American Vampires

by Bob Curran

  She claimed that in Gullah folklore, the boo-daddy or boo-hag often drank from the most available orifice, the nose. The only way to divert the boo-daddy’s attentions, according to Lillie, was to hang a sieve on the bedroom door.

  This is a common belief concerning vampires in many cultures, and is not unique to the Gullah. Vampires, being inquisitive and fastidious creatures, will be drawn to some small repetitive task that will keep them occupied until the sun rises, and they have to return to the grave.

  According to Lillie, the sounds made by a boo-daddy deep in the swamps were distinctive and would let swamp-dwellers know that the creature was on the prowl. Allegedly, it barked like a fox, howled like a dog, and hooted like an owl. Cynics will of course say that the sounds were made by ordinary animals, but to the Gullah, they were indisputable proof that the boo-daddies were prowling areas of the swamplands.

  Besides the usual tales of men who had married boo-creatures, Lillie also knew about ruined shacks and abandoned mansions far away in the swamps where such beings congregated, which she called “haint houses.” The only people who could enter these places, unmolested by the vampiric creatures there, were those who had been born with a thin membrane of skin across their faces, which comes away after birth. In many cultures, this membrane has magical properties and often acts as a form of protection against evil spirits. Babies born with a caul are considered special, and in Gullah lore, it might have immunity to the attentions of boo-daddies.

  As mists writhe through the South Carolina swamplands and queer noises are heard in the depths of the marshes, it is easy to see how the Gullah people formed their beliefs. Even if one was not Gullah, it was difficult to suppress a shudder as the Carolina night crept in from the sea. Who knows what lies out there in the dark, along the lonely swamp roads?

  LOUISIANA

  As far as vampires go, Louisiana might be just the place to find them. Past New Orleans, a brooding, magical city filled with shadowy streets, courtyards, and alleyways, lies a wilderness of cypress swamps, a place of hidden, misty bayous, abandoned and overgrown cemeteries tucked away in remote groves, and mouldering antebellum houses, some hung with Spanish Moss, dreaming in the last vestiges of the fading grandeur of the Old South. What better place to find the unquiet, vampiric dead? Little wonder that writers such as Anne Rice, Robert Bloch, and H.P. Lovecraft have set some of their more eerie tales there.

  Louisiana is a real melting pot of cultures and traditions, yet it does not seem to readily lend itself to conventional ideas of the Undead. By “conventional,” we mean the traditional notion of the vampire as portrayed in books and films. So forget the ideas of Anne Rice, as Louisiana vampire beings are slightly different.

  For a number of years, the predominant culture in the state was that of France (up until 1803, it was a French Colony), a country that does not really have a major tradition of vampirism. Nevertheless, other influences have crept in and now form a rich vampiric tapestry, which lies just beneath the surface of Louisiana society. Vampires in this state tend to be fused with other entities to form hybrid monsters or were-creatures. Like Louisiana, these Undead and terrible things have often originated in an amalgam of cultures and perspectives, so in order to understand where they might come from, it is perhaps necessary to take a brief look at the complex colonial history of Louisiana.

  People have immigrated into the Louisiana area since 3400 BC. During this period, when the hunter-gatherers began to organize themselves and build mound-dwellings, Louisiana boasted the earliest (and largest) mound complex in America at the Watson Brake site near Monroe. These Mesolithic peoples settled in this area, spawning cultures that would follow them in the region throughout the centuries—periods that gave rise to some of the Native American groups in the area—the Appalousa and the Chitimacha among many others.

  The first Europeans arrived in the area in 1528 when Pánfilo de Narváez led a Spanish expedition to the Mississippi River. In 1542, an expedition led by Hernando de Soto passed north of the state, encountering Caddo and Tunica natives, before moving south again, down to Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. De Soto found that the natives all along the river were incredibly hostile and the Spaniards were very poorly equipped (their crossbows had stopped working and they were low on provisions). Significant numbers of his expedition were wounded and more than 11 were killed. After his experiences in the region, de Soto reported back to Spain that future expeditions should avoid the area where possible.

