Chris Gaskey's Vampires
By...uh...Chris Gaskey (DUH!)

Dedicated to Chris' 12th Grade English Teacher Mrs. Janice McCarty, who gave him a C on this assignment

The word "vampire" more than likely conjures up images of the most common of the incarnations of Bram Stoker's Dracula character: Bela Lugosi's 1931 silver screen portrayal of a tall, dark, and handsome Eastern European aristocrat with a penchant for drinking blood. Modern society's literature, movies, television, video games, etc., have imprinted the Lugosi-esque vampire into the general public's subconscious, causing them to associate all vampires with Universal Studios' interpretation of the Count. Upon closer inspection of the folklore and fiction of many civilizations throughout the world, the vampire is almost always anything but. Herein vampires are discussed, by identification of the different types of these creatures, as well as the examination of different instances of vampirism in fiction throughout the ages, of the physical characteristics of fictional vampires, and of previously popular ways to prevent and combat vampirism.

Many locales are considered to be the location of origin for vampires. Most believe that the first civilizations--the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians--are the cradle of vampiric lore, while others hold that areas such as Indo-China, Russia, and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe are the originators. Whatever the case may be, the mythos held an important role in the early religions and cults of the ancient world. One of the vital beliefs that were a part of these early theisms was that of the benefactors of life, which were widely recognized as the God(s), food, and blood; as a result, vampires were able to thrive within their mythology. By tradition, vampires came from the ground, were harmed by sunlight and fire, and could control parts of nature, including animals and the weather. Over the following millennia, the image of the vampire changed a great deal, which was largely a result of the "Romantic" literary period. During this time, vampires were lifted out of their primitive and rural world and integrated into the common, civilized settings prevalent at the time; consequently, they assimilated into the intellectual, economic, and political aspects of the society in which they were placed. After the Romantic period passed, vampires were found to have high adaptability to the times, and have been a part of the pop culture of many societies since.

The influence of vampires in the cultures of the world is prevalent in the fact that there are many different words for "vampire": vampir & vampyre [alternate spellings], wempti [Lithuania], uber [Turkey], upyr [Russia], upior [Poland], ustrel [Bulgaria], and blutsauger [Germany] are just some of the many examples of this. Furthermore, there are many different species or divisions of vampires throughout the world. One of the more familiar species is the "nosferatu", which is derived from the Greek word "nosophoros" meaning "plague-bringer". Nosferatu are generally vermin-like in appearance, having a long nose, pointy ears, and long, bony fingers. Also, as their name implies, they carry diseases with them wherever they may roam. "Lamiae" (singular "Lamia") are the most prevalent incarnation of female vampires. Lamiae are extremely beautiful and very dangerous to children and males. In one legend, a lamia was the Queen of Libya. In Greek mythology, a lamia was once a mistress of Zeus, who was subsequently punished by Zeus' wife and sister Hera by making her feast upon her own children. The punishment backfired, however: the lamia developed a taste for the young. A lamia ("Lilith") is also a key figure in Hebrew and Muslim mythology. "Vrykolakas" is the main species of the Aegean region. One of the main attacks of a vrykolak is knocking on someone's door. If the knock is responded to after the first attempt, the answerer dies rather quickly. Another physical weapon for the vrykolak is the seating of itself upon its victim, which either crushes their fodder or smothers it. But, no matter how you slice it, the ultimate vampire species is the one created by Bram Stoker, which doesn't go by any other name than it's mainstay: Dracula.

The Dracula of the novel by Bram Stoker (1897) was portrayed as an evil bloodsucker, entirely clothed in black, with a thin nose, thick moustache, sharp teeth, pointed ears, hairy palms, long fingernails, and putrid breath. Also, Dracula cast no reflection, was extremely strong and grew even more so as he consumed blood, controlled many creatures, and could transfigure. Despite all of his strengths, he was not without his weaknesses: he could not enter homes without invitation, he had to sleep in a container that held his native soil, and he repulsed in the presence of holy items such as the crucifix, Eucharistic wafer, and holy water, as well as the secular garlic. In the end, of course, good triumphed over evil and Dracula was destroyed. In most instances throughout cinematic history, however, Dracula was portrayed in a very different way; it was not until 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula that the story told by the novel was adapted anywhere close to intact.

