destroying the Eastern Slavic vampire include driving a wooden stake through the exhumed corpse's heart or some other critical part of the body, decapitation, and cremation. But in some districts the corpse of a suspected vampire was dumped into a lake or a river.
In northern and central European Russia and some other parts of the general region, eretich (literally meaning "heretic") came to be a special term for a vampire, applied to anyone who became an undead vampire as the result of dying outside the Christian Orthodox Faith. But it applied most especially to evil sorcerers and witches who returned from graves after dying and who had sold their souls to the devil while they were still alive. In an account from one district in central European Russia, the eretiches were women who had sold their souls to the devil. After their death, they passed as living women and specialized in turning living Orthodox Christians against their faith. At night they slept in graveyards, occupying the graves of those who died unfaithful.
Sorcery and vampirism also combined in the belief that even a good person could become an upir after he died by the intervention of an evil sorcerer who magically took possession of his soul.
Vampires in Bulgarian
Bulgarian beliefs concerning undead vampires are quite varied. Bulgarian names for an undead vampire include: Vampir, Vorkolak, Ouber, Ustrel, …
The pure Bulgarians call this being by the genuine Slavonic name of Upior; the Gagaous (or Bulgarians of mixed race) by that of Obour which is Turkish; in Dalmatia it is known as Wrikodlaki, which appears to be merely a corruption of the Romaic. It seems that the names vampir and obour as used in Bulgaria often mean the same thing.
In one account from Bulgaria translated and quoted in The Darkling by Jan Perkowski, the vorkolak is said to be the soul of an outlaw who perished in the mountains, or in the forest, or along a country road, and whose corpse is eaten by crows, wolves, or some other such scavengers. This soul cannot enter heaven or hell, and so it remains on earth. This vorkolak haunts the place where he was killed. At night, this spirit strangles and drinks the blood of 
anyone who comes by. The way to rid a place of a vorkolak, is to erect a cross, bless water, and hold a church service at the spot where the outlaw died.
In another account from Bulgaria quoted in the same book, a vampir is a corpse which returns from the grave. A person who died a violent, unnatural death or whose corpse was jumped over by a cat before burial becomes such an undead vampire. (This belief is found all over Eastern Europe where there is belief in undead vampires.) In a case mentioned in this report, a man became a vampir as the result of a fatal fall from a roof. The bones turn to gelatin at first and during the first forty days after burial he performs mischief such as releasing animals from their pens, scatters house hold items, and suffocates people. If not destroyed within the first forty days, the vampir developes a skeleton and becomes even more fierce. At least during the first forty days, the vampir can be destroyed by a Vampiridzhija (a professional vampire hunter) or devored by a wolf. The report doesn't make clear what it takes to destroy the vampire after he develops a skeleton.
Another example of Bulgarian beliefs about vampires is given in Twelve Years' Study of the Eastern Question in Bulgaria by S. B. G. St. Clair and Charles A. Brophy (London: Chapman and Hall, 1877). Much of what the authors say about Bulgarian beliefs in vampires is given as an excerpt in the The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers (originally published in 1929, last reprint: Random House, 1996). The name used for an undead vampire here is obour .
According to St. Clair and Brophy, the Bulgarians in the village that they themselves were then currently living in believed that nine days after a person predisposed to become an obour is buried, "he returns to upper earth in aeriform shape", invisible except that in the dark he gives off sparks "like those from a flint and steel" and in the light he casts a shadow. His harm is confined to such activities as roaring out in a loud voice or calling out cottage dwellers in endearing terms and then beating them black and blue, and entering cottages to turn things topsy turvy like a poltergeist, spit blood on the floors, and smear cow dung everywhere.
But St. Clair and Brophy add that, after forty days from burial, the obour arises from the grave in bodily form and is able to pass himself off as an ordinary mortal human being "living naturally and honestly." They give as an example what was alleged to have once happened in the village they themselves were living in. According to the tale, a stranger arrived in the village, established himself, and married a wife. The newly wed wife's only complaint was that every night he stayed out until dawn. It was soon noticed that there were many dead horses and cattle about, partially eaten. This came to an end, but then cattle grew sick and died, and it was noticed that the blood had been drained out of them.
When the villagers learned from the stranger's wife that he was always out all night, they suspected that he was a vampire responsible for the animal deaths. They examined him and found that he had only one true nostril - a sure sign that he was a vampire. So, they bound him, took him to a hill outside the village, made a big fire of thorn bushes, and burned him alive.
Later in their book, St. Clair and Brophy state that:
“Since commencing this chapter (III), we have learned that the village of Drvishkuoi, six hours from here in now haunted by a Vampire...he will have shortly have completed his fortieth day as a shadow, the villagers are in terrible alarm lest he appear as flesh and blood.”
St. Clair and Brophy also describe a procedure which professional vampire hunters used to destroy an obour who was still in the first stage of his unlife. First, they would put some of his "favorite food" (i.e., human excrement) in a bottle. Then they would chase the obour using a holy Orthodox Christian icon. And drive him towards the bottle. When the obour entered the bottle, they would promptly cork it. Then they would toss the bottle into a fire and the vampire was thus destroyed.
