Vampire – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Vampire is a mythical being who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures. In folkloric tales, undead vampires often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 1800s. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularised 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,[1] although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to what can only be called mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.

In modern times, however, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures. Early folkloric belief in vampires has been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalise this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.

The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.[2] However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, and television shows. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of the English word vampire (as vampyre) in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen published in The Harleian Miscellany in 1745.[3] An even earlier example is found in the re-telling the famous case of Arnold Paole and Petar Blagojevich in Serbia, where the London Journal of March 11, 1732, describes vampyres in Hungary (actually northern Serbia under direct Austrian rule) as sucking the blood of the living.[4] Vampires had already been discussed in French[5] and German literature.[6] After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires".[6] These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.[6]

The English term was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian /vampir,[7][8][9][10][11][12] when Arnold Paole, a purported vampire in Serbia was described during the time when Northern Serbia was part of the Austrian Empire.

The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian (vampir), Bosnian: lampir, Croatian vampir, Czech and Slovak upr, Polish wpierz, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upir, Ukrainian (upyr), Russian (upyr'), Belarusian (upyr), from Old East Slavic (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.[13] Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *pyr and *pir.[14] Another, less widespread theory, is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar ubyr).[14][15]

Czech linguist Vclav Machek proposes Slovak verb "vrepi sa" (stick to, thrust into), or its hypothetical anagram "vperi sa" (in Czech, archaic verb "vpeit" means "to thrust violently") as an etymological background, and thus translates "upr" as "someone who thrusts, bites".[16]

An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian ), dated variously to the 11th13th centuries, where pagan worship of upyri is reported.[17][18]

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,[1] 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.[19]

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.[20] 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.[21]

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Vampire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia