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Vampire

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Myths

   Philip Burne-Jones, The Vampire, 1897
   Enlarge
   Philip Burne-Jones, The Vampire, 1897

          This article deals with vampires in folklore and legends. For
          treatments of the vampire legend in fiction, see vampire
          fiction. For the real bats that subsist on blood (though rarely
          human blood), see vampire bat. For other uses of the term
          vampire, see Vampire (disambiguation).

   Vampires (archaic spelling: vampyres) are mythological or folkloric
   creatures, typically held to be the re-animated corpses of human beings
   and said to subsist on human and/or animal blood ( hematophagy). They
   are also the frequent subject of cinema and fiction, albeit fictional
   vampires have acquired a set of traits distinct from those of folkloric
   vampires (see Traits of vampires in fiction). In folklore, the term
   usually refers to the blood-sucking undead of Eastern European legends,
   but it is often extended to cover similar legendary creatures in other
   regions and cultures. Vampire characteristics vary widely between
   different traditions. Some cultures have stories of non-human vampires,
   such as animals like bats, dogs, and spiders.

   Vampirism is the practice of drinking blood from a person/animal. In
   folklore and popular culture, the term generally refers to a belief
   that one can gain supernatural powers by drinking human blood. The
   historical practice of vampirism can generally be considered a more
   specific and less commonly occurring form of cannibalism. The
   consumption of another's blood (and/or flesh) has been used as a tactic
   of psychological warfare intended to terrorize the enemy, and it can be
   used to reflect various spiritual beliefs.

   In zoology and botany, the term vampirism is used to refer to leeches,
   mosquitos, mistletoe, vampire bats, and other organisms that prey upon
   the bodily fluids of other creatures. This term also applies to
   legendary animals of the same nature, including the chupacabra.

Etymology

   The English word vampire was borrowed (perhaps via French vampire) from
   German Vampir, in turn borrowed in early 18th century from Serbian
   вампир/vampir, or, according to some sources, from Hungarian vámpír.
   The Serbian and Hungarian forms have parallels in virtually all Slavic
   languages. The Bosnian Lampir which was the name of the oldest recorded
   vampire Meho Lampir.: Bulgarian вампир (vampir), вапир (vapir) or въпир
   (vəpir), Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz and (perhaps East
   Slavic-influenced) upiór, Russian упырь (upyr' ), Belarussian упiр
   (upyr), Ukrainian упирь (upir' ), from Old Russian упирь (upir' ). The
   etymology is uncertain. Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are
   *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь. The Slavic word might, like its possible Russian
   cognate netopyr' ("bat"), come from the Proto-Indo-European root for
   "to fly". Another theory has it that the Slavic word comes from a
   Turkic word denoting an evil supernatural entity (cf. Kazan Tatar ubyr
   "witch"). This theory has now become obsolete. The word Upir as a term
   for vampire is found for the first time in written form in 1047 in a
   letter to a Novgorodian prince referring to him as 'Upir Lichyj'
   (Wicked Vampire).

Vampire analogies in ancient cultures

   Tales of the dead craving blood are found in nearly every culture
   around the world, including some of the most ancient ones. Vampire-like
   spirits called the Lilu are mentioned in early Babylonian demonology,
   and the bloodsucking Akhkharu even earlier in the Sumerian mythology.
   These female demons were said to roam during the hours of darkness,
   hunting and killing newborn babies and pregnant women. One of these
   demons, named Lilitu, was later adapted into Jewish demonology as
   Lilith.

   In India, tales of the Vetalas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses,
   are found in old Sanskrit folklore. A prominent story tells of King
   Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive Vetala. The
   stories of the Vetala have been compiled in the book Baital Pachisi.
   The vetala is an undead, who like the bat associated with modern day
   vampire, is associated with hanging upside down on trees found in
   cremation grounds and cemeteries.

   The hopping corpse is an equivalent of the vampire in Chinese
   tradition; however, it consumes the victim's life essence ( qì) rather
   than blood.

   The Ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet in one myth became full of
   bloodlust after slaughtering humans and was only sated after drinking
   alcohol colored as blood.

   In Homer's Odyssey, the shades that Odysseus meets on his journey to
   the underworld are lured to the blood of freshly sacrificed rams, a
   fact that Odysseus uses to his advantage to summon the shade of
   Tiresias.

