Hello, my name is August Emerson, and I'm very pleased you've come into my www - that is to say - my Wicked, Wicked Web.

What is this perenniel fascination we have with things that go BUMP! in the night?

We do like to be scared witless at times... the heart pounds, the adrenaline rushes, it’s a thrill to the system, an injection of stimulation that lets us know we’re alive!

From the improbable minds of an intellectual eighteen year old British girl with the gentle name of Mary, and a delicate man of fragile nature and refined sensibilities, come stories such as Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allen Poe).

Vampires

That same rainy week in 1816 when Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, Lord Byron's

personal physician, Dr. Polidori, himself only 20 years old, began writing The Vampyre. And thus was launched the modern fascination with vampires.

Bram Stoker authored Dracula, first published in 1897, wherein we discover many of our current cultural concepts of vampires. And in contemporary times, vampire lore has been infused with the undead blood of Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire.

Ancient Vampires

Vampires, which subsist on our life-force, have been with us for a very, very long time. Although we commonly think of them as coming from Eastern Europe, their presence stretches far back in the mists of time.

The Babylonians had their Lilu, the ancient Sumerians their Akhjkharu. The ancient Greeks, Hebrews and Romans had the Empusae, the Lamia and other iterations of malevolent, supernatural beings with vampiric behaviors. Lilitu later became Lilith of Jewish demonology.

Vampires were dealt with in non-fictional terms around 1725 in Serbia, as Austrian officials responded to the complaints by villagers of the dead coming out of their resting places and attacking them.

Such beliefs could be found throughout Eastern Europe in the Balkans, Transylvania, and the Carpathian Mountains. The legends of vampires caused mass hysteria, and many folkloric details of vampires, their powers and vulnerabilities, and how to protect oneself from them, became common knowledge. Many of these cultural artifacts remain with us today, the most common one being that the best way to destroy a vampire is to drive a wooden stake through its heart.

Keeping Vampires in Their Place

Some other interesting bits about vampires are the ways to prevent them from rising from the grave in the first place, such as to bury the vampire upside down, severing the tendons at the knees, or surrounding the grave with poppy seeds as, for some mysterious reason, the vampire must count the seeds, and will be preoccupied doing so all night until the sun comes up, thereby saving the village.

There’s an intriguing parallel in Chinese folklore - to control vampire-like beings, place a sack of rice on it’s path, and it will have to count all the grains of rice... and yet another vampire is too preoccupied to do harm. Similar counting myths of vampire beings are to be found in India as well.

Commonly known Amulets that keep vampires at a distance are garlic, religious artifacts (Holy water, crucifixes, etc.) and sunlight. Less commonly known are the efficacy of the branches of wild roses and the Hawthorn plant. Nor are vampires able, apparently, to cross running water.

Vampires are believed to be shape shifters, and not just manifesting into a bats, but capable of morphing into wolves, rats, spiders, and other creatures. This is logical, is it not? An undead being certainly must have power over the three dimensions in order to be excepted from it, so either literally morphing into another creature, or hypnotizing people to think it has, would be an obvious vampire power.

It's also generally accepted that vampires do not cast a shadow, nor can they be seen in a mirror. Some folks think this is to symbolize it’s lack of a soul. Perhaps. But also, perhaps because the vampire is in fact moving at a different wave length from things that are three-dimensional. The vampire must be, in part at least, in another dimension. Only two and three dimensional objects have a reflection, and only three dimensional objects cast a shadow. (click to continue to Vampires)

Philip Burne-Jones, The Vampire -1897

Some images on this website thanks to:
http://cavernsofblood.com