The concept of people coming back from the dead is
quite common in various cultures, vampires also rise back from the dead but not
as normal human beings, they come with an unusual hunger for blood. Their
history is as old as 11-century B.C, the general view of vampires in the eyes
of people is that they are blood-sucking monsters and demons, ancient tales
also depict vampires as monsters and murderers but the modern day movies and
television shows depict vampires not as monsters who kill anyone coming in
their way, but as normal people who don’t wreak havoc wherever they set foot
(The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Twilight Series). They don’t reveal their
identities to their human friends and acquaintances because who would want to
be friends with creatures who drain people out of blood? Vampires die when they
are exposed to sunlight, garlic was also used in ancient times to get rid of
vampires. In many ancient cultures vampires were just demon spirits who left
their bodies, they don’t die and live for centuries, in many cultures vampires
can be killed by stabbing them with a wooden stake through the heart, vampires
grow fangs, they have long nails, pale skin, can read minds and can hear
conversations from far away.
The most famous vampire in the vampire literature is
of course Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. This novel was published in 1897 to positive
reviews, the character of
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| Count Dracula |
Count Dracula is inspired by the 14th-century
Romanian general,Vlad the Impaler who was also known as Dracula. But the
concept of blood sucking demons was known to many cultures long before 1897:
Mesopotamian, Icelandic, Romanian, Serbian, Russian, Hebrew, Ancient Greeks and
Romans too. Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, North East England is famous for
its own vampire. A creature caused destruction in the castle, an earlier
version of the tale says that it was a revenant but later in 12th-century
William de Newburgh elaborated the tale and added more vampire-like features to
the creature. However it is still unknown whether the creature who caused
mayhem in Alnwick Castle was a vampire, the point is that the concept of
vampire was quite known to people in 11th or 10th
centuries.
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| Alnwick Castle |
One of the most well-known case of vampires was of
Petar Blagojevich in the 1700s in Kisiljevo, a village in north-east Serbia.
Petar died in 1725 but rose back from the dead as a vampire. Within eight days
of Petar’s return nine people were killed, the victims on their death beds
claimed that Petar had throttled them. According to some sources Petar went to
his house and asked his son for food, when he refused, Petar bit his neck,
drank his blood and murdered him. The villagers then decided to stake Petar’s
body and then burned it, another case similar to that of Petar was of Arnold
Paole’s also in the 1700s. According to the Slavic mythology, people become
vampires due to unnatural deaths such as suicide, improper burial rituals,
excommunication and when animals jump or birds fly over corpses or empty graves
of the deceased.
Vampires are also mentioned in Asian cultures. In the
Filipino mythology, Mandurugo or the ‘blood-sucker’ takes form of a pretty girl
by day and grows wings and a tongue by night, it devours human entrails and
even unborn babies.
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| Mandurugo |
The legend of Jiang Shi is famous in the Chinese culture
also known as the Chinese ‘hopping’ vampire. Jiang Shi is a stiff corpse which
moves around by hopping and arms outstretched. The Jiang Shi kills people to
absorb their ‘qi’ or ‘life force’.
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| Jiang Shi or Chinese 'hopping' vampire. |
Vampires have been part of many cultures in different
forms for millennia. Television shows such as the The Vampire Diaries, The
Originals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies and novels such as the Twilight
series show vampires as normal human beings by day and search for blood by night but generally they are known
as I mentioned above; blood-sucking monsters and demons. And BEWARE! There
might be a vampire right behind you!!!
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