   The strix, a nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood is
   mentioned in Roman tales. The Romanian word for vampires, strigoi, is
   derived from the word, and so is the name of the Albanian Shtriga, but
   the myths about those creatures show mainly Slavic influence.

   As an example of the existence and prominence of similar legends at
   later times, it can be noted that 12th century English historians and
   chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of
   revenants that arguably bear some resemblance to East European
   vampires.

   The vampire myth as we know it is most strongly rooted in East European
   and above all Slavic folklore (dealt with more thoroughly in the next
   section), where vampires were revenants accused of killing people,
   often by drinking blood, but also by throttling, or sitting on them and
   preventing breathing. A vampire could be destroyed by cutting off its
   head, by driving a wooden stake into its heart, or by burning the
   corpse.

Folk beliefs in vampires

   It seems that until the 19th century, vampires in Europe were thought
   to be hideous monsters from the grave. They were usually believed to
   rise from the bodies of suicide victims, criminals, or evil sorcerers,
   though in some cases an initial vampire thus "born of sin" could pass
   his vampirism onto his innocent victims. In other cases, however, a
   victim of a cruel, untimely, or violent death was susceptible to
   becoming a vampire. Most of Romanian vampire folk beliefs (except
   Strigoi) and European vampire stories have Slavic origins.
   Vampyren "The Vampire", by Edvard Munch
   Enlarge
   Vampyren "The Vampire", by Edvard Munch

Slavic vampires

   In Slavic beliefs, causes of vampirism included being born with a caul,
   teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, "irregular" death,
   excommunication, and improper burial rituals. Preventive measures
   included placing a crucifix in the coffin, placing blocks under the
   chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to
   coffin walls for the same reason, putting sawdust in the coffin
   (vampire awakens in the evening and must count each grain of sawdust,
   which takes up the entire evening, so he will die when at dawn) or
   piercing the body with thorns or stakes. In the case of stakes, the
   general idea was to pierce through the vampire and into the ground
   below, pinning the body down. Certain people would bury those believed
   to be potential vampires with scythes above their necks, so the dead
   would decapitate themselves as they rose.

   Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighbourhood included death
   of cattle, sheep, relatives, or neighbours, an exhumed body being in a
   lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, a body
   swelled up like a drum, or blood on the mouth coupled with a ruddy
   complexion.

   Vampires, like other Slavic legendary monsters, were afraid of garlic
   and liked counting grain, sawdust, etc. Vampires could be destroyed by
   staking, decapitation (the Kashubs placed the head between the feet),
   burning, repeating the funeral service, sprinkling holy water on the
   body, or exorcism.

   The most famous Serbian vampire was Sava Savanovic, famous from a
   folklore-inspired novel of Milovan Glišić.

   In the Old Russian anti- pagan work Word of Saint Grigoriy (written in
   the 11th-12th century), it is claimed that polytheistic Russians made
   sacrifices to vampires.

Romanian vampires

   Tales of vampiric entities were also found among the ancient Romans and
   the Romanized inhabitants of eastern Europe, Romanians (known as Vlachs
   in historical context). Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so
   it is not surprising that Romanian and Slavic vampires are similar.
   Romanian vampires are called Strigoi, based on the ancient Greek term
   strix for screech owl, which also came to mean demon or witch.

   There are different types of Strigoi. Strigoi vii are live witches who
   will become vampires after death. They can send out their souls at
   night to meet with other witches or with Strigoi i, which are
   reanimated bodies that return to suck the blood of family, livestock,
   and neighbours. Other types of vampires in Romanian folklore include
   Moroi and Pricolici.

   A person born with a caul, extra nipple, extra hair, born too early,
   black cat crossed the mother's path, born with a tail, born out of
   wedlock, one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was
   doomed to become a vampire, as was the seventh child of the same sex in
   a family, the child of a pregnant woman who did not eat salt or who was
   looked at by a vampire or a witch. Moreover, being bitten by vampire
   meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.

   The Vârcolac, which is sometimes mentioned in Romanian folklore, was
   more closely related to a mythological wolf that could devour the sun
   and moon (similar to Skoll and Hati in Norse mythology), and later
   became connected with werewolves rather than vampires. (A person
   afflicted with lycanthropy could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.)