The film that immortalized the character of Count Dracula, 1931's Dracula, borrowed very loosely from the novel. The movie, starring Bela Lugosi as the Count, was an instant hit, and spawned many offspring, although none were as successful. Lugosi's Dracula set the standard for the portrayals of most big screen, television, and literary vampires for years to come. One of the small screen characters that were influenced by Dracula was Barnabas Collins, the main character of the early-70s British soap opera "Dark Shadows"; Barnabas was usually decked out in cliché Dracula-esque garb. But there was a unique aspect to the character of Collins: he resented his vampiric bloodline, and throughout the run of the series Barnabas searched for a cure to his vampirism. He was also portrayed as a considerate creature, which made the audience genuinely sympathize with him.

But that's not to say that there aren't any quasi-faithful adaptations of the novel aside from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Indeed, the first theatrical edition of Stoker's novel, F.W. Murnau's silent 1922 German masterpiece Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, portrayed Dracula as a nosferatu that had many of the physical characteristics of the novel's Count. Name changes were necessary because this version was so close to the novel--Murnau did not have the rights to produce a movie using the Dracula name. So, Count Dracula became "Count Graf Orlock" (played by Max Schreck), Renfield became "Knock ein Häusermakler", and so on. Enough of the film was altered from the book so as not to infringe, but the Stoker estate sued the production company nonetheless. Schreck's Orlock was undoubtedly the most faithful big-screen representation of the Dracula character until 1992.

But one could argue that Vlad Tepes, aka "Dracula", technically provides the most faithful portrayal. Vlad Tepes (1431-1476) was "voivode", or warlord, of Wallachia, Romania from 1456 until 1462, with another stint beginning in early 1476 and ending later that year with his assassination. During his first period of rule he led a Romanian campaign against the Turks, massacring thousands by various gruesome methods. One of these methods, and by far Vlad's most preferred, was impalement. After Vlad's burial, legend states that he rose, which explained the still-empty burial chamber of Tepes. Despite Vlad's cult hero status in his native Romania--they issue national currency with his likeness--he did not gain worldwide fame (infamy?) until Stoker published Dracula.

As popular as Dracula is, there is another literary vampire that, in many people's eyes, surpasses the great Count in character: Anne Rice's "Lestat de Lioncourt", of her Vampire Chronicles. Lestat is known as the "Brat Prince" by his vampiric companions, due to his father being a French marquis, as well as his pompous ways. He is not without a sense of morality, however: he will not feed off of the blood of the innocent. There is obviously an appeal to Lestat, as he has his own real-life fan club, the "Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat Fan Club". There are also many other literary vampires that have a similar following: "Lord Ruthven", Dr. John Polidori's creation, was a result of the same dare, issued by famous poet Lord Byron, that compelled Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to pen her tour de force Frankenstein or: The Modern Prometheus. At the time of Polidori's composition of The Vampyre, he and Byron had a falling-out, and Polidori used him as the inspiration for the character traits of Ruthven: Ruthven was handsome, pallid, womanizing, and cruel to all, friend or foe, not unlike Polidori's former friend. The character of Ruthven was the initiator of the movement of the vampire from its folkloric roots to the Romantic environment of the time. Ruthven also inspired more than a few of Dracula's "novel" qualities. Another milestone in vampiric literature is James Malcolm Rymer's (authorship was credited to Thomas Preskett Prest for many years) Varney the Vampyre or: The Feast of Blood, which was the first English-language vampire novel. Francis Varney, like Lord Ruthven, bestowed many of his character traits to his literary successor, Dracula.

In the same manner that the novels, stories, motion pictures, and television programs inspired one another, they also inspired many physical characteristics and traits that are common between their respective vampiric characters. Being that blood is representative of life, it is appropriate that the vampire, undead, gains its sustenance from the living's life force. It is also the activity most associated with vampires and vampirism. There were many supernatural explanations as to why the vampire needed blood to survive, but as the science of man progressed, the explanation leaned more and more towards an affliction of the medical condition "anemia" (Greek for "bloodlessness") in vampires. There are many instances in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles that Lestat has to powder his skin to fit in with humans, which is a result of a lack of sustenance, because a vampire's skin can seem almost transparent when hungry. Going hand-in-hand with the blood drinking was the advent of fanged vampires. Fangs, in terms of animalia, make it easier to pierce the flesh of their prey. The same applies to the vampires. The fanged vampire, however, is not as common an occurrence as the blood drinking one. Folkloric accounts rarely mention fangs, and Lugosi's Dracula was done without them. Today, it is common for a vampire to have retractable fangs, which allows easier movement amongst humans. Fingernails are another telltale sign of vampirism. Many Eastern Europeans believed that when a corpse lost its nails or grew new ones that it was a vampire, and consequently the corpse was staked, burned, and reburied with garlic. Fingernails are mentioned many times in vampire literature. In Dracula, Harker observes Dracula's nails as long and sharp. In Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Lestat and Louis mention on several occasions that their nails are unlike human ones, and it is something that they take care to hide. Other attributes that are common to most literary vampires are acute senses of sight and hearing, which is a result of their nocturnal nature. Nocturnal creatures, being night hunters, must have good eyesight and a keen sense of hearing in order to successfully stalk and capture their prey. Their powerful hearing sense also helps in detection of fellow vampires, whether friend or foe.

