Vampires

by Charlotte Montague

  Similar to the Filipino Aswang is the Soucouyant of Trinidadian folklore, an old hag who can change shape, shedding her skin to become a fireball that flies through the air at night. The Soucouyant sucks blood from her victims, who may die and become Soucoyants as well. As with the European vampire, the Soucouyant can be repelled by scattering grains of rice on the ground, so that she must count them all; alternatively, salt can be sprinkled on the place where she left her skin, so that she will burn to death when she puts it back on.

  The Vetala

  From Hindu mythology comes the Vetala, also known as the Baital. This is an evil spirit that haunts cemeteries and enters corpses. It may continue to inhabit the corpse or leave it to cause trouble for the human world. Its specialities are causing miscarriages, sending people mad, or killing children. However, it may also be a force for good on certain occasions, since it can guard villages from attack.

  The Vetala inhabits a mysterious world somewhere between the living and the dead, and has lived for many centuries. Its vast store of knowledge, experience, and insight make it attractive to witches and sorcerers, who often try to capture and enslave it. However, it is a clever spirit, and knows how to escape capture. In one legend, King Vikramaditya, who lived in the first century bc, tried to capture a Vetala that lived in a tree in a graveyard. The only way to catch the Vetala was to remain silent, come what may. Once caught, the Vetala responded by telling the king stories, which so interested the king that he asked questions, whereupon the spell was broken and the Vetala returned to his tree home. The stories that the Vetala told the king are collected in a book, the Baital Pachisi, a set of tales comparable to the Arabian Nights.

  Also from Hindu mythology comes the Churel, an ugly old woman with a long, thick, black tongue which she uses to suck the blood from living mortals. The Churel is said to be the wandering spirit of a woman who has died in childbirth. She begins her spirit life by sucking the blood from her former husband, and continues to seek out young men as victims, living by streams and rivers, and lying in wait for them.

  The Jiang Shi

  Jiang Shi are Chinese vampires. According to legend, they come into being when a dead person’s soul refuses to leave its body, and go on to cause trouble to the living. They have the appearance of decomposing corpses, with a horrible, furry green skin and long white hair. In ancient mythology, they sucked the essence of life from human beings, but in more recent times – possibly because of the influence of western stories about vampires – they are believed to suck blood from the living. A defining feature of the Jiang Shi is its curious hopping gait. This feature is said to come from the ancient Chinese custom of transporting corpses of people who had died back to their hometowns. The corpses would be put on long bamboo sticks, which would bend up and down, making them look as though they were hopping. The list of vampire-like creatures from myths and legends in different countries and cultures is a long one, and it is not possible to mention them all here. However, what continues to fascinate those with an interest in folklore is that the figure of the vampire, or bloodsucking revenant, is a perennial one that occurs across many cultures, both ancient and modern.

  Chapter 4: Vampire Devotees

  In most people’s minds, the vampire is a mythical entity, a figure that combines elements of ancient pagan beliefs and superstitions with playful modern-day romance and horror narratives. However, there are some who take the legend more seriously, to the extent of pursuing a vampiric lifestyle. This may simply involve looking the part, that is, wearing black clothes and ghoulish make-up, and identifying with what has become known as the ‘goth’ subculture. In some cases the fascination may be deeper, indicating serious psychological disturbance, and involving gruesome rituals such as the drinking of blood, or even necrophilia. In this chapter we look at real-life vampires, beginning with an in-depth account of those infamous, bloodthirsty characters from history on whom the vampire myth is based: Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Bàthory, and Gilles de Rais. We then move on to discuss some of the early serial killers who were dubbed vampires in their time: in particular, Fritz Haarman and Peter Kürten, who were at large in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the term ‘serial killer’ was not in common use; thus, the senseless, repeated murders perpetrated by these bloodthirsty individuals were attributed to vampirism, showing how even in the twentieth century, superstition and pagan belief were still rife.

  Sava Savanovic

  The fear of crazed murderers who kill from bloodlust goes back centuries, and is a recurring theme in the history and culture of many northern European countries. One of the earliest serial killers said to be a vampire was the legend of Serbian Sava Savanovic¥, who was said to have lived in an old watermill on the River Rogagica near a village called Zarozje. According to local legend, he preyed on millers who came to the watermill to grind their grain. Little more is known about him, except that the watermill, owned by the Jagodic family, continued to function until the 1950s, when it closed. Apparently, tourists today still come to see ‘the vampire’s mill’.

  A so-called vampire who received a great deal of notoriety was Peter Plogojowitz, also known by his Serbian name Petar Blagojevic. Plogojowitz was a Serbian peasant who would have lived out his life in obscurity except that when he died, in 1725, there was an outbreak of disease and death in his village, Kisilova. Within a matter of days, nine more people had died, after falling ill and rapidly deteriorating. Some of the victims told stories on their deathbeds that Plogojowitz had returned from the grave to try to strangle them. Plogojowitz’s wife complained that his ghost visited her at night, demanding that she give him his shoes. She was so frightened by this that she moved to another village, but there was worse to come.