   The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and
   livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with
   witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of St George's Day
   ( April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar), the night when all forms
   of evil were supposed to be abroad. St George's Day is still celebrated
   in Europe.

   A vampire in the grave could be discerned by holes in the earth, an
   undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner
   of the coffin. Living vampires were identified by distributing garlic
   in church and seeing who did not eat it.

   Graves were often opened three years after the death of a child, five
   years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death
   of an adult to check for vampirism.

   Measures to prevent a person from becoming a vampire included removing
   the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any
   of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals
   from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in
   the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle,
   especially on St George's and St Andrew's day.

   To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body, followed by
   decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century, one
   would also shoot a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the
   body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and given
   to family members as a cure.

Roma vampire beliefs

   Even today, Roma frequently feature in vampire fiction and film, no
   doubt influenced by Bram Stoker's book, Dracula, in which the Szgany
   Roma served Dracula, carrying his boxes of earth and guarding him.

   Traditional Romani beliefs include the idea that the dead soul enters a
   world similar to ours except that there is no death. The soul stays
   around the body and sometimes wants to come back. The Roma legends of
   the living dead added to and enriched the vampire legends of Hungary,
   Romania, and Slavic lands.

   The ancient home of the Roma, India, has many vampire figures. The Bhut
   or Prét is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wanders
   around animating dead bodies at night and attacks the living like a
   ghoul. In northern India could be found the BrahmarākŞhasa, a
   vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull
   from which it drank blood. Vetala and pishacha are some other creatures
   who resemble vampires in some form. Since Hinduism believes in
   reincarnation of the soul after death, it is supposed that upon leading
   an unholy or immoral life, sin or suicide, the soul reincarnates into
   such kinds of evil spirits. This kind of reincarnation does not arise
   out of birth from a womb, etc, but is achieved directly, and such evil
   spirits' fate is pre-determined as to how they shall achieve liberation
   from that yoni, and re-enter the world of mortal flesh through next
   incarnation.

   The most famous Indian deity associated with blood drinking is Kali,
   who has fangs, wears a garland of corpses or skulls and has four arms.
   Her temples are near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga
   battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop
   of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby
   winning the battle and killing Raktabija.

   Sara, or the Black Goddess, is the form in which Kali survived among
   Roma. Some Roma have a belief that the three Marys from the New
   Testament went to France and baptised a gypsy called Sara. They still
   hold a ceremony each May 24 in the French village where this is
   supposed to have occurred. Some refer to their Black Goddess as "Black
   Cally" or "Black Kali".

   One form of vampire in Romani folklore is called a mullo (one who is
   dead). This vampire is believed to return and do malicious things
   and/or suck the blood of a person (usually a relative who had caused
   their death, or hadn't properly observed the burial ceremonies, or who
   kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was
   proper).

   Female vampires could return, lead a normal life and even marry but
   would exhaust the husband.

   Anyone who had a hideous appearance, was missing a finger, or had
   appendages similar to those of an animal, etc., was believed to be a
   vampire. If a person died unseen, he would become a vampire; likewise
   if a corpse swelled before burial. Plants or dogs, cats, or even
   agricultural tools could become vampires. Pumpkins or melons kept in
   the house too long would start to move, make noises or show blood. (See
   the article on vampire watermelons.)

   To get rid of a vampire people would hire a Dhampir (the son of a
   vampire and his widow) or a Moroi to detect the vampire. To ward off
   vampires, Gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and
   placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the
   fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the
   corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. Further
   measures included driving stakes into the grave, pouring boiling water
   over it, decapitating the corpse, or burning it.

   According to the late Serbian ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović, Roma
   people in Kosovo believed that vampires were invisible to most people.
   However, they could be seen "by a twin brother and sister born on a
   Saturday who wear their drawers and shirts inside out." Likewise, a
   settlement could be protected from a vampire "by finding a twin brother
   and sister born on a Saturday and making them wear their shirts and
   drawers inside out (cf previous section). This pair could see the
   vampire out of doors at night, but immediately after it saw them it
   would have to flee, head over heels."

