Fallen Angels . . . and Spirits of the Dark

by Robert Masello

  “His face was a strong — a very strong — aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose . . . The mouth . . . was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. . . .

  “I could not but notice that they [his hands] were rather coarse — broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. . . . There was a strange stillness over everything; but as I listened I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count’s eyes gleamed, and he said:

  “Listen to them — the children of the night! What music they make!”

  THE MAKING OF A VAMPIRE

  Most vampires, according to legend or lore, are made so by other vampires: once bitten, they are themselves infected with the terrible contagion. They are at once invested with eternal life, and burdened with the blood-lust needed to sustain it. This begs the question . . . where does the chain of blood begin?

  There are many theories. According to one, vampires are the reanimated corpses of anyone who died in a state of sin, unabsolved by the Church and consequently barred from salvation. In Slavic countries, anyone who led a life of wickedness and cruelty, or who practiced in secret the Black Arts, was a likely candidate; so were those who had committed suicide, perjury, or who had died under a curse by their own parents. Excommunicants were, of course, included. In other countries, such as Sicily and Greece, vampires were also recruited from the ranks of the unavenged dead: anyone who had been murdered could rise up as a vampire to seek redress himself.

  Another old superstition, which made the rounds from Romania to China, was that anyone whose coffin before burial was jumped over by a cat (or dog, hen, or virtually any other animal) was turned into a vampire. As a result, coffins were carefully guarded while they were still above ground. And if the unthinkable should happen, and a bird should suddenly fly directly over it, the lid was pried open again and a sprig of hawthorn, or a clove of garlic, was placed inside; both plants were thought to have sacred or virtuous power. In the Balkans, a piece of iron was put into the corpse’s hand. Evil things supposedly shunned cold iron just as they did silver.

  In some regions, vampires were thought to be born that way. Any baby who came into the world with teeth was suspect; so was any child born with a pronounced birthmark, or harelip, which was likened to a vampire’s snarl. But more than any one thing in particular, it was the appearance of deformity, or merely difference, that aroused suspicion — in Mediterranean countries anyone with red hair, blue eyes, or an unusually pale complexion was watched carefully for other vampiric signs.

  VAMPIRE POWERS

  Even though the vampire was doomed to wander the Earth each night, satisfying a burning thirst, he was provided with a host of uncanny abilities to help him in the quest.

  First among them was the ability to shed his corporeal form at will. The vampire buried in the earth didn’t actually have to burrow up, like a mole, through six feet of dirt every time he left his grave; it was thought that he could simply filter up, through tiny holes, and coalesce, as it were, topside. He could become, if he chose, a wolf, bat, cat, rat, or even a fine mist. In one guise or another, he could scale any wall, climb through any window, or even seep through any keyhole. Unless the proper precautions were taken, no place was safe.

  And no place was more dangerous than home. The vampire had a strong inclination to visit his own family members first — husbands their wives, wives their husbands. Young women went in search of their betrothed. And all vampires, male and female alike, shared a taste for young, healthy, and attractive prey. In theory, the blood of the young was richer and more restorative.

  The vampire could also command many noxious and nocturnal creatures to do his will; Dracula kept a pack of wolves to protect his castle and warn off trespassers. And he could cast a kind of hypnotic spell that rendered his human victims not only unable to resist, but unable the next day to remember the attack at all. (This way the vampire could feed on one person at a time for several days or, if the person lived that long, weeks. The victim only knew he was suffering from bad dreams, and a kind of unshakable lassitude.)

  And then there was the gift — or curse — of immortality. So long as the vampire was undisturbed, his grave undiscovered, and his blood supply renewable, he could go on feeding forever.

  VAMPIRE PERILS

  The sun was, by some accounts, the vampire’s mortal enemy. To be caught in the sun’s rays was to be incinerated. By other accounts, it was chiefly an inconvenience; the vampire was entitled to be out and about only during the nocturnal hours, and during the day he was duty bound to return to his own grave or crypt. This was perhaps the paramount restriction on vampire behavior, but there were many other rules to which the vampire also had to adhere.

  The vampire could not abide the smell of garlic, nor could he tolerate a crucifix or other holy relic. He could not cast a reflection — and as a result steered clear of mirrors — nor could he, by some accounts, cross running water. Capturing him was next to impossible . . . but killing him was not.

  First, of course, the vampire had to be tracked to the proper grave. Unless the telltale holes were found in the earth above a grave, all the bodies would have to be dug up in search of the one that showed itself still ruddy and complete. If the vampire had recently fed, according to some authorities, the body would be swollen up like a leech, or the coffin might be awash with blood.

  Another method of finding the vampire’s grave was to set loose a white stallion, one that had never stumbled or been to stud, in the graveyard. The horse, it was said, would step over all but the vampire’s grave.

  Once he was found, there were several ways of dispatching the vampire for good. He could be shot with a consecrated silver bullet, or tied up in his coffin with special knots. But the tried and true method was to drive a wooden stake, with one blow, through his heart. This was usually followed by cutting off the head with a sexton’s spade, then burning the separate parts, including the tainted stake, and distributing the ash to the wind.