  Killing of son

  One night, according to the villagers, Peter Plogojowitz appeared to his son, asking for food. When the son demurred, his father promptly killed him, brutally and in cold blood. At this, the villagers decided it was time to dig up the errant vampire, and set out to the churchyard with the local priest, armed with spades, garlic, and a wooden stake. Also among the party was an official from the Austrian government, then ruling that part of Serbia, who went by the name of Imperial Provisor Frombald.

  When the body was dug up, Frombald was surprised to see that it looked strangely alive, as though it had been thriving underground. Its hair and beard had grown long, together with its fingernails, which looked new and young. Its cheeks were ruddy, and there appeared to be fresh blood emanating from its mouth. In a great state of agitation, the priest and villagers ran a wooden stake through the corpse’s heart, at which point more rich, dark blood flowed from its ears and mouth. Taking this to be fresh blood, the assembled company panicked, and burned the body to ashes.

  Vampire panic

  In great distress, Frombald submitted a report of these doings to his superiors, hoping that he would not be castigated for taking part in such godless rituals. He was not, but the report was widely circulated and published in a national newspaper in Austria, fuelling a ‘vampire panic’ that spread to Germany, France and England. (For more information on this, see Chapter 1.)

  At the time, there were various scientific refutations of the phenomenon, including explanations of what we know today.

  There were also theories about communicable diseases playing a part in the quick succession of sudden deaths within a village or small town. One commentator, Michael Ranft, put the deaths down to anxiety provoked by the situation. He wrote: ‘Sudden death gives rise to inquietude in the familiar circle. Inquietude has sorrow as a companion. Sorrow brings melancholy. Melancholy engenders restless nights and tormenting dreams. These dreams enfeeble body and spirit until illness overcomes, and eventually, death.’ However, these arguments were dismissed by the superstitious villagers, and even today in the region the belief in vampires still persists.

  Arnold Paole

  Another instance of vampire panic came with the death of an outlaw called Arnold Paole, w
ho died after falling off a haywagon in 1726. Not long afterwards, several people in the vicinity died suddenly, having complained that Paole had visited them at night. (Paole himself, during his life, had also mentioned that he had been plagued by a vampire, but had resolved the situation by eating earth from the vampire’s grave and drinking his blood.)

  Once again, the villagers decided to open up his grave, in the company of the local priest and government official, and were horrified to find the corpse looking healthy and swollen with blood. Paole and his four victims received the wooden stake treatment, and the episode contributed to the terror panic already sweeping across Europe by this time. Five years later, there was another outbreak of hysteria following the deaths of dozens of people from the same area in a matter of months, and the corpses were subjected to a number of anti-vampire rituals, including having their heads cut off and being burned to ashes.

  Mercy Brown

  At various times in history, there have been vampire panics occasioned by sudden deaths within a small community, following the burial of a local person. In the late nineteenth century, a family in Exeter, Rhode Island, suffered an outbreak of tuberculosis. The first to die was the mother of the family, Mary Brown, followed by her eldest daughter, also called Mary. Next came Mercy, a younger daughter, who died in 1892. The spate of deaths raised suspicions that a vampire was at work, so the father, George Brown, had the bodies exhumed. While the corpses of the mother and eldest daughter had decomposed, Mercy appeared unchanged. In accordance with local superstitions, Mercy’s heart was taken from her body, burned, and the ashes mixed with water. The solution was given to her brother Edwin to drink. Edwin, who was already ill, died two months afterwards.

  The Highgate vampire

  Today, urban myths and legends about vampires stalking graveyards still exist. One such instance was the media sensation surrounding the alleged Highgate Vampire, a revenant that supposedly inhabited the north London cemetery where Karl Marx and other well-known figures are buried. The story was promoted by a group of young occultists who roamed the cemetery in the 1960s, when it had been left untended for many years. They reported seeing a ‘grey figure’ and several ghosts, variously described as a cyclist, a woman wearing a white gown, and a tall man in a hat. There were also reports of bells ringing, and soft voices calling.

  The local newspaper, not surprisingly, published several articles on this phenomenon, including a sighting of ‘a King Vampire of the Undead’, who was said to be a medieval nobleman. This man had apparently practised the black arts and had travelled from Wallachia to England in a coffin during the eighteenth century. In addition, foxes with throat wounds, whose bodies had been drained of blood, were reported to have been seen lying around the cemetery.

