Post by Joanna on Oct 5, 2013 1:50:59 GMT -5
Sunset.
Trees and houses are visible only as shadowy silhouettes against the fading red-orange of autumn dusk. Chill October air wraps itself around you, carrying with it the odors of wood smoke and decay. You walk quickly past the dark and silent houses as a flurry of dry leaves crackle and swirl about your feet. Nearby, an ancient cemetery lies carpeted in a thick layer of scarlet and gold leaves, its timeworn stones jutting from the earth like greying and broken teeth. Turning onto your own street, you see an inviting yellow glow coming from the windows of your home. Suddenly, you are startled by the whisper of wings just above your head – a large bat darts by before vanishing into the shadows of the road ahead. Your heart races for a moment, then, laughing quietly to yourself, you continue. As you approach your home, you are surprised to notice the door is open – and you realize there are no longer any lights on! From the darkness of the doorway appears an oddly pale man dressed in a long, black coat. The stranger’s lips glisten darkly in the fading light. You open your mouth to ask who he is, but before you can utter a word, he is gone! Within the house all is silent. Overhead the whisper of bat wings fades once more into the deepening night.
Do you believe in vampires? If so, you are not alone. Legends of the undead have terrified mankind since the earliest of times. The vampire is known throughout the world by many names. – Blutsauger (Germany), Penanggalan (Maylaysia), Jigar-Khor (India), Vrykolakas (Greece) – the list goes on and on. In ancient China, a deceased body was carefully protected from exposure to moonlight in order to prevent its return as a Kaung-Shi. Today in some areas of Transylvania, people still hang garlic throughout the house to ward off the familiar Nosferatu. Even the practice of using headstones is believed to have begun as a way to keep the dead in their graves, giving rise to the legend that a tilted gravestone marks the resting place of a vampire!
In the Victorian London of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire was a thing of evil – repulsive and frightening. The only desire in the hearts of the novel’s protagonists was to destroy the monster and all he represented. The outwardly stoic Victorians were horrified by Dracula’s unbound sensuality and his ability to inspire such wantonness in women. Stoker’s Dracula is neither attractive nor romantic, yet his dark embraces are impossible to resist. Conversely, in the 1999 John Carpenter film Vampires, the vampire-hunting heroes are portrayed as misogynistic and cruel, slaying vampires with glee at the behest of a corrupted Catholic bishop. The vampires in this film appear almost sympathetic by contrast, striving primarily for survival and the ability to live in the sunlight!
It is here where we begin to understand the improbable transformation of the vampire from the nightmare image of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu into the sexually charged romanticism of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. The ideas and behavior so feared by the people of the 19th century have become today’s virtues – individuality, sexuality and freedom. Where once the vampire’s immortality challenged notions of God and salvation, today it beckons to a world on the brink of annihilation, where the very air is measured in degrees of toxicity. Fears of extramarital sensuality and the empowerment of women have given way to fears of sexual repression and deadly viruses, barriers which the vampire transcends with little effort. Even the most primal fear generated by the vampire, that of predation and death, has been transformed in a world where the value of predatory instincts is trumped in popular books such as the business guide How to Swim With the Sharks. Is it any wonder the vampire has been elevated to the status of hero and ideal in the minds of so many?
But what exactly is a vampire? Films like Blade and television shows such as Angel and its predecessor Buffy the Vampire Slayer portray the vampire as an essentially human-looking, often attractive person, whose undead traits appear only when it is about to attack. Most cinematic vampires have sharp canine teeth by which they feed and many can transform into animals such as bats or wolves. Often aristocratic and wealthy, vampires are seductive creatures, easily attracting willing victims into a life of immortal splendor. But what of the vampires who came before the age of television and film?
Folklore defines a vampire as “a ghost or reanimated corpse which leaves its grave each night to feed upon the blood or life-force of the living.” The actual word vampire, derived from a Slavic word meaning “blood-drinker,” is believed to have entered the English language around 1732. In stark contrast to today’s fiction, the vampires of ancient legend are more often ghastly than alluring and more likely to be found lurking in a moldering crypt than a lordly castle. Folkloric vampires come in a variety of forms, from spectral visitors to withered corpses or nightmarish monsters – hardly the sensual ideal so often portrayed on screen. Some of the better known aspects of vampire lore are accurate – aversion to garlic, wooden stakes and infectious bites for instance – all have their roots in early folklore. Many other generally accepted rules of vampirism, such as sharp canine teeth, burning in sunlight or the existence of vampire covens, are entirely the product of Gothic fiction from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The precise origins of the vampire are lost to history, but it is believed the earliest such tales date back 5,000 years to ancient civilizations such as Sumer and Ur. The genesis of the myth almost certainly stems from man’s perceptions of the power and significance of blood. From very early times, humans became aware of the life-sustaining properties of blood. Primitive man could endure a variety of injuries, including the loss of eyes, ears or limbs and still survive. By contrast, a relatively small wound that continued to bleed often led to death. Blood, by association, was considered the very essence of life itself.
In those early cultures, we also find references to angry gods with the power to “cause the dead to rise up and devour the living.” The concept of the sacred power of blood seems to have worked its way into many of these early religions. Blood sacrifice became a way to fend off the unwanted attentions of less benevolent gods. As ancient pantheons grew, some of these blood-thirsty vampire-gods were reduced to the stature of daemons or djinn (lesser gods), and later still, to the diminutive role of demons and spirits. It is at this point the image of the traditional vampire begins to take shape. The idea that the jealous dead might return to torment or steal the blood of the living must have been a logical extension of preexisting notions about the relationship of blood and death.
The fully-developed legend of the blood-drinking ghost took root and flourished most strongly in the mountains of Eastern Europe, but tales of these Nosferatu have not remained confined to the Old World. In the years following the Revolutionary War, the people of Colonial New England began to experience outbreaks of an unknown wasting fever which came to be known as “consumption.” Medical science of the time seemed powerless to overcome the dread disease, leading people to the conclusion the malady was a spiritual, rather than a physical, condition. Faced with death after death from the mysterious fever, the frightened residents of dozens of rural communities from Rhode Island to Vermont fell to whispering about a nearly-forgotten terror.
New England has long been a vortex of strange superstitions and twilight tales – remember the Salem witch trials? Yankees perpetually walk a line between austere pragmatism in their daily lives and a sort of morbid pride in the ghosts and goblins that lurk in the darker recesses of local folklore. One will see a devilish glint in the eye of the most down-to-earth New Englander as he relates the details of an unsolved murder or haunted graveyard. It comes as no surprise then that the people of the Northeast embraced the legend of the vampire – though they did not use the term “vampire” – to explain the wasting disease that sapped the life of their relatives and neighbors. For more than a century, the specter of the undead preyed upon fears in the remote villages of New England. By some estimates, there were in excess of a hundred incidents of vampire exhumation. Most of these tales are lost to time, having died with the families who suffered through them. But a few such stories have survived, pieced together by diligent folklorists and researchers from fragments of old newspapers and stories passed down from generation-to-generation.
Compiled by Graveyardbride from the following sources: The Vampire Hunter’s Guide to New England by Christopher Rondina; Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires by Michael E. Bell, and New England's Things That Go Bump in the Night by Robert Ellis Cahill.
See also
“New England Vampires: Rachel Burton - 1793”
“New England Vampires: Nancy Young - 1827”
“New England’s Last Vampire”
