Vampires

by Charlotte Montague

  Fear of sunlight

  Although the vampire was said to rise from the grave at night and return there in the morning, in early folklore there was no suggestion that it might be vulnerable to sunlight. Even in nineteenth century vampire literature, there was little mention of the notion that sunlight could kill a vampire. On the contrary, vampires were thought to move around like ordinary people during the daytime, their supernatural powers only coming upon them at night.

  The idea that sunlight was harmful to vampires was an addition to the mythology that took place in the twentieth century, and went on to appear in comics, books, films, and on television. In these later stories, vampires might collapse or explode when hit by sunlight, the ‘scientific’ explanation for this being that their neural pathways would fire randomly in their brains, causing them to experience extreme epileptic reactions, blinding them, and possibly setting them on fire. Obviously, this idea was appealing to film-makers and comic strip artists, but it had no real basis in the traditional mythology of vampirism.

  Fear of water and fire

  Vampires were also said to be terrified of water. In some cultures, they were thought to be unable to cross over any stretch of water, such as walking over the river on a bridge, and for this reason, churchyards were often sited by ponds and rivers. Throwing water over a vampire, especially holy water that had been blessed by a priest, was believed, among Slavic communities, to have the power to destroy it, and this aspect of vampire mythology has continued through the centuries to the present day.

  The vampire’s fear of water has an interesting connection to hydrophobia, a sympton of rabies, in which sufferers experience intense terror of water as part of their madness. The explanation behind this connection may be that, in the past, people suffering from rabies as a result of being bitten by a bat or wolf exhibited insane behaviour, including fear of water, in the last stages of the disease, and for this reason they may have been deemed to have turned into a vampire – hence the idea that vampires hate water and may be destroyed by it.

  In traditional folklore, fire and sunlight are other sources of fear for vampires. This is seemingly due to their pallid skin tone and love for darkness. Even a flame from a candle was believed to send them into a state of psychotic fear. Therefore it is not surprising that people believed that one of the most effective methods for killing a vampire was to burn their body to ashes. In most cases, the head and heart would be removed before the cremation took place. Traditional folklore stipulated that the body must be burned thoroughly, as vampires had a supernatural ability to heal themselves, and could come to life again if the job was not done properly.

  Super senses

  Another odd characteristic of the vampire, as it appears in ancient folklore, was that it had a very sensitive sense of smell. For this reason, garlic was said to ward off vampires – they simply could not bear the smell. During church services, garlic would be handed out to ensure that no evil spirits were present. Garlic was also hung outside the doorways of houses, and used extensively in the kitchen, as it was thought to have strong purifying properties. The faith in the healing powers of garlic was so strong that ordinary people who had an aversion to garlic were thought of as highly suspect, and in some cases might even be persecuted as vampires themselves.

  The vampire’s sense of smell was so sensitive, it was thought, that it could detect the scent of a sleeping person’s blood from a long way off, and make its way towards it using its nose as a guide. This idea, too, has some basis in the natural world, in that it may have been derived from observing the behaviour of animals. Many animals, including wolves, dogs, and certain species of bat, are able to sniff out a live animal or a corpse, follow its trail, and find it. Given that the vampire was conceived of as a creature which subsisted on the blood of live human beings, it is not surprising that people would imagine it to have a very refined sense of smell, and be able, like wolves and bats, to hunt down its victims.

  In addition to its powerful sense of smell, the vampire was thought in some cultures to have enhanced vision, so that it could see and track victims in the dark, often from miles away. Once again, while this seems an entirely fanciful notion, it did have some basis of reality in nature. Owls, for example, have very strong night vision, allowing them to hunt in darkness.

  Vampires were also thought to have a highly developed sense of hearing, rather like bats, whose sensitive ears help them to pinpoint their prey by means of echolocation. Vampire bats also have heat sensors, allowing them to sense blood near the surface of the victim’s skin, and this may explain why in some versions of the legend, vampires can stalk their victims by means of infra-red heat sensors.

  Super powers

  In some versions of the mythology, vampires are able to turn themselves into bats, wolves, or other animals at will. Vampires may also become foxes, rats, and moths, or transform themselves into vapours, allowing them to slip through cracks under a door or a window. They are also, in some legends, able to vanish, or to live side by side with human beings as invisible presences. According to some tales, as they grow older, they become stronger, and can reach a point where their strength is that of ten men. They may also be able to travel very fast, at superhuman speeds, that make it impossible to see them with the naked eye, or disappear from one place and appear in another.

  Vampires are also said to be able to hypnotize their victims before attacking them. Their ability to do this depends on the victim’s own strength of will. After the attack, vampires may hypnotize their victims to forget what happened.

