Vampires and the Fear of Illness
In 1892, a fearful group of villagers in Exeter, Rhode Island, gathered at their town cemetery armed with shovels for a morbid task. Slowly but resolutely, they began to exhume the newly buried corpse of 19-year-old Mercy Brown. Brown had died about two months prior, but there was something about her death that troubled the townsfolk. They believed she was a vampire, intent on draining the life from her ailing brother.
Upon opening the coffin, the villagers discovered Brown's body with a rosy tint to her cheeks. Convinced that she was a vampire, they burned her heart and liver. Afterwards, they fed the ashes to her brother. Nonetheless, he also died, likely from tuberculosis, like his mother and a sister before him.
The exhumation of Mercy Brown was hardly an isolated incident. The villagers of Exeter lived in a time when fear of vampires gripped people. Fanged and bloodthirsty, these supernatural beings have occupied some of the darkest corners of the human imagination for centuries.
The Roots of Vampire Lore
Since the dawn of human fear of the dark, people have dreaded the unseen monsters that might lurk within it. The history of vampires goes back a long way. Many ancient cultures had myths about vampire-like creatures, although they differed from the legends popular today.
In Mesopotamia, people feared beings called Ekimmu, who could drain people's vitality. Ancient Egyptian lore described Sekhmet, the vengeful daughter of the sun god Re, as having an insatiable bloodlust. Hebrew folklore told of Lilith, believed by some to be Adam's first wife, feeding on her victims. Some stories claimed that Lilith caused men to have erotic dreams, resulting in "wet dreams".
What these beings had in common was that they all drained something vital from people, whether it was vitality, blood, or "seed". In their actions against humanity, these ancient spirits shared attributes with the vampire descriptions that would come later. The modern concept of the vampire, with its fangs, bloodlust, and aversion to sunlight, would not emerge until much later.
Modern Depictions of Vampires
The modern depiction of vampires began to take shape in the Middle Ages. According to PBS, the earliest known vampire reference may come from an Old Russian text written in 1047, which described creatures called "upir". The term "vampire" itself would not appear for centuries, not until 1725.
In that year, terrified villagers in Kisiljevo, Serbia (now part of Romania), appealed to a priest named Frombald for help. They believed that a dead man named Petar Blagojević was causing illness and death throughout their village. Not only did his widow claim to have witnessed him, but nine other villagers all swore that he had lain upon them in the night and strangled them. Within about 24 hours, all had died.
Priest Frombald wrote to his superiors, stating that the villagers knew exactly what they were dealing with: a vampyri, the Serbian word for revenant, or one who returns from the dead. Frombald himself performed an exhumation and found Blagojević's body seemingly fresh and with blood around his mouth. When the villagers insisted on driving a stake through Blagojević's corpse, Frombald reported that a great deal of fresh blood flowed out. News of Frombald's report and similar accounts spread quickly.
Today, we know that the Serbians were not alone in their anti-vampire crusade. Archaeologists have in recent years unearthed vampire gravesites in Poland. There, they found a woman buried with a sickle across her neck and a child with a padlock around its ankle, both dating back to the 17th century. Another mass grave contained decapitated 18th-century and 19th-century vampires with coins in their mouths and bricks weighing down their bodies.
Like the villagers of Kisiljevo, those in Poland may have killed Blagojević a second time after his death to prevent a plague from spreading through their village. The villagers in Poland may have done the same, although it's possible that some of the so-called vampires in these cases were simply social outcasts.
Indeed, scholars suspect that many of the ideas people have about vampires today stem from misunderstandings about disease and how it spread.
Vampires and the Spread of Disease
In the cases of Blagojević and Brown, vampires were the scapegoats when illness struck. However, vampires also came to embody the symptoms of disease, which in turn became telltale signs of vampirism in the minds of many.
Rabies is one example. An 18th-century rabies outbreak in Europe dovetailed with the rise of vampire stories. The disease's symptoms, such as sleeplessness and aversion to light, fit perfectly with the modern concept of vampires as creatures who slept during the day and prowled at night. Furthermore, rabies was spread through animal bites, and people already associated vampires with biting their victims.