Despite all of these strengths, vampires have still developed quite a list of downfalls, as well as a roll call of preventative measures against them. The most common method is staking. When this system was first developed, it was used on a corpse to affix it to the earth. Also, many people staked the ground above the corpse, for if the corpse attempted to rise it would impale itself upon that stake. After coffins came into widespread usage, it evolved into an actual way to kill the beast. Many hold that a strategic point of staking (namely the head or the heart) can kill the creature, while others hold that the wood that is used to construct the stake is what does it; the most preferred wood is ash, aspen, and juniper. Another measure that has developed over the years is sunlight. Most early vampire works did not include sunlight as a weakness, and Dracula was the first to do so. In the case of the Count, however, sunlight was only effective to weaken his already superhuman strength. Post-Dracula, the sunlight method developed into fatality for the vampire, and in the Vampire Chronicles, it is the only method that could kill a vampire aside from combustion, which itself has become a popular method due to its wide use in works of folklore and works of fiction. But even in the case of the Vampire Chronicles, a vampire could become immune to the effects if they were old enough or strong enough. Christian holy items are also a Draculaen development: the Christians had linked vampires to Satan and Satanism for years, but Dracula was the first to use any holy item as a weapon. The crucifix and the Eucharistic wafer were used a great deal throughout the novel, used as a method of strength drain, weaponry, and vampiric attack detection. The holy item tradition carried on, but many modern novelists are making their vampires more secular; Rice's vampires are impervious to all holy attacks. Garlic is also another heavily used attack, used especially in Dracula, as well as many other vampiric pieces across all mediums. Not unlike the crucifix, it was used to detect vampiric attacks and to ward off vampires themselves. In Dracula, Van Helsing placed garlic around Lucy's neck and her bedroom's doorway. In real, folkloric, and fictional situations, garlic was also used in concordance with decapitation; the garlic would be stuffed into the mouth of the corpse.

Speaking of corpses, there were many things throughout history that people would do to prevent a corpse from rising as a vampire. Many pertain to the burial of the corpse: burying the corpse facedown would cause the reanimated corpse to dig deeper into the earth rather than out of it; burying the corpse at a crossroads would prevent it to rise due to a crossroads' demonic connotation to the people; holy items were considered to be on the opposite end of the good-evil spectrum from crossroads, but were similarly effective in keeping the corpse in place if buried with it. Also part of past burial methods is the burial of the corpse with seeds. The reanimated corpse would have to count every seed before it could rise. As with the seeds, burying the corpse with tiny knots would cause the creature to have to untie them all before rising. There were also measures taken in the preparation of the body for interment. For many years in the past, people believed that animals jumping over the corpse or moonlight shining on the body before its burial doomed it to reanimation as a vampire; as a result of this belief, people would watch over the corpse until its burial. People also used to believe that payment was necessary to enter the afterlife, so they would bury their dead with coins on their eyelids, which prevented the soul from becoming trapped inside of the body and lessened the risk of reanimation. Moreover, the original purpose of fashioning headstones was to weigh down the reanimated corpse, not to offer a memoriam to the deceased.

Maybe vampires themselves are a memoriam to the deceased; part of the natural human instinct of survival and the longing for everlasting life, or an outlet for the want of a deceased loved one to once again be a part of our lives. Either way, vampires have been and always shall be a part of the human experience. In the journey that took humans from Ancient Egypt to Medieval Romania to early 20th century Hollywood, vampires tagged along for every step of the way. Whether this narrative leaves you with Bela Lugosi, "The Vampire" Lestat, or Great Uncle Larry on your mind, you will always have an image of what a vampire should be, which serves as a testament to the multicultural phenomenon of vampirism.