Some common traits of vampires in folklore

   It is difficult to make a unified description of the folkloric vampire,
   because its properties vary widely between different cultures.
     * The appearance of the European folkloric vampire contained mostly
       features by which one was supposed to tell a vampiric corpse from a
       normal one, when the grave of a suspected vampire was opened. The
       vampire has a "healthy" appearance and ruddy skin, he is often
       plump, his nails and hair have grown and, above all, he/she is not
       in the least decomposed.
     * The most usual ways to destroy the vampire are driving a wooden
       stake through the heart, decapitation, and incinerating the body
       completely. Ways to prevent a suspected vampire from rising from
       the grave in the first place include burying it upside-down,
       severing the tendons at the knees, or placing poppy seeds on the
       ground at the gravesite of a presumed vampire in order to keep the
       vampire occupied all night counting. Chinese narratives about
       vampires also state that if a vampire comes across a sack of rice,
       s/he will have to count all of the grains. There are similar myths
       recorded on the Indian Subcontinent. South American tales of
       witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings
       have a similar aspect to it.
     * apotropaics, i.e. objects intended to inhibit or ward off vampires
       (as well as other evil supernatural creatures), include garlic
       (confined mostly to European legends), a branch of wild rose, the
       hawthorn plant, and all things sacred (e.g., holy water, a
       crucifix, a rosary, a star of David) or an Aloe vera plant hung
       backwards behind the door or near it, in South American
       superstition. This weakness on the part of the vampire varies
       depending on the tale. In stories of other regions, other plants of
       holy or mystical properties sometimes have similar effects. In
       Eastern vampiric legends, vampires are often similarly warded by
       holy devices such as Shintō seals.
     * Vampires are sometimes considered to be shape-shifters not limited
       to the common bat stereotype put out by cartoons and movies.
       Rather, a multitude of animals are available such as wolves and
       spiders, and many more.
     * Vampires in European folklore are said to cast no shadow and have
       no reflection. This may be tied to folklore regarding the vampire's
       lack of a soul.
     * Some traditions hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless he
       or she is invited in.
     * They cannot enter a church or holy place. They are servants of the
       devil.

Eighteenth century vampire controversy

   During the 18th century there was a major vampire scare in Eastern
   Europe. Even government officials frequently got dragged into the
   hunting and staking of vampires.

   It all started with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East
   Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1725 to 1734. Two
   famous cases involved Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole. As the story
   goes, Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of
   times after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he
   was found dead the next day. Soon Plogojowitz returned and attacked
   some neighbours who died from loss of blood.

   In the other famous case, Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who
   had allegedly been attacked by a vampire years before, died while
   haying. After his death, people began to die, and it was believed by
   everyone that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours.

   These two incidents were extremely well documented. Government
   officials examined the cases and the bodies, wrote them up in reports,
   and books were published afterwards of the Paole case and distributed
   around Europe. The controversy raged for a generation. The problem was
   exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-claimed vampire attacks, with
   locals digging up bodies. Many scholars said vampires did not exist,
   and attributed reports to premature burial, or rabies. Nonetheless, Dom
   Augustine Calmet, a well-respected French theologian and scholar, put
   together a carefully thought out treatise in 1746, which was at least
   ambiguous concerning the existence of vampires, if not admitting it
   explicitly. He amassed reports of vampire incidents and numerous
   readers, including both a critical Voltaire and supportive
   demonologists, interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires
   exist. According to some recent research, and judging from the second
   edition of the work in 1751, Calmet was actually somewhat sceptical
   towards the vampire concept as a whole. He did acknowledge that parts
   of the reports, such as the preservation of corpses, might be true.
   Whatever his personal convictions were, Calmet's apparent support for
   vampire belief had considerable influence on other scholars at the
   time.

   Eventually, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal
   physician, Gerhard van Swieten, to investigate. He concluded that
   vampires do not exist, and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the
   opening of graves and desecration of bodies. This was the end of the
   vampire epidemics. By then, though, many knew about vampires, and soon
   authors would adopt and adapt the concept of vampire, making it known
   to the general public.

New England

   During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was
   widespread in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and
   Eastern Connecticut. In this region there are many documented cases of
   families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the
   belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for sickness
   and death in the family (although the word "vampire" was never used to
   describe him/her). The deadly tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was
   known at the time, was believed to be caused by nightly visitations on
   the part of a dead family member (who had died of consumption
   him/herself). The most famous (and latest recorded) case is that of
   nineteen year old Mercy Brown who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892.
   Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb
   two months after her death. Her heart was cut out then burnt to ashes.
   An account of this incident was found among the papers of Bram Stoker
   and the story closely resembles the events in his classic novel,
   Dracula.

