Vampirism

“ Nor must it be forgotten that in this disease, as in the plague, the mere thought of being seized often suffices to cause death without any warning symptoms, and hence the great number of deaths in localities where vampirism has been thought to prevail. For very few of those who are attacked succeed in escaping, and if they survive they retain for life the marks left by their wounds. The penalty, moreover, is not always undeserved; vampirism rarely if ever attacks men of pure hearts and sober minds ”

“ The awakened interest in supernormal phenomena which has taken place in recent years has included in its wake the absorbing subject of Vampirism. Yet there has not been any collection published of vampire stories which are common to all the five continents of the globe. The subject of vampirism is regarded more seriously to-day than it was even a decade since, and an attempt has been made in this volume to supply as far as possible all the instances which could be collected from the various countries. ”

“ The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed. Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony. ”

“ Nearly related to this lycanthropy is the more horrible vampirism. The vampires, according to the belief of the Middle Ages, are disembodied souls which clothe themselves again in their buried bodies, steal at night into houses, and suck from the nipple of the sleeping all their blood. He who is thus bereft of the vital fluid is in his turn changed into a vampire and visits preferably his own relatives. ”

“ Occasionally possession is not attributed to demons, but to deceased men who come by night from their graves, and suck the blood of their victims, whereupon the latter begin to decline and finally die a miserable death, while the buried man lives and thrives upon his ill-gotten food. This is vampirism, the name being derived from the once universal belief that there existed vampires, huge bats, who, whilst fanning sleeping men [Pg 363] with their soft wings, feasted upon their life's blood and only left them when they had turned into corpses. ”

“ In all human probability the ancient belief in vampirism had its origin in discovered cases of suspended animation. It will be remembered that whenever a corpse was suspected of being a vampire, the grave was opened and the body was [Pg 312] examined. If it showed no signs of decomposition, the fact was held to be indubitable evidence of guilt. ”

“ Careful writers like Calmet and others have, it is true, always maintained that, while the existence of vampirism cannot be denied, the phenomena attending it are in all cases the creations of diseased minds only. On the other hand, it is a well-established fact that the bodies of so-called vampires, when exhumed, have been found free from corruption, while in all the corpses around them decomposition had long since begun. ”

“ I wished I might really die, for I was tired—so frightfully tired and sick of it all. But I knew of no way to accomplish this, so I had to bear it all, fasting until my voracious, disgusting appetites got the better of me.
I decided there must be some information on my kind, particularly in this area where vampire legends are rife, so I took to haunting reading rooms. It was there I met Maria. She told me, after we knew each other better, that she was doing graduate work in regional superstitions and had decided that her thesis would treat of the history of vampirism. ”

“ VAMPIRISM IN GERMANY AND SURROUNDING COUNTRIES
Germany, the home of modern philosophy, is not free from the belief in the reality of the vampire apparition, although the more horrible forms of the superstition are not frequently encountered. Crosses are, however, frequently erected at the head, or by the side, of graves, even in Protestant cemeteries, in order that their presence may prevent the occupants from being controlled by any demon that might, but for the presence of such charm, take possession of a body ”

“ The life thus extended requires blood in order to sustain itself, and hence the minds of those who come in magic contact with the soul of a vampire, become filled with sanguinary thoughts, which present themselves to their imagination as the desire to suck blood and thus lead to the actual performance. The fact that vampirism is