Similarly, people suffering from pellagra, a disease caused by eating too much corn, could develop a sensitivity to sunlight. Europeans ate a lot of corn in the 18th century. Likewise, the metabolic disorder porphyria could cause skin blisters when exposed to sunlight, along with hallucinations.
Then there was the plague, which could occasionally cause a person's gums to bleed. The disease spread rapidly and seemed to strike seemingly out of nowhere. Tuberculosis, the disease that the villagers of Exeter feared Mercy Brown carried, could cause sufferers to waste away, cough up blood, and die slowly. To some, it might have seemed as if an unseen force was slowly draining their lives away.
Disease played a major role in shaping early ideas about vampires. Not only did people blame vampires for spreading sickness from the grave, but some scholars believe that the symptoms of disease themselves came to resemble vampires.
Of course, all this might have remained little-known folklore if vampires hadn't found their way into best-selling novels.
Vampires in Literature
In the decades after Blagojević was staked through the heart, vampires began to appear in poetry and prose. German poet Heinrich August Ossenfelder wrote "Der Vampir" in 1748, which tells the tale of a young woman seduced by a vampire.
English poets followed, including John Stagg's "The Vampyre" in 1810 and Lord Byron's "The Giaour" in 1813. John William Polidori's 1819 story "The Vampyre" was perhaps the first prose work of vampire fiction in English. It tells the chilling tale of a suave aristocrat who seduces and drains women of their blood.
Vampire stories exploded in popularity between 1845 and 1847, with the serialization of "Varney the Vampire". It featured several vampire tropes that would become common, such as prominent fangs.
Then, in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula arrived on the scene. Stoker's novel depicted Dracula with sharp teeth, an unnaturally pale complexion, a cruel demeanor, and "a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of". Dracula possessed superhuman strength, cast no shadow, and turned people into vampires by drinking their blood.
He could also transform into a bat. However, Stoker's vampire had weaknesses, including a fear of crucifixes and garlic. Depictions of Count Dracula have varied over the years. Some films portray Dracula as suave and charming; others present him as a terrifying, bloodthirsty fiend. While Stoker was not the first writer to describe vampires, Dracula is the character many people think of when they imagine how vampires look and act.
In all, Dracula was a fictional character, but it's been said that art imitates life. Were there ever any real-life vampires?
The Question of Real Vampires
Did vampires exist? To the villagers who exhumed Mercy Brown and Petar Blagojević, there is no doubt that the answer is yes. But the truth depends on how we define the term vampire.
If a vampire is a living corpse or someone who can transform into a bat, then no, such creatures do not exist. However, violent rulers and mass murderers have existed throughout human history.
The most famous example is the brutal 15th-century ruler of Wallachia (present-day Romania), nicknamed Vlad the Impaler. Also known as Vlad Dracula, he had a taste for blood. He impaled thousands of his enemies, once boasting in a letter that he and his warriors had killed 23,884 Turks. In all, he is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of over 60,000 people.
It's also been said that Vlad Dracula dipped bread in the blood of his enemies and ate it. However, this story is difficult to verify. Some believe that author Bram Stoker based his character Dracula on Vlad Dracula. Scholars have debated this in recent years, and National Geographic maintains that Stoker drew on a variety of sources.
Nonetheless, it is a fact that Stoker came across the name Dracula while reading a historical text. Afterwards, he wrote an important note: "Voivode (Dracula): In Wallachian the name Dracula means devil. Wallachians use the name to mean a cruel man ....".
Later, there have been mass murderers with distinctly vampiric tendencies. Fritz Haarmann, a German serial killer in the early 20th century, was known as the "Vampire of Hanover". He earned that nickname because he killed some of his victims by biting through their windpipes. He referred to these as "love bites".
Summary
Vampires have been a part of human folklore for centuries, their image evolving from fearsome creatures of the night to romantic figures of mystery and allure. From ancient myths to modern media, vampires continue to captivate audiences with their blend of danger, romance, and the supernatural. Their enduring popularity speaks to our deep-seated fascination with the unknown, the forbidden, and the power of transformation.