  A much publicized ‘vampire hunt’ then ensued, led by two local men, David Farrant and Sean Manchester. The pair offered claims and counter-claims as to the supernatural goings-on in the churchyard, until Farrant was jailed, in 1974, for vandalism and desecration of graves. He claimed that these crimes had been committed by satanists. Manchester later wrote a book on the subject entitled The Highgate Vampire. Today, the feud between the two men continues, each claiming to tell the definitive story of what remains an urban legend.

  The Brummy vampire

  Other urban areas in Britain have also yielded tales of vampirism, including an area of Birmingham known as Ward End. The stories began in 1981 when stones were thrown at houses in the area during the night. Although police set up infra-red cameras to survey the streets there, no human beings were ever seen. In 2004, reports came in that a man had been biting people. The local hospital and police station were not alerted, however, and there was no trace of the victims. In the end, in the absence of hard information about the so-called ‘Brummy vampire’, the case was dismissed as an urban legend, and the short-lived panic surrounding it subsided.

  Richard Trenton Chase

  It would be reassuring to imagine that all tales of vampirism in our time are the product of myth and superstition, and have no basis in reality. This usually appears to be so, as in the cases of the Highgate vampire and the Brummy vampire. Sadly, however, there continue to be instances of real vampirism, that is, dreadful crimes committed by extremely deranged individuals who believe themselves to be vampires and who act accordingly; murdering innocent victims at random to eat their flesh and drink their blood.

  One such was Richard Trenton Chase, a serial killer from the city of Sacramento, California. Between 1977 and 1978 he killed six victims, drinking their blood and eating parts of their bodies. When he was caught, it emerged that he was seriously deluded. Under interrogation, he said he believed that Nazis were plotting his death by planting a certain kind of poison underneath his soap dish, which would turn his blood to powder.

  Chase was born on 23 May 1950 in Santa Clara County, California. His parents split when he was a child and by all accounts, his early years were difficult. By the time he was an adolescent, he was abusing drugs and alcohol. During this time, he visited a psychiatrist complaining of sexual impotence. The psychiatrist diagnosed that he was suffering from repressed anger, but nothing further was done to improve the situation, and Chase went on to exhibit increasingly bizarre behaviour.

  Rabbit blood

  After leaving home in the belief that his mother was trying to poison him, he rented an apartment with college friends. He alarmed them by holding oranges to his head, thinking that the vitamin C would enter it that way. Other strange behaviour included shaving his head so that he could see how his bones ‘moved around’, and reporting that someone had stolen one of his arteries. He was frequently high on a cocktail of drugs and took to walking around the apartment naked. One by one, the friends moved out, until he was left there alone.

  He then began to catch small animals, kill them, and eat them raw. In some cases, he mixed their organs in a blender with Coca Cola and drank them. He believed that, like a vampire, this would prolong his life, preventing his heart from shrinking. Not surprisingly, before long, he became ill and was admitted to hospital after injecting rabbit’s blood into his veins and contracting blood poisoning. In hospital, he was nicknamed Dracula after being found with the remains of a small bird smeared over his mouth. He was treated for schizophrenia and drug-induced psychosis, and released into the care of his mother. Not long afterwards, his mother took him off his medication. That was when the nightmare began.

  Hideous crimes

  Chase went on a rampage lasting almost a year, killing a total of six innocent people. He began with a 51-year-old engineer, Ambrose Griffin, shooting him with a rifle. Next he shot Teresa Wallin, who was three months pregnant, mutilating and fornicating with her corpse before bathing in her blood. He then visited 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, killing her, her six-year-old son Jason, her baby nephew David, and her friend Danny Meredith. After engaging in his usual necrophiliac and cannibalistic activities, he ran off to his apartment, where he drank the baby’s blood, ate parts of his brain and other organs, before leaving the body in a churchyard.

  Insanity plea

  It was not long before police caught up with him. His apartment was full of gruesome evidence as to his hideous activities, but he maintained his innocence, telling police that he had merely killed some dogs. Fortunately, the police did not believe him and he was arrested. At his trial in 1979, despite an insanity plea, he was found guilty of first degree murder on six counts and sentenced to death. A year later, while awaiting his fate, he committed suicide, overdosing on a hoard of anti-depressants prescribed to him by the prison doctor.

  In recent times there have been other reports of murderers who believed themselves to be vampires, such as the case of Manuela and Daniel Ruda, who killed their friend Frank Hackert ‘for Satan’, drank his blood, and then had sex in a coffin. They both denied having any personal responsibility for the murder. At their trial, they were declared to be suffering severe personality disorders, and were sentenced to be held in secure psychia
tric units.

  Unfortunately, these are not isolated instances. One of the most disturbing aspects of the Ruda case was that the couple received a great deal of fan mail from vampire enthusiasts. Today, there is speculation that the satanic cult of the vampire is increasing, especially in economically depressed areas where serious mental illness, especially among the young, can go untreated. Thankfully, however, the cases in which individuals believing themselves to be vampires actually commit murder, continue to be relatively few.