  And so, for a time, European interest in Louisiana was negligible. However, in the later 17th century, when French expeditions traveled south for sovereign, religious, and commercial objectives it was renewed. The French began to establish themselves along the banks of the Mississippi River, extending their influence down to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1682, the explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, entered the area and named it “Louisiana” in honor of the French king, Louis XIV. The French rapidly began to establish fortified settlements, the largest being Fort Maurepas (now Ocean Springs, Mississippi, near Biloxi). This was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, who was brought from French Canada for the task. He formed much better relations with the local Native Americans than the Spanish had been able to do, and soon the Fort and settlement were well established. Louisiana was a massive territory, extending along both sides of the Mississippi River toward French Canada and encompassing the present-day states of Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, and North and South Dakota. Such a large area was set up with one specific purpose in mind—to trade with the Spanish colonies that lay to the west and in Texas to deter any Spanish advances. El Camino Real (the King’s Road)—or the old San Antonio Road—was set up as a trade route in order to convey goods and supplies into the Spanish colonies in Spanish Tejas. Its terminus was based at Natchitoches. This settlement soon became a bustling river port, transporting cotton and similar goods into the west, and many great plantation houses grew around it. And another town, serving surrounding plantations, was also growing fast; New Orleans was quickly becoming a major port. The massive area of Louisiana was rapidly adopting a French ethos, which was beginning to rival the Spanish west.

  The French, of course, were not the only immigrants. Along the banks of the Mississippi from around 1720, Germans had begun to settle—there is still an area of the Mississippi shore, through St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and St. James Parishes—which is still known today as The German Coast. Their influence stretched even further back into the swamplands where there are areas known as Bayou des Allemandes (German Bayou) and Lac des Allemandes (German Lake). They also settled all the way through the area to a site known as the Arkansas Post (Encores Rouges), now part of the Arkansas National Park. This was a large German settlement, although a census conducted in 1790 showed only roughly 10 pure German families living there. It’s thought that the Germans found living at the Post somewhat intolerable.

  Many of the German families in Louisiana came from the Alsace region on the French/German border, and were largely of farming stock. The majority, however, came from the Rhineland area and from the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. They had settled there under the aegis of the Company of the Indies (Le Banque Generale Privee, also known as the Mississippi Company), a private land-holding bank. When the Company folded in 1731 (as part of the Mississippi Bubble) they took over and became responsible for their own holdings.

  In 1763, a large part of Louisiana was signed over to the other major power in the area—Spain—at the Treaty of Paris, which concluded the Seven Years War in Europe. Much of the territory to the west of the Mississippi was handed to Great Britain following the French- Indian Wars. The Spanish now controlled New Orleans (the Old Quarter of the city still boasts Spanish architecture), and this would prove important when a new wave of French immigrants would arrive. They were Acadians from French Nova Scotia in Canada, who had been driven out of their
homes by invasions by the British and had traveled south hoping to settle in the areas around New Orleans. Led by Joseph Broussard (known as Beausoleil) the refugees had tried to settle on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean before moving to New Orleans and finding it in the hands of the Spanish. More than 200 of them arrived in the city on February 27th, 1765, on board the Santo Domingo and were initially welcomed by the Spanish. However, life in a Spanish-dominated city slowly became intolerable for the independent-minded Acadians, and they gradually withdrew out into the swamps and bayous of the countryside to the southwest, becoming what are known today as “Cajuns” (a corruption of Acadian). There were Spanish settlers too—mainly from the Canary Islands—called Islenos (islanders). They began arriving between 1778 and 1783, and some of them drifted out into the bayou country; many, however, stayed close to New Orleans. The area was now becoming a rich cultural mix of Cajuns, Spanish, and Germans, but there was yet another element that would add to this heady interracial stew.