Modern belief in vampires

   Belief in vampires persists to this day. While some cultures preserve
   their original traditions about the undead, most modern-day believers
   are more influenced by the fictional image of the vampire as it occurs
   in films and literature.

   In the 1970s, there were rumours (spread by the local press) that a
   vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters
   flocked in large numbers in the cemetery. Several books have been
   written about the case, notably by Sean Manchester, a local man who was
   among the first to suggest the existence of the " Highgate Vampire" and
   who later claimed to have exorcised and destroyed a whole nest of
   vampires in the area.

   In the modern folklore of Puerto Rico and Mexico, the chupacabra
   (goat-sucker) is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or
   drinks the blood of domesticated animals, leading some to consider it a
   kind of vampire. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated
   with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the
   mid-1990s.

   During late 2002 and early 2003, hysteria about alleged attacks of
   vampires swept through the African country of Malawi. Mobs stoned one
   individual to death and attacked at least four others, including
   Governor Eric Chiwaya, based on the belief that the government was
   colluding with vampires.

   In Romania during February of 2004, several relatives of the late Toma
   Petre feared that he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore
   out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to
   drink it.

   In January 2005, rumors began to circulate that an attacker had bitten
   a number of people in Birmingham, England, fueling concerns about a
   vampire roaming the streets. However, local police stated that no such
   crime had been reported. This case appears to be an urban legend.

   In 2006, Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi published a piece that uses
   geometric progression to attempt to disprove the feeding habits of
   vampires, stating that, if each vampire's nourishment depended on
   making even one other person a vampire, it would only be a matter of
   years before the Earth's entire population was among the undead or
   vampires died out (compare matrix scheme). However, this notion that a
   vampire's victims must themselves become vampires does not appear in
   all vampire folklore, and is not universally accepted by modern vampire
   believers.

Natural phenomena that propagate the belief in vampires

Pathology and vampirism

   Folkloric vampirism has typically been associated with a series of
   deaths due to unindentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within
   the same family or the same small community. The " epidemic pattern" is
   obvious in the classical cases of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole,
   and even more so in the case of Mercy Brown and in the vampire beliefs
   of New England generally, where a specific disease, tuberculosis, was
   associated with outbreaks of vampirism (see above).

   In his book, De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis (1725), Michaël Ranft
   makes a first attempt to explain folk's belief in vampires in a natural
   way. He says that, in the event of the death of every villager, some
   other person or people - much probably a person related to the first
   dead - who saw or touched the corpse, would eventually die either of
   some disease related to exposure to the corpse or of a frenetic
   delirium caused by the panic of only seeing the corpse. These dying
   people would say that the dead man had appeared to them and tortured
   them in many ways. The other people in the village would exhume the
   corpse to see what it had been doing. He gives the following
   explanation when talking about the case of Peter Plogojowitz: "This
   brave man perished by a sudden or violent death. This death, whatever
   it is, can provoke in the survivors the visions they had after his
   death. 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."

   Some modern scholars have argued that vampire stories may have been
   influenced by a rare illness called porphyria. The disease is a blood
   disorder that disrupts the production of heme. People with extreme but
   rare cases of this hereditary disease can be so sensitive to sunlight
   that they can get a sunburn through heavy cloud cover, requiring them
   to avoid sunlight altogether. However, it should be noted that the idea
   that vampires are harmed by sunlight derives primarily from the motion
   picture industry, and is not found in traditional folklore.

   Certain forms of porphyria are associated with neurological symptoms,
   which can create psychiatric disorders. However, suggestions that
   porphyria sufferers crave the heme in human blood, or that the
   consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based on
   a severe misunderstanding of the disease. There is no evidence to
   suggest that porphyria had anything to do with the development of
   vampire folklore.

   Another disease that has been linked with vampire folklore is rabies.
   People suffering from this disease would avoid sunlight and looking
   into mirrors and would froth at the mouth. This froth could sometimes
   be red in colour and resemble blood. However, like porphyria, there is
   little evidence to suggest that rabies was the inspiration for the
   original vampire legends.

   Some psychologists in modern times recognize a disorder called clinical
   vampirism (or Renfield Syndrome, from Dracula's insect-eating henchman,
   Renfield, in the novel by Bram Stoker) in which the victim is obsessed
   with drinking blood, either from animals or humans.

