Vampires

by Charlotte Montague

  Before the twentieth century, wolf attacks on humans were a well-known though not very common occurrence. However, the damage to livestock was extensive, and this is perhaps why wolves came to be hated in many parts of Europe. There were also incidences of small children being carried off by wolves, and this may have led to fairy tales that warned children of this danger. It may also have inspired mythological stories of children being raised in the wild by a wolf pack.

  The werewolf

  Fear of wolves also gave rise to stories of werewolves, which along with vampires, dominated European folk tales in the medieval period. The werewolf is a legendary creature, a human being who has the ability to shift its shape into a wolf or wolf-like animal with tremendous strength and supernatural powers. The transformation occurs under a full moon, and is accompanied by much howling and gnashing of teeth as the body painfully changes shape, growing fangs, fur, and yellow eyes. The first writer to record such a creature is the medieval commentator, Gervase of Tilbury, but similar creatures appear in the writings of the Ancient Greeks, notably Petronius.

  It has been argued that, as with the vampire legends, the tales of werewolves may have arisen to explain the occurrence of diseases such as rabies and porphyria. If bitten by a rabid wolf, an infected human being might take on the aggressive behaviour of an angry wolf or dog. In the case of porphyria, bloodshot eyes and reddened teeth, as well as sensitivity to light, might mark a sufferer out as a werewolf. However, there is some controversy about these suggestions, in that the classic werewolf tales do not necessarily involve reference to transmission of the condition through biting. (This is in contrast to the vampire legend, which definitely does entail the idea of people becoming vampires as a result of being bitten.) In both the case of the vampire and the werewolf, the issue of light sensitivity, which is a characteristic of porphyria, seems to be irrelevant, since this was not mentioned in either case in early folklore tales.

  It seems more likely that the werewolf in European folklore is a symbol that helps to explain many strange human behaviours, for example, mental illnesses in which individuals appear to have a dual personality – gentle one minute, violent the next. Or it may simply be a way of describing how the world becomes more frightening and strange at night, especially in remote rural areas, when the wolves begin to howl and human beings are reminded of how precarious their civilization is, and how easily it might be destroyed. The anthropologist Robert Eisler touched on the psychological connection between humans and wolves in his study Man into Wolf, reflecting that when early tribes changed from being hunter gatherers to predatory hunters, they began to identify with the predatory wolf. (This may also help to explain the preponderance of wolf-derived Christian and surnames in Northern Europe. Such as the German male Christian names Adalwolf, and Wolfgang meaning noble wolf and wolf path, and the Spanish surname, Lopez, which means simply – wolf.)

  The vampire werewolf

  Inevitably, the werewolf legend soon became tangled, in medieval folklore, with that of the vampire. In Europe, people suspected of being werewolves were often executed, and their bodies burned rather than being buried. This was because there was a widespread belief that werewolves might, after death, turn into vampires. These vampires might come back to life as hyenas – another creature with a long history of negative associations in human culture. As a scavenger feeding off dead or dying animals, including humans, the hyena is reviled in most societies (indeed the word ‘hyena’ in Greek derives from ‘pig’), and in the past has been thought of as the companion of demons and witches. Traditionally, hyenas are regarded as hybrid creatures whose sexuality is indeterminate, and they are much feared throughout the world, particularly in Africa, where night attacks on humans have occurred, in some instances, proving fatal. The curious laughing call of the Spotted Hyena (which actually hunts live prey) has also been the source of much dislike of the animal.

  Not only werewolves, but sinners, were thought to come back to life after they had died. In addition, people with pale faces, hollow eyes, and swollen lips, were suspected of being werewolves, and persecuted as a result. It was feared that when they died, either of natural causes or because they were executed, they would take the form of blood-drinking wolves, coming back to the corpse they had left behind at break of day. In order to avoid this, priests would be sent to perform exorcisms. Disinterring and decapitating the dead body, and often throwing the head into a river, where it was hoped it would sink, due to the weight of the many sins within it.

