DistractionsBloodsuckers have stalked our nights and nightmares for centuries, but where did they come from in the first place?
Tuesday, 31st December 2019, 5:19 pm
While vampires feature on the Mt Rushmore of universally-recognised scary creatures, their exact traits still vary a lot from telling to telling.
Sometimes they are debonair predators brimming with dark allure, while other versions have them down as shrivelled, animalistic hunters.
Daylight, doorways, crucifixes and garlic have all been found to halt some - but not all of them. Some can turn into bats and hypnotise their prey, while others just have pointy teeth.
The product of countless different fables, folk tales and superstitions drawn from around the world and combined, the vampire we know today is a multifaceted creature.
But where do vampires come from - and are they living among us?
The original vampires
The idea of a dark, supernatural being which lives off the blood, spirit or flesh of human beings can be found in the folklore of pretty much every human culture that has ever existed.
In most cases, vampires were believed to be those returned from the dead, either by demonic possession or other dark forces.
The vampires which still abound in our popular culture can be traced mostly back to Eastern Europe.
In the 18th century, tales that had been handed down orally for generations were finally put onto the page, and our vampire canon was born.
Hysteria grew around the idea that corpses were buried with stakes through their hearts to prevent them returning, and many were excerpted on vampirism charges.
The more attractive, aristocratic breed of vamps arrived in the popular books of the 19th century, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and John Polidori's The Vampyre.
Vampires around the world
While Dracula was drawn almost entirely from the Eastern European idea of a vampire, similar legends have arisen in countries across the world.
In China, the Jiangshi are reanimated corpses who feed on the life essence (ch'i) of their victims rather than their blood. Chinese myths also held that if a vampire encountered a bag of rice it would be compelled to count every grain.
This arithmetic obsession has also been attributed to vampires in the folklore of South America and India, while various European traditions have seen millet or poppy seeds left with newly-buried corpses to distract visiting vampires.
Various African myths contain vampire-like figures, like the Asanbosam which the Ashanti people of West Africa described as having iron teeth and living in the trees.
The vampire mythos has proved particularly hard to dispel in Malawi. In 2003, a governor was attacked because people believed the government was colluding with vampires, while in 2017, six people were killed after a mob accused them of being vampires.
Where the vampire myth comes from
One of the main sources of the original vampire myth is believed to be a simple misunderstanding around how dead bodies decompose.
As a corpse's skin shrinks, it takes on the gaunt, deathly appearance common to many depictions of the undead.
As the internal organs break down, a dark purge fluid can then leak out around the mouth making corpses look like theyve been gnawing on the living.
Times of serious vampire hysteria tend to coincide with periods in which a community was hit with a spate of deaths they could not understand.
Diseases, such as tuberculosis, could rapidly spread through a small town, who would often turn to supernatural explanations to make sense of the destruction.
Rabies has also been cited as a potential source the condition can compel victims to bite others, can alter sleep patterns (making rabies sufferers nocturnal) and produce hypersexual behaviour and hypersensitivity (hence the dislike of sunlight and garlic).
It is also carried by bats and transferred by biting.
It has also been suggested that, due to the limited diagnostic abilities of the time, some accounts of the undead may be the result of patients being accidentally buried alive.
A person who suffered from something like catalepsy could become rigid and unresponsive for hours or even days, with a heartbeat that would have been undetectable in the old days.
Are vampires real?
A human being who lived solely off of human blood would quite quickly stop being alive (blood is far too rich in iron for us, for one thing). Of course, vampires are supposed to be dead already, but again there is no evidence that anyone has ever got back up after being dead for more than a few moments.
So no, vampires as they appear in Dracula, True Blood or Nosferatu are not real.
However, there are now thousands of people across the world who identify as vampires.
This ranges from those who are essentially goths (people who enjoy the all-black aesthetic and general broodiness) to those who regularly and ritually absorb human blood (though they do so via a carefully performed medical procedure, rather than by latching on to the throats of passers-by).
There are also "Psychic Vampires" who believe they can absorb the life energy from others via intense, meditative practices.
Across history, there have also been many violent incidences of real-life vampirism. Several serial killers, such as Richard "The Vampire of Sacramento" Chase gained notoriety for drinking the blood of his victims.
Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, ruled over part of Romania during the 15th century.
As well as his eponymous habit of impaling his enemies onto wooden stakes, legend has it he enjoyed dining alongside his victims while they died, using their blood as dipping sauce for his bread.
Bram Stoker is believed by some to have taken the name of his iconic character from him.
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