  In 1719, two French ships—the Duc du Maine and the Aurore—arrived in the port of New Orleans carrying an important cargo. Both were slave ships and they brought the first African slaves into Louisiana. Many of these slaves (and those who would follow them) came from the West African coast, from a region that is now known as Benin. Others came from Angola. Later, slaves would also arrive from what is now Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Senegal—according to French shipping records more than 2,000 slaves were brought from these areas between 1718 and 1750. Trade and administrative links between French Louisiana and Senegambia (the area that is now covered by Senegal and Gambia), facilitated the ready import of slaves. New Orleans became a major slave port on the southern coast supplying slaves to the plantations and great houses further inland. Life on these plantations was not always pleasant, and according to legend, groups of slaves would run away into the swamps where pursuit would be difficult and where they could continue to live without disturbance. It’s also thought that many of these slave groupings mixed with and intermarried with groups of Cajuns, Islenos, and Germans already living there, thus forming an even richer cultural mingling in the bayou regions. There is evidence that all of these cultures merged with each other in various ways; music is one example. One of the staples of Cajun music, for which southwest Louisiana is famous, is the accordion. It came from the Germans who were already living in the bayous before the French arrived. The music consists of two types—the formal French Cajun waltzes and two-steps, which certainly come from the French settlers, and the blues-soaked zydeco (swamp rock), which has all the features of slave music. The two are often intertwined and white musicians often play the frottoir (a vest-like instrument made of corrugated aluminium worn by zydeco musicians in Cajun bands).

  The cultures also shared their differing cuisines. The most famous dish usually associated with the Louisiana cajuns—jambalaya—is thought to be French. Actually, it contains elements of both Spanish and Creole slave dishes. Some have argued that it was an early attempt by the Spanish settlers to make paella without using saffron (which was expensive to import), so tomatoes were used. Others state that the dish is simply a variation of the Jollof dishes (also called Benachin meaning “one pot” in the Wolof language of Gambia) of West Africa brought over to America by the incoming slaves.

  But it was not only music and food that the various peoples shared; it was also their folktales and their belief in supernatural and mysterious things. The French did not have a widespread belief in vampires; in fact, the conventional idea of the vampire played no great part in their folklore. But they did have a great belief in monsters. In the woods of Provence, a giant, human-like ghostly creature known as Le Grand Bissetre hovered over lonely pools, making a mournful cry as it did so. To see this creature, or even to hear its cry echoing through the forest, was a bad omen, as it would guarantee a slow and lingering death, during which all the good was “sucked” from the individual’s body by some mysterious malady. Although this being was not exactly a ghost, it was regarded mainly as a kind of monster that could do physical and mental harm to those who saw it. Le Grand Bissetre has often been dismissed, using such explanations as marsh gasses and swarms of insects carrying sickness in marshy places in the woods, but none of these could satisfactorily take away the actual terror of the legend concerning the thing. This terror was probably also brought to the swamps of the New World. The low-lying boggy land, which lay around New Orleans and which stretched into the swamps, may have rekindled memories of such creatures lurking in the countryside back in France.

  There were also malignant forms of fairies known as fee, which often attacked young children in their cradles, as well as the very old and sick. Belief in them was usually found among the French, but there were tales among some of the Spanish, particularly among those who had lived close to the French borders. These beings sometimes dwelt close to water and were especially vicious, especially during the summer months. There was little protection against them, said the French legends, save the power of the Holy Cross or the prayers of a priest, and they too could draw the breath from a sleeper—especially if that sleeper was an infant—for their own malign purposes. Although many of the fatal activities of the fee have been explained away by a gradual understanding of water-borne diseases, it is easy to see how some of these stories and beliefs could have transferred themselves into the swampy low-lying marsh country of southwest Louisiana and how some elements of them could appear in “vampire tales.”

