Part 3 of Vampire Origins digs into chronological variations in vampire beliefs around the world. Bats and other key factors in vampire lore are analyzed.

Vampire Controversies in the 18th Century

Eastern Europe experienced a major vampire scare in the 18th century. Even government officials were forced into hunting and staking vampires.

The panic began in 1721 with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia. Then again in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1725 to 1734. Two famous vampire cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole from Serbia. As the story goes, Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of times after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the next day. Plogojowitz soon returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.

In the other famous case, an ex-soldier turned farmer, Arnold Paole was allegedly attacked by a vampire years before and died. After his death, people began to die and it was believed that Paole had returned to prey on his neighbors.

These two incidents were well documented. Government officials examined and reported on the cases. Books about the Paole case were published distributed around Europe. The controversy raged for a generation and was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire attacks. Many scholars said vampires did not exist and attributed vampire reports to premature burial or rabies. However, Dom Augustine Calmet, a respected French theologian and scholar, put together a carefully worded treatise in 1746, concerning the existence of vampires. He amassed reports of vampire incidents and numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and supportive demonologists, interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires really existed.

In his Philosophical Dictionary,Voltaire wrote on the vampires: These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. Victims waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite.

According to recent research and judging from the second edition of the work in 1751, Calmet was actually somewhat sceptical towards the vampire concept as a whole. He did acknowledge that parts of the reports, such as the preservation of corpses, might be true. Whatever his personal convictions were, Calmet's apparent support for vampire belief had considerable influence on scholars of that time.

Eventually, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician, Gerhard van Swieten, to investigate. He concluded that vampires do not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and the desecration of bodies. This was the end of the vampire panics. By then, many knew about vampires and soon authors would adopt and adapt the vampire concept, making it known to the general public.

Vampires in New England

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the belief in vampires was widespread in New England, particularly in Rhode Island and Eastern Connecticut. There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire, responsible for sickness and death in the family. Oddly enough, the word "vampire" was never actually used to describe the person.

Deadly tuberculosis, or "consumption," was believed to be caused by nightly visitations by a dead family member who had already died of consumption. The most famous case is that of 19 year old Mercy Brown who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb two months after her death. Her heart was cut out and burnt to ashes. An account of this incident was found among Bram Stoker's papers and closely resembles events in his classic novel, Dracula.

Vampire Beliefs in the Modern Era

Belief in vampires is prevalent, even today. While some cultures preserve their original traditions about the immortals, most modern believers are more influenced by the fictional image of the vampire, as it appears in films and literature.

In the 1970's, there were rumors that a vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters flocked to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case.

In the modern folklore of Puerto Rico and Mexico, the chupacabra (goat-sucker) is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of domesticated animals. The "chupacabra hysteria" comes up frequently and it is believed to be a type of vampire.

During late 2002 and early 2003, hysteria about alleged vampire attacks swept through the African country of Malawi. Mobs stoned one individual to death and attacked at least four others, including Governor Eric Chiwaya, fearing that the government was colluding with vampires.

Got 3 Minutes? Turn It Into Cash!

In Romania, early 2004, relatives of the late Toma Petre believed he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore out his heart, burned it and mixed the ashes with water.

Rumors circulated about an attacker that bit a number of people in Birmingham, England in January 2005. This ignited concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. However, local police claim that no such crime had been reported. This case, like so many, falls into the urban legend category.

In 2006, Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi published a piece that uses geometric progression to attempt to disprove the feeding habits of vampires, stating that, if each vampire's nourishment depended on making even one other person a vampire, it would only be a matter of years before the Earth's entire population was among the undead. However, the notion that a vampire's victim must become a vampires does not appear in all vampire folklore. This theory also assumes that a single bite turns the victim into a vampire, which is not true in most vampire lore.

In March 2007, self-proclaimed vampire hunters broke into the tomb of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia. They staked his body through the heart into the ground. Although the group claimed this was to prevent Milosevic from returning as a vampire, it is not known whether they actually believed this or if it was simply a politically motivated crime.

Vampire Graves

When coffins of alleged vampires were opened, onlookers found that the cadaver did not always look like what they thought a normal corpse should. This was often taken to be evidence of vampirism. Decomposition rates vary according to temperature and soil composition and some of the signs of decomposition are not widely known. These details led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead body had not decomposed at all, thereby indicating proof of continued life.

Corpses swell as gas from decomposition accumulates in the torso and blood tries to escape the body. This causes the body to look plump or well-fed - changes that are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. In the Arnold Paole case, an old woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbors to look more plump and healthy than she had ever looked in life. It should be noted that folkloric accounts almost universally represent the alleged vampire as having ruddy or dark skin, not pale like the vampires in literature and film. Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition.

Blood can often be seen emanating from nose and mouth of a decomposing corpse, which could possibly give the impression of a vampire who had recently been drinking blood. The staking of a swollen, decomposing body could also cause the body to bleed and force the accumulated gas to escape. This sudden release could produce a groan as the gas moves past the vocal chords. It could also produce a sound similar to flatus when the gas passes through the anus.

Official reporting on the Peter Plogojowitz case refers to "other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect." After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the roots of the hair, nails, and teeth. This can include teeth concealed in the jaw. These factors can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels away. The Plogojowitz case reports stated the dermis and nail beds emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails." Furthermore, decomposition can force the body to shift or contort, adding to the illusion that it has been active after death.

Vampire Bats

Bats have only recently become an integral part of the vampire story. But many cultures have bats in their vampire stories. In Europe, bats and owls were long associated with the supernatural. Gypsies believed they were lucky and wore charms made of bat bones. In English heraldic tradition, a bat means "awareness of the powers of darkness and chaos."

In South America, Camazotz was a bat god of the caves, living in the Bathouse of the Underworld. The three species of actual vampire bats are all endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence that they had any Old World relatives. It is extremely unlikely that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation of the bat.

During the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors first came into contact with vampire bats and recognized the similarity between the feeding habits of the bats and their legendary vampires. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the Oxford English Dictionary records the folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. It didn't take long for vampire bats to be adapted into fictional vampire tales.

Vampires in Pop Culture

Lord Byron introduced the vampire theme to Western literature in 1813 with his epic poem, The Giaour. It was John Polidori who authored the first real vampire story, The Vampyre. Polidori was the personal physician of Byron and the vampire of the story, Lord Ruthven, is partially based on him. The "ghost story competition" that spawned this piece was the same competition that motivated Mary Shelley to write her novel, Frankenstein.

Other examples of early vampire stories are Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel and Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire story, Carmilla.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has been the definitive version of the vampire in popular fiction for the last century. Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession) with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in a Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. Stoker's writings were adapted into many later works. In modern popular culture, book series by Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer all feature vampire variations.