Another type of Bulgarian vampire, the ustrel is described in the original, unabridged Golden Bough by Sir James Fraser. Here, the ustrel is an infant who had been born on a Saturday and who had died before receiving baptism. Nine days after burial, the ustrel claws its way out of its grave. It then finds a herd of cattle to satisfy its thirst for blood. It then returns to its grave. But on the next day it returns to the herd and never returns to its grave. It then resides in the horns or a bull or the hind legs of a milk cow.
It feeds first on the fattest cattle and then works its way on down as the poor animals whither and die. The way to rid a herd of cattle of the ustrel is to perform the ritual of the need fire. On a Saturday morning, all the fires in the community are extinguished. Then two bone fires are created at a crossroads. The cattle are then led between the two fires. The ustrel drops onto the crossroads from the animal whose horns or hind legs it had inhabited when that animal passes between the two fires. The ustrel cannot leave the crossrroad and is eventually devoured by wolves.
In his book I Searched for Death (John Long Ltd., 1940), Gordon Cooper describes a ceremony he witnessed in Razlog, Bulgaria called The Second Burial. This involved the reburial of the corpse of a man who had died five years previously during the time between Christmas and Epihany ( January 6) - the same period called Yule Tide and The Twelve Days of Christmas in England. Bulgarians called this time the Unclean Days and believed that the forces of evil hold sway over the world during this period. Any person who died during this time would become a vampire unless precautions were taken. In this case, the man, before he died, made his relatives swear that they would exhume and re-bury his body on the day of his patron saint on the fifth year after his first burial. This re-burial was what Cooper observed. It was a full-blown Eastern Orthodox funeral conducted by a priest. The relevant excerpt from Cooper's book is reprinted in The Natural History of the Vampire by Anthony Masters (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1972).
Bulgarians believed that a person sired by an undead male vampire had the power to see vampires invisible to others and was frequently employed as a vampire hunter. As in the case of the Gypsy and Serbian dhampir, this power was inherited by the person's children, grand children, etc.
Vampires in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia
In Serbia, the most common names for an undead vampire are vampir and vorkudlak. In Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro, the names include not only these but also lampir. In documented testimony from a trial that began in October 1737 and ended in 1738 in the then independent Croation city-state of Durovnik, not far north from Montenegro, the names given for "vampire" include kosak, pricosak, tenjac, and vukodlak. (The defendants in the trial were vampire hunters and their accomplices from the Croation island of Lastova in the Adriatic Sea. They were accused of desecrating graves.) In the part of Croatia on the Adriatic penninsula of Istria and in neighboring Slovenia, the name kudlak, an abbreviation of vorkudlak is sometimes used.
Most generally, these names applied to undead vampires who closely resemble the Russian upir and the Greek vrykolakas except that there is not much mention of demonic possession to be found here. The means for destroying them include exhuming the corpse the corpse and then driving a stake a stake into the heart, decaptitating it, or cremating it. In regions on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, the corpse was sometimes hamstrung; i.e., the tendons of the knee were cut before re-burial to prevent the corpse from walking again.
In some parts of Serbia, there is or was a belief that, unless they are destroyed first, vampires reach a stage in their unlife after thirty years from their death and burial where they no longer need to periodically return to the grave but can in fact pass as ordinary mortal human beings even in the day time. They then travel far away to some country where they will not be recognized and then they often marry a mortal human, and have children.
As is described in my web page containing Part II of Vampires of the World, under "The Kudlak of Istria", on the penninsula of Istria the term kudlak, an abbreviation of vorkudlak, can mean either an undead vampire or a person born with a caul who has certain supernatural powers and uses them to the detriment of his community even before he dies. And when such a person dies he continues his career as a full fledged undead vampire.
There are other eccentric beliefs found in these countries. Here are three:
- Some Serbs at least believed that an undead vampire could take the form of a butterfly.
- A tribe in Montenegro believed that the undead spent part of their unlife in wolf-form.
- The Gypsies and some Serbs believed that the undead were often invisible to most people.
Vampires in Scandinavian
Much of what we know about Scandinavian mythology during the time of the Vikings is found in myths and legends written down in Iceland after the Norwegian descendants on this island, as well as most of Scandinavia, had been converted to Christianity. Among this literature we find tales concerning the corporeal undead who dwelled in their burial mounds.
In the sagas written in Iceland, the name most common for such a revenant is draugr. In most of the sagas, such a revenant is not hostile unless its dwelling place is invaded by mortal seeking treasures buried in the mound. But, in some of the sagas, the dead person leaves his mound to inflict revenge upon the living who had brought about his death.
In the folklore of Norway recorded during the past two centuries, the draug (note difference in spelling) is most often a person who drowned in the sea but remains as a living corpse. In most of these tales, the draug climbs aboard ships or onto the shore to attack the living unless he is repelled. In this later Christian lore, a recurring theme is that the drowned person became a revenant as the result of not being buried in the consecrated ground of a church yard cemetery.
Vampires in India
| Hindu names for the vampiric undead include:
The vetala is essentially a vampiric demon or a demi-god. But a vetala sometimes takes possession of a corpse and animates it. The term bhuta is sometimes applied in a way that includes all of the Hindu vampiric demi-gods, demons, and undead. But its special meaning is the revenant of a man who died under such circumstances as:
In some regions of India, a Hindu who dies under such circumstances is apt to be buried instead of being given a proper funeral where the body is cremated. The bhuta often satisfies its appetite by eating the intestines and excrement it finds in other corpses. But it also attacks humans, causing them to become sick, and death often results. |
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