  So closely connected were vampires and werewolves in Northern European folklore that in some countries, notably Serbia, they were called by the same generic term: vulkodlak. In the Balkans generally, these revenant creatures were said to be witches who could take any number of horrific forms, and who turned themselves into werewolves so as to suck the blood of human beings. It was stipulated that this bloodsucking must take place under a full moon, in order for the witches to gain the full benefit to their health. Thus it was that the folkloric imagery of bats and wolves, together with that of the hyena, merged with legends of witches and witchcraft to create that terrifying nocturnal creature, the vampire werewolf.

  The owl of doom

  Along with the bat and the wolf, the other creature to be associated with vampirism – and, of course, with witches – is the owl. As everybody knows, owls usually hunt at twilight or during the night, and mostly prey on small mammals. They have extraordinary powers of vision, and their feathers are constructed in such a way that they make little sound as they fly along. The feathers may also be delicately marked so as to camouflage them from their victim. Owls use their sharp talons and beak to catch their prey and often swallow it whole, later regurgitating indigestible parts of it, such as bones and fur, in small pellets.

  The familiar hoot or screech of the owl as it hunts has long been associated, in human culture, with death and destruction. The ancient Strix of Roman mythology (see Chapter 3) is based on the owl, and in Romania, the call of the owl is traditionally thought to presage the death of someone nearby. However, the owl is also thought to be wise (for instance, as the companion of Minerva, the Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom). Thus, like the wolf, the owl has positive as well as negative associations in human culture.

  Rules and taboos

  In conclusion, we can see how the habits of bats, wolves, and owls have contributed to the vampire legend, both in Europe and around the rest of the world. Historically, humans have lived close to these animals, and have come to fear them, in some cases quite rationally, in other cases rather foolishly. Folk tales and legends of vampirism express these fears, and may also set rules and taboos – some sensible, some wildly irrational – about how to minimize their perceived threat to human life.

  Chapter 2: From Peasant to Nobleman

  In contrast to the vampires described in popular literature of the nineteenth century, the medieval vampire did not have fangs; it was not pale or gaunt; it had no aversion to sunlight; nor did it have any sophistication or charisma. It certainly did not appear to its victims dressed immaculately for an upper-class dinner or ball, or sporting a long red cape. The whole sexual element, of a charming, smooth-talking, upper-class individual, was entirely missing in medieval stories. These characteristics were later additions to the myth, that came about as the vampire myth began to find its way into popular literature once the eighteenth-century panic about vampire sightings had died down.‘An enormous corpulence’

  As far as we know from writings of the time, the medieval vampire was conceived of as a repellent creature with no sexual allure whatsoever. On the contrary, it was foul-smelling and ugly, and people would flee as soon as it appeared. There are several reports about sightings of vampires that date from this early period. One of the most graphic is that of William of Newburgh, also known as William Parvus, a twelfth-century English historian who made a study of ‘revenants’, that is, the deceased who come back from the dead.

  In one case, Newburgh describe
d a man of ‘evil conduct’, who escaped from jail and died when he fell out of the rafters of the roof in his bedroom (where he was hiding to spy on his wife, who was having an affair.) Newburgh relates that the man had a Christian burial, but that he later arose from his grave and wandered around the town, pursued by a pack of barking dogs. He killed a number of townspeople, terrorizing them into staying at home with their doors locked as soon as the sun went down. Eventually, the local people tired of this, and decided to trap the vampire in his lair. They went to the graveyard, dug up the man’s corpse, and laid it bare. A horrible sight awaited them. The corpse, as Newburgh describes it, was ‘swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces.’

  He continues:

  ‘The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart.’

  More fat vampires

  By the eighteenth century, belief in vampires had reached a peak, so much so that a number of studies into the phenomenon were published, many of them by respected scholars. The most famous of these was by Augustin Calmet, a Benedictine scholar from Lorraine in France. In 1746, he presented his treatise, Dissertation on the apparition of angels, demons, and spirits; and on revenants and vampires in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Calmet wrongly supposed that the idea of the vampire as a reanimated corpse who survived by sucking blood was a new one, dating the phenomenon to the late seventeenth century. He wrote:

  ‘In this age, a new scene presents itself to our eyes and has done for about sixty years. In Hungary, Moravia, Silesia and Poland, men, it is said, who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, destroy their health and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings, by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out their hearts, or burning them. These are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches ... In the twelfth century also, in England and Denmark, some resuscitations similar to those of Hungary were seen. But in no history do we read anything similar, so common, or so decided, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary and Moravia.’