  Even then, vampires could prove frustratingly resilient. In the early 1700s, the Hungarian town of Liebava was positively plagued with vampire attacks. At the behest of the Bishop of Olmutz, an investigation was begun. As part of it, one man climbed to the top of the church tower and kept watch over the graveyard. One night he saw a vampire emerge from his tomb, dragging his shroud behind him. As soon as the vampire was out of sight, leaving his shroud draped across a headstone, the man retrieved it and carried it back to the top of the church tower. Hours later the vampire returned, and when he saw that the shroud was missing, he flew into a rage. The man in the tower called down to him, “I have it here! If you want it, you’ll have to climb up.”

  The vampire ran to the ladder and scrambled up the rungs. But when he’d almost come to the top, the man pulled out a hammer and slammed it into the vampire’s head. For a moment the vampire still clung to the ladder; then he lost his grip and plummeted to the ground. The man hurried down after him, and while the vampire lay insensible he cut off his head with an axe. The nocturnal attacks in Liebava ended.

  In the eastern European market town of Kring, in 1672, the vampire was more difficult to dispatch. A man named George Grando died, and was buried by a monk of St. Paul. But when the monk went to Grando’s house to console his widow, he saw the spectral figure of Grando himself sitting behind the door. The monk fled, along with everyone else in the
house. But the figure was seen again, haunting the streets at night, tapping lightly on doors where it would not wait for an answer. It was soon noticed that at these same houses, death soon followed. And Grando’s widow insisted that his spirit came back to her at night, throwing her into a deep sleep and sucking her blood.

  The chief magistrate decided it was time to look into the matter. With a party of townsmen, he went to the graveyard, dug up the coffin, and opened it. Inside, they found Grando looking healthy and sound. He even had a slight smile on his lips. In shock, the townsmen all ran back to the town, and the magistrate had to round them up all over again. This time they brought a priest and a thick hawthorn stake, sharpened to a point.

  The priest, taking charge, knelt down beside the corpse and held a crucifix above its eyes: “O vampire, look at this,” he intoned, “here is Jesus Christ who loosed us from the pains of Hell and died for us upon the tree.”

  A tear coursed down the corpse’s cheek, and as the priest continued, more tears appeared. The stake was brought forward, placed on the vampire’s breast, and struck with a powerful blow of a mallet. But rather than piercing the body, the stake rebounded off it! It was struck again, and again it failed to impale the corpse. It was hit again, and again, and again, to no avail, until one of the townsmen grabbed a hatchet, leapt into the grave and hacked off the corpse’s head. Suddenly the head screamed, the limbs of the body convulsed in pain, and the evil spirit vanished forever.

  THE WEREWOLF

  In past centuries, there was perhaps no more terrifying sound to the peasant in his cottage or the farmer on his lands than the howling of a wolf. The wolf was one of man’s most dreaded enemies, a predator with great endurance, strength, and above all cunning. Seminocturnal, silent and sleek, prowling the woods and fields, the wolf was a relentless hunter with a prodigious appetite, and when a pack descended upon a village or farm, there was little that could be done to fend them off.

  So it’s hardly surprising that the werewolf (“were” was Old English for “man”) should be one of the most frightening creatures in the great occult pantheon. Combining the savagery of the wolf with the intellect of a man made for an animal of fearful proportion, and the stories of werewolf transformations and attacks are ancient and many. One of the earliest comes from Petronius’s Satyricon, when one of the guests at a lavish feast was asked to recount a recent adventure he’d had. The story he told was this:

  Niceros, at the time a servant, was in love with a woman named Melissa, the recently widowed wife of an innkeeper. One night, with his own master away on business, Niceros decided to pay her a call and asked a friend of his, a soldier, if he’d like to come along. The soldier agreed, and the two of them set out in the moonlight. After walking several miles, they stopped at a cemetery to rest. Niceros sat on a wall, singing and idly counting up the headstones, but the soldier, without warning, stripped off all his clothes and laid them in a heap by the roadside.

  Then, to Niceros’s mounting astonishment, the soldier went on to urinate in a wide circle around the clothes, just as a wolf might mark his territory. And when he was done, he fell to his knees and was instantly transformed into a wolf. Howling, he ran off into the forest.

  Needless to say, Niceros was terrified. When he went toward the circle, he saw that the man’s clothes had turned to stone. Drawing his sword, he ran all the rest of the way to Melissa’s house.

  When he got there he was panting, exhausted, and white as a ghost. Melissa did her best to calm him down, then said, “If you’d come a bit earlier, at least you could’ve helped us. A wolf got into the grounds and went after the livestock — it was a madhouse out there.” When Niceros asked what happened next, Melissa told him that even though the wolf had gotten away, “one of the slaves put a spear right through his neck.”