  Another bizarre feature of the vampire is their ability to withstand many forms of attack. They cannot be killed with knives, guns, or sticks. (An exception may be made if the gun is loaded with silver bullets, and in early times, a corpse might be shot through with a silver bullet to make sure the inhabitant was well and truly dead.) The only well-established way to eradicate vampires entirely, according to folklore, is to pierce them with a stake, cut out their hearts, cut off their heads, and burn their bodies to ashes. This is necessary because vampires, so we are told, regenerate themselves very quickly. If they are wounded, their injuries will heal overnight, and may do so even more quickly if they find a victim whose body they can drain entirely of blood.

  Finally, in some versions of the legend, vampires are able to control the minds of nocturnal animals such as bats, mice, rats, and wolves. These animals act as slaves to their master, and they are so faithful to him that they may lay down their lives for him. Vampires may also control the weather, bringing a blanket of fog down to cover their traces, or blowing up a storm to prevent them being followed. Vampires also, by biting their victims, may create human slaves, who will do their bidding come what may.

  Vampires & Immortality

  Over the centuries, as we have discussed, the image of the vampire changed from that of a monstrous, bloated corpse stalking its victims out of revenge at having been excluded from the land of the living, into a svelte nobleman who charmed members of high society, especially rich women, with his pallid beauty, refined sensibilities, and deathly allure. By the late nineteenth century, the vampire had become largely a creature of literature and legend, and as remote rural communities began to feel the effects of modern life, there were few who genuinely still believed in the existence of real vampires. However, the myth still continued – and continues – to hold great fascination for many people in many cultures all over the world. One of the reasons for this is that it centres on the notion of immortality.

  During the twentieth century, Christian belief in Europe gradually declined, and with it the conventional idea of life after death; thus the legend of the vampire, which involves the story of the ‘undead’ spirit, became an appealing way of continuing to reflect on the mysteries of the life hereafter, outside of a religious context.

  Horrible stench

  Descriptions of vampires in medieval times emphasized the horror of the monster’s decomposing body, with lurid accounts of the
blood running from its orifices, its swollen limbs, matted hair, long nails, and so on. As well as these less than attractive features, the medieval vampire emitted the most horrible stench, which could be smelt for miles, and could cause people to faint with disgust. Unlike his later counterpart, the sophisticated nobleman, the medieval vampire was a very realistic ‘walking dead’, in that its evil-smelling, rotting corpse was vividly described in every detail. It was also conceived of as a ‘plague bringer’; it was thought that the stench could waft into houses and infect whole families, who would fall ill merely by breathing ‘unclean’ air.

  Underlying these accounts was a well-grounded fear that corpses could spread disease, and must be buried in places away from human habitation in order to stop contagious illnesses spreading. Some commentators have noted that in times of plague, bodies were often buried in mass graves, which were visited by gravediggers again and again, and might be opened many times. These workmen would see bodies in various stages of decomposition, some of them with the features that so frightened medieval people – fat, swollen limbs, rosy cheeks, a ruddy complexion, long nails and hair, dark blood running out of the mouth, ears, and nose – and bring back tales of what they had seen. Thus, an extreme anxiety developed that corpses could come back to life, and if they did, they would spread the disease that they had died of – either through the foul, pestilential stench that they brought with them, or by their bloodsucking forays, attacking innocent sleeping victims.

  ‘Eternal death’

  In these early accounts, immortality was seen as a kind of curse – ‘eternal death’, the flip side of ‘eternal life’ as promised by the Christian priests. An important aspect of the vampire was that it could only sustain itself by sucking the blood of living beings, and ultimately causing their death by doing so. It was as if the pagan images of medieval culture, and of course the peasants’ closeness to the ordinary phases of nature (including witnessing the dead and dying) combined to make a mockery of the Christian idea of ‘eternal life’ by conjuring up this monstrous being that could not die, yet lived a miserable half-life, preying on its victims at night and draining their lifeblood away from them as they slept.

  Drinking the blood of Christ

  The idea of drinking blood to attain eternal life is also at the heart of Christian ritual, in the celebration of mass. In the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, as it is also known, Christians who have been baptized and confirmed come up to the altar to take the bread and wine, which is conceived of as the body and blood of Christ. The priest first takes a chalice, holds it up and says: ‘Drink ye all of this; for this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins; Do this, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me.’ Each communicant is then given a wafer of bread and a sip of wine from the same chalice.

  Today, there is some controversy over the ritual of the Eucharist within the Christian church over the issue of what is called ‘transubstantiation’. Some sects argue that the ritual is purely symbolic, an act of faith, remembrance, and gratitude for Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross; others, including the Roman Catholic church, maintain that during the service, the wine and the bread actually turn into Christ’s blood and body, and that communicants therefore drink his blood and eat his flesh.

  The quest for immortality

  Whatever the status of these beliefs, it is clear that human beings through the centuries have always shown an immense urge to overcome death through belief in an afterlife, and through various ritualistic practices, many of which have included the drinking of blood. The early vampire myth, with its roots in the Slavic ‘old religion’ of ‘undead’ spirits and demons, is part of that quest. The nineteenth century vampire, which was the start of a nobly born, wealthy individual, has other cultural references (not least, as some political commentators have pointed out, a critique of the nobility, whose decadent, privileged lifestyle ‘leeches’ the morals of society, and the lifeblood of the lower orders). However, what seems to bind them all together is the common quest for immortality.