  In his treatise, Calmet carefully presented a collection of descriptions and sightings of vampires, but he himself remained ambivalent about their existence. Many of those who read his essay, however, took it to be positive proof that vampires were, indeed, stalking the land, and overall, it supported the superstitions about revenants. However, another Frenchman, Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was extremely sceptical about Calmet’s findings, and in his Philosophical Dictionary, published in 1764, he employed his sharp wit to poke fun at the idea:

  These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.

  ‘A barbarism of ignorance’

  Despite Voltaire’s mocking review, Calmet’s treatise had such influence that the Empress Maria of Austria finally sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampirism in her territories. Like Voltaire, van Swieten was sceptical about the existence of vampires, but nonetheless he wrote a serious report about the allegations, entitled, A Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts. In this essay, published in 1768, he explained how the body decomposed, and how blood and gases might account for the ruddy complexion and swollen appearance of recently buried corpses. In conclusion he called the vampire myth ‘a barbarism of ignorance’, and said, ‘…all the fuss is nothing but a vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people.’ As a result of van Swieten’s findings, the Empress issued an edict forbidding people to exhume, mutilate, and burn buried corpses.

  The aristocratic vampire

  After this, the exhumations of corpses and persecution of living people with abnormalities of any kind thankfully died down. However, stories of vampires continued to thrill audiences, and were taken up in popular literature of all kinds. In the early nineteenth century, a suave and sophisticated vampire made its first appearance in John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819. (For more information on this, and other literary vampires, see Chapter 5). In appearance, Polidori’s vampire was a complete contrast to his forebears; instead of being ‘fat and rosy’, he was pale, thin, and good-looking. Polidori describes him thus:

  ‘It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein … those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart …’

  Despite, or perhaps because of his deathly, soul-searching gaze, this intriguing stranger was extremely attractive to the female sex.

  A ‘Winning tongue’

  ‘His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection.’

  Polidori’s vampire was not only physically alluring, he also had a ‘winning tongue’, and his ‘apparent hatred of vice’ – he routinely ignored all the women who threw themselves at him – made him even more fascinating.

  In creating his aristocratic vampire, Polidori set a template for virtually all the vampire figures that followed. Bram Stoker, author of the seminal Dracula, which was published in 1897, drew heavily on his idea of the vampire as a charming, intelligent, refined, and sophisticated man about town, and this incarnation of the vampire went on to become a staple of the horror genre up to the present day.

  Baby Vampires

  In the Middle Ages, the timing of a baby’s birth had much significance – negative as well as positive. In the same way, details of its appearance could have all kinds of mysterious meanings. Its lineage was also a matter of great importance: for example, the seventh son of the seventh son might be considered to have supernatural powers, or other extraordinary features. As the vampire myth spread from the Balkans and took hold of the popular imagination in Europe, these superstitions about the circumstances of a baby’s birth became entwined with the vampire myth, so that when a new baby came into the world, it would be checked for tell-tale signs, and possibly rejected as a result.

  The caul: blessing or curse?

  First and foremost were birth defects and abnormalities, some of which would be considered normal enough today. For example, if the baby was born in a caul, it would be viewed as suspicious. A caul is a membrane from
the amniotic sac which separates the baby from the wall of its mother’s womb. At birth, instead of leaving this caul behind, the baby occasionally emerges wrapped inside it. Today, a doctor or midwife usually breaks this membrane during the mother’s labour, if it does not rupture of its own accord during the process; thus babies born in the caul are less common now than they used to be.

  In health terms, being born in a caul poses no risks, and is positively beneficial to the baby, in that it is shielded from infection until the caul peels off spontaneously. In medieval peasant societies with little access to medical help, it was noted that babies born in the caul were often stronger and healthier than most, and had a better chance of survival. A membrane strong enough to withstand the process of labour was seen as protective. For this reason, the caul was seen as a sign of good luck, and could signify that the child would be a successful individual in later life. In many cases, the caul would be kept as an heirloom: the midwife would rub some paper on the baby’s head, so that the membrane would transfer onto the paper, and then present it to the mother.