  The Germans, on the other hand, had a rich tradition of vampire stories and tales of the walking dead. They knew the Undead under a number of names—nachtzehrer (night waster), which had been used mainly in the north of the country, and blutsauger (blood suckers), which was a term used in the south. The nachtzehrer was something of a dangerous nuisance that attacked family members as they slept, and had a penchant for ringing church bells in order to keep the community awake. The blutsauger was one of the dead who sucked the blood of sleepers. The general term of shroud-eater was also used, denoting the way in which a revenant might devour its way out of its winding sheet. It has to be pointed out, however, that not all German vampires simply drank blood. Many caused terrible dreams that were just as deadly, as they left the dreamer wasted and exhausted in the morning and might ultimately result in his or her death. They also spread disease in a community and tormented livestock. Like everywhere else, the types and activities of German vampires varied, wavering between the returning, malignant dead, and outright night-time monsters. Like the Dutch nachtmerrie, these creatures belonged to a class of being known as night visitors, which were not altogether human (or which had never been so). Such “visitors” could take the form of old pagan gods in the guise of Nacht Ruprecht (a strange creature of vegetable origins with a face of twisted roots and vine, always accompanied by a humanoid companion named George Oaf) or Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), a sinister shadowy creature who might steal away the souls of the innocent. Such beings did not necessarily drink blood, but created terror in those who were getting ready to settle down for the night. There were also blood drinkers; in the north of Germany, a goblin-like creature called an alp climbed on the beds of sleepers to draw blood from trailing arms or from exposed areas of flesh. Like other night visitors, the alp also had the power to affect dreams. Alongside this vampiric being was the neuntoter, a type of vampire who was driven away not by garlic (as in the films), but by lemons. Lemon juice, and even the smell of lemons, could repel this night monster. In order to dissuade such night creatures, a rope or a sheet with a number of knots was sometimes left by the bed or along a road leading to the sleeper’s house. The idea was that the night visitor would have to stop and would be forced to unpick the knots in the rope or sheet for most of the night, until the sun came up, and it would have to return to its grave, thus leaving its potential victim alone.

  In the gloomy swamplands of 18th-century Louisiana, however, tales of the night visitors, whether it might be the blood-drinking alp or Nac
ht Ruprecht, must have taken on a kind of immediacy, which may have unsettled the early immigrants into the bayou country. Tales of such beings might have merged with the stories of the French Cajuns and of Le Grand Bissetre.

  According to the Hausa people (the largest ethnic group in coastal West Africa), deep within some of the forests lived the Bori, although, exactly who or what the Bori were is open to question. We must be careful, too, because among the Hausa peoples, Bori is also the name of a spiritual force that can possess an individual, and an entire belief system has been built around it. However, for some of the Hausa, Bori was something physical that lived deep in the forests and usually stayed away from men. Alternately, there was a gathering of evil spirits; a coven of witches or indeed a congregation of the dead. It was also said that they were a different type of people, not exactly human, with their own ways, their own religion, and their own customs. Some traditions held that there were more than one grouping of them, each with its own language, traditions, and “rhythms” (the sound of their drums). And although it was held that Bori, were disembodied spirits, it was also believed that they could possess individuals in order to gain physical shape. The same was true with dead bodies, which they could reanimate if they so chose. It was not normal to see a walking dead man emerge from the forest gloom. This might be one of the Bori and their influence was very strong. Similar to European vampires, they could spread death and sickness wherever they wandered and could sometimes draw healthy, living people back with them to the forest depths.

  In some traditions, for example, the Ashanti from the Ghana region, there were other things that dwelt in the forests, too. These were things made of leaves and roots that were molded into human shape. They could be briefly glimpsed moving among the shadows of tall trees, but were never directly seen in sunlight. Similar to the Bori, they often preferred the night. They were, according to some, the old vegetation and forest gods that had once ruled Africa way back in some former time. Once they had accepted the worship of men, but now for some reason they had turned against them and often sought out ways to do humanity harm. They were entities to be avoided, for they could lead men astray and to their deaths. Some of them were small, some the same height as men, and others still were giants who could crush a man simply by flexing the root-like fibers of one hand. Not all these entities were masses of tangled roots though. Some were like ghosts and could float through the forests on the wind, lighting on their victims from above. Others had leathery wings like bats. And there were those among humankind who leagued with them in return for power—witches and wizards who worked evil against their communities. These “witchy people” or “voodoo hags” were either slaves or masters of the forest entities and worked with them to promote evil. These were the kinds of dark creatures that lurked in the minds of the African slaves as they first came to the swamps of Louisiana. And again, it is easy to see how these beliefs merged with the dark, boggy, forested countryside that they found there.