  Niceros stayed the night, though his eyes never closed, and the first thing in the morning he set off for home again. On the way, he stopped at the spot where the soldier’s clothes had lain, but all he found there was a bloodstain on the grass. And when he went, with his heart in his mouth, to visit the soldier himself, he found him lying in bed, with a doctor tending to a great bloody gash in his neck. “I realized he was a werewolf,” Niceros said, “and afterwards I couldn’t have taken a bite of bread in his company, not if you killed me for it.”

  FROM MAN TO ANIMAL

  The means by which Niceros’s friend transformed himself — urinating in a circle in the moonlight — was one of the oldest and simplest methods employed to become a werewolf. According to the folklore, there are many others.

  There is, of course, the fail-safe method of petitioning the Devil. After sealing the pact — with the usual renunciation of Christianity, the rebaptism, the offering of a gift, etc. — the would-be werewolf receives the power of changing shape, and sometimes a magic belt or some such item, which must be worn each time he does so. Witches, too, were sometimes said to metamorphose into werewolves at their sabbats. Whole assemblies of them were said to go on rampages across the countryside at night, and according to one old Latvian legend, the Devil himself — in the guise of a wolf — led thousands of them on a twelve-day march one Christmas.

  Behemoth, a demon of great strengths and appetites.

  Being born on Christmas day was not a good idea, either — it was considered an affront to Christ. In Italy, anyone born at the time of the new moon, or who slept outside on a Friday with a full moon in the sky, could become a werewolf. In many countries, it was thought dangerous to drink from a stream where wolves had drunk or to drink rainwater that had collected in a real wolf’s footprint, or, God forbid, to eat a real wolf’s brains. That was really asking for trouble.

  But there were apparently people who did ask for it.

  Anyone wanting to become a werewolf could perform the following ritual, in these easy steps: going to a deserted wood or hilltop on the night of a full moon, the supplicant draws a magic circle on the ground at midnight. (The outer circle is seven feet in diameter, the inner one is three feet.) Inside the circle, he builds a fire under a cauldron, into which he tosses a number of ingredients, including such old standbys as hemlock, opium, henbane, and parsley. He then recites a spell, a few of the lines of which are:

  Wolves, vampires, satyrs, ghosts!

  Elect of all the devilish hosts!

  I pray you send hither,

  Send hither, send hither,

  The great grey shape that makes men shiver!

  Then the supplicant strips naked and smears his body with a special ointment prepared for the occasion. Like the flying ointment witches sometimes used, this one was probably a mixture of things such as belladonna and aconite. (The blood of a dead cat was sometimes recommended, too.) After donning a belt made from the skin of a wolf, the supplicant kneels down by the fire and waits. If he’s done his job right, an evil spirit will appear — anyone from the Devil to one of his minions — to grant the favor of werewolf status. (Why anyone would have made such a request, however, remains a mystery.)

  To turn back into a man, the werewolf has, by most accounts, only to wait until dawn. If that doesn’t do the trick, he can simply reverse parts of the ritual — taking off the wolfskin belt, for instance, or washing off the magic ointment in a running stream. Soon he’s good, or bad, as new again.

  WHAT DID WEREWOLVES DO ALL NIGHT?

  Once transformed, the werewolf could become either wholly a wolf, though an extra large and strong one, or a hybrid — a wolf with a man’s hands, for instance. Either way, he spent the night hours in exclusively wolflike activities: hunting, howling, devouring his prey.

  It was in his choice of prey that the werewolf differed from other members of the pack. The werewolf might pursue the same domestic animals, sheep and cattle and goats, that the other wolves did, but his heart wasn’t really in it — the werewolf preferred human flesh, the younger the better. And given the choice, girls before boys.

  In several famous werewolf cases, the perpetrators all confessed
to the same cravings. Jean Grenier, in seventeenth-century France, proudly announced that he had hunted down and eaten many young girls (and was imprisoned in a monastery for his crimes). Pierre Bourgot, in 1502, claimed that he had broken the neck of a nine-year-old girl and devoured her. (He was executed.) And Peter Stubb, in sixteenth-century Germany, declared that he had made a pact with the Devil. In return for his allegiance, the Devil gave Stubb a wolfskin belt (or “girdle”) which he had only to put on in order to change himself; an English pamphlet, printed in 1590, described him then as “a greedy devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.” Thus transformed, Stubb roamed and ravaged the countryside around Cologne.

  “He would walk up and down,” according to the English account, “and if he could spy either maid, wife, or child that his eyes liked and his heart lusted after [werewolves were also known as rapists], he would wait their issuing out of the city or town, and if he could by any means get them alone, he would in the fields ravish them, and after in his wolfish likeness cruelly murder them.”

  When Stubb was finally captured by a band of men and a pack of baying hounds, he was asked to produce this magic girdle he claimed the Devil had given him. But Stubb explained that he had shed it during the chase; when a concerted search failed to turn it up, the townsmen assumed it must have been reacquired by the Devil. Stubb, who confessed to twenty-five years’ worth of barbarous crimes, was tortured (the skin from his body ripped away with red-hot pincers), beheaded, and then burned. His head was mounted on a pole and displayed outside the town of Bedburg.