  In the twentieth and twenty-first century, the image of the vampire as a seeker of immortality – whether visualized as a horrifying monster from the grave or a well-groomed aristocrat – has tended to be obscured. The camp horror elements of the legend have attracted many talented film-makers and fiction writers, who have created tremendously entertaining fantasies for a popular market, so much so that the more serious aspects of the stories have been somewhat overlooked. However, in more recent years, building on the important themes of human sexuality, death, and the quest for immortality that have been present in fictional accounts of vampirism since the days of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there has been a revival of the myth; one recent example is Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance series Twilight , aimed at a teenage market. Once again, the vampire legend shows itself able to accommodate a discussion of emotional issues that appeal to contemporary youth: for example, the feelings that many teenagers experience as they hit adolescence; that they are ‘different’ from others, ‘weird’, ‘looking in from the outside’, and so on. In addition, Meyer’s books address the teenager’s perennial preoccupation with the ‘big questions’, such as love, sex, death, and the aspiration to live for ever.

  The female vampire

  As we have noted, the medieval European image of the vampire as a mouldering corpse was a far from sexually attractive one. It is only during the Regency period, with John Polidori’s The Vampyre, that we encounter the seductive vampire, in the person of Lord Ruthven, and then again in the Victorian period with the most famous vampire of them all, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. One of the many reasons for the popularity of these stories was that they touched on the connection between sex and death: women who had sexual liaisons with vampires not only risked public shame and humiliation, they also risked being transformed into seductive sirens or dying. In Stoker’s Dracula, the women could also become violent, even murderously so towards babies. To a repressed female readership nurtured on Victorian ideas of chastity, domesticity and selfless womanhood, these possibilities must have seemed horrifying – but in an erotic, exciting way.

  Stoker drew on a deep vein of literature and folklore that conceived of the vampire as, among other incarnations, a beautiful, seductive woman who could suck the lifeblood out of a man, murder little children, and even eat them. These tales expressed deep fears about the power of female sexuality and fertility, and are present in many different cultures around the world. For example, the Ancient Greeks told of the beautiful Libyan Queen Lamia, who turned into a hideous child-eating demon, while the Mesapotamians feared Lilith, a highly seductive, serpentine evil spirit who appeared to men in erotic dreams. In more modern tales of female vampires, the sexual elements of penetration (piercing the skin), and lust (sucking the blood) are clear; thus, these stories resurrect age-old anxieties about woman’s ability to seduce and control men, and the possibility that this power may lead them to abandon their traditional roles as dutiful wives, mothers, and daughters.

  In the same way, stories of lesbian vampires, such as Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla allowed readers to explore a taboo subject in a fantasy setting, thus circumventing the strict sexual mores of the time. Some critics believe that Le Fanu’s novel was based on the historical figure of Countess Bàthory, who was said to have murdered countless young women, bathing in their blood. However, others believe that the story of Carmilla is more significant as a precursor than Bram Stoker’s male protagonist, Count Dracula.

  Whatever the truth, it seems that historically, the female vampire is a powerful mythical creation, expressing the fear of the sexually alluring woman as a dangerous threat to the patriarchal order.

  Chapter 3: Myths and Legends

  The dictionary definition of the vampire is ‘a corpse that rises nightly from its grave to drink the blood of the living’. The belief in vampires arose in the medieval Slavic ‘old religion’ and then, in the centuries that follo
wed, caught the imagination of writers, artists and film-makers, developing into the suave, sophisticated figure that we know today. Parallel to this European tradition are many other ancient belief systems across the globe that involve similar figures to the vampire: revenants who stalk the living, drinking their blood so as to sustain themselves in the shadowy afterlife.

  The Strix

  Ancient Greece, as we know, had a very highly developed belief system, with many complex myths surrounding the pantheon of gods that were worshipped. Among these, we find several tales about female demons, such as the storm demon Lamia, a woman who in life suffered the death of her children and took her revenge by preying on babies, stealing them away to suck their blood and eat their flesh. Allied to this myth is the story of Lilith, which comes from Hebrew mythology. In some ancient versions of this story, Lilith is the first wife of Adam who refuses to obey him, is banished from the Garden of Eden, and then returns in snake form to tempt him. She becomes an evil demon, seducing men and stealing infants away from their mothers, as well as bearing demon children herself who visit humankind and wreak havoc upon it. This myth endured for centuries, and right up until the eighteenth century, Lilith was held responsible for infant deaths, impotence, and infertility. Significantly, both Lamia and Lilith are women who are able to transform themselves into snakes, echoing another aspect of the vampire myth, which is the revenants’ ability to assume non-human forms.