   There have been a number of murderers who performed seemingly vampiric
   rituals upon their victims. Serial killers Peter Kurten and Richard
   Trenton Chase were both called "vampires"; in the tabloids after they
   were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered.

Finding "vampires" in graves

   When the coffin of an alleged vampire was opened, people sometimes
   found that the cadaver did not look as they thought a normal corpse
   should. This was often taken to be evidence of vampirism. However,
   corpses decompose at different speeds depending on temperature and soil
   composition, and some of the signs of decomposition are not widely
   known. This has led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead
   body had not decomposed at all, or, ironically, to interpret signs of
   decomposition as signs of continued life.

   Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso and
   blood tries to escape the body. This causes the body to look "plump",
   "well-fed" and "ruddy" - changes that are all the more striking if the
   person was pale or thin in life. In the Arnold Paole case, an old
   woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbours to look more plump
   and healthy than she had ever looked in life. It should be noted that
   folkloric accounts almost universally represent the alleged vampire as
   having ruddy or dark skin, not the pale skin of vampires in literature
   and film. Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition.

   Blood can often be seen emanating from nose and mouth of a decomposing
   corpse, which could give the impression that the corpse was a vampire
   who had recently been drinking blood. The staking of a swollen,
   decomposing body could cause the body to bleed and also force the
   accumulated gases to escape the body. This could produce a groan when
   the gases moved past the vocal chords, or a sound reminiscent of flatus
   when they passed through the anus. The official reporting on the Peter
   Plogojowitz case speaks of "other wild signs which I pass by out of
   high respect".

   After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the
   roots of the hair, nails, and teeth, even teeth that were concealed in
   the jaw. This can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth
   have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels
   away, as reported in the Plogojowitz case - the dermis and nail beds
   emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".
   Finally, decomposition also causes the body to shift or contort itself,
   adding to the illusion that the corpse has been active after death.

Vampire bats

   Bats have become an integral part of the traditional vampire only
   recently, although many cultures have stories about them. In Europe,
   bats and owls were long associated with the supernatural, mainly
   because they were night creatures. Conversely, the Gypsies thought them
   lucky and wore charms made of bat bones. In English heraldic tradition,
   a bat means "Awareness of the powers of darkness and chaos". In South
   America, Camazotz was a bat god of the caves living in the Bathouse of
   the Underworld. The three species of actual vampire bats are all
   endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they
   had any Old World relatives within human memory. It is therefore
   extremely unlikely that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted
   presentation or memory of the bat. During the 16th century the Spanish
   conquistadors first came into contact with vampire bats and recognized
   the similarity between the feeding habits of the bats and those of
   their legendary vampires. The bats were named after the folkloric
   vampire rather than vice versa; the Oxford English Dictionary records
   the folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until
   1774. It wasn't long before vampire bats were adapted into fictional
   tales, and they have become one of the more important vampire
   associations in popular culture.

Vampires in fiction and popular culture

   Count Orlock, a well-known example of vampire fiction, from the 1922
   film Nosferatu.
   Enlarge
   Count Orlock, a well-known example of vampire fiction, from the 1922
   film Nosferatu.

   Lord Byron arguably introduced the vampire theme to Western literature
   in his epic poem The Giaour (1813), but it was John Polidori who
   authored the first "true" vampire story called The Vampyre. Polidori
   was the personal physician of Lord Byron and the vampire of the story,
   Lord Ruthven, is based partly on him — making the character the first
   of our now familiar romantic vampires. The "ghost story competition"
   that spawned this piece was the same competition that motivated Mary
   Shelley to write her novel Frankenstein, another archetypal monster
   story.

   Other examples of early vampire stories are the unfinished poem
   Christabel and Sheridan LeFanu's lesbian vampire story, Carmilla.

   Bram Stoker's Dracula has been the definitive description of the
   vampire in popular fiction for the last century. Its portrayal of
   vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession), with its
   undertones of sex, blood, and death, struck a chord in a Victorian
   Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. Stoker's writings
   are also adapted in many later works. Vampires have proved to be a rich
   subject for the film industry. In modern popular culture, Anne Rice's
   book series, Konami's Castlevania video game titles, and television
   series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been especially successful
   and influential. Numerous role-playing games featuring vampires exist.
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