I’ve always presumed that vampires were primarily figments of the imagination of horror writers. Admittedly I was aware that Bram Stoker, the original Dracula author, pinched his idea from the folk tales of Eastern Europe, but until I went surfing I didn’t realize how much material he borrowed. That’s where the defining vampire traits of creatures of the night, biting necks, feeding on human blood and returning from the dead come from.
The preferred mode of killing the vampire (stake through the heart of the vampire’s body) is a variant of many remedies that folklore provides including putting a crucifix in the coffin, stakes and thorns, decapitation, burning, shooting a bullet through the coffin, holy water splashed on the body or the grave, exorcism, repeating the funeral service, exorcism and placing garlic in the vampire’s mouth. Also, bizarrely, placing fistfuls of millet or poppy seeds in the grave is supposed to stop a vampire from wandering around at nights, because vampires are obsessed with counting. I’m wondering if anyone’s tried putting a Rubik’s cube in the grave. Could work.
Signs that there’s a vampire about include dead blood-sucked livestock (cows, sheep, goats, etc.) and, rarely, dead people. And the dead people are expected to be neighbors or relatives of the vampire. This is a bit of a give-away since the vampire is expected to be someone who recently died. The thing to do (should you ever be faced with these circumstances) is to check the graves of the recently dead. Any life-like body with clear growth of hair and fingernails and traces of blood in the mouth is your vampire. So reach for the holy water, stake, garlic and/or Rubik’s cube and do what has to be done.
Bats
The association of vampires with gypsies was part of Bram Stoker’s original novel, which is fair, in a way, because gypsy folklore is awash with vampires. The gypsies themselves are called “gypsy” because they were once believed to have come from Egypt, but in fact the evidence suggests that they came from India, which may be the origin of the vampire idea. In parts of India there are tales of “Bhuta”, ghosts of people who died untimely deaths and wander around animating dead bodies and attacking the living.
You can blame the association between bats and vampires entirely on Bram Stoker. The vampire bat is found only in Central and South America and plays no part in vampire folk lore. It was learned about by the Spanish conquistadors, but not associated with the vampire idea (which is absent from Spanish folklore). However, while writing Dracula in the 1890s, Stoker came across a clipping about vampire bats from a New York newspaper. Naturally, the idea made its way into the book, with the dreaded count being able to transform himself into a rather large specimen of the bat species and flap around with the best of them. Doesn’t make much sense, but it makes great cinema.
Aside from the shape-shifting-to-become-a-bat trick, Stoker assigned other traits to Dracula that don’t originate in folklore. He had the strength of twenty men, has hypnotic powers, could manifest as mist or dust (quick reach for the Dyson), casts no shadow and his image fails to register on a mirror. And strange as it may seem, he cannot enter your household unless he’s invited in. It’s nice to know he’s so well mannered.
No Sex Please, We’re Vampires
The fact that Bram Stoker made his vampire a Count has tended to imbue subsequent male vampires with sartorial elegance and impeccable taste. Rather than feasting on farm animals, they are more inclined to dine on nubile females – who will consequently become vampires. From the Hollywood perspective, vampire’s tend to nobility or nubility. And although there’s clearly a sexual metaphor in play, a bite on the neck is where it all begins and ends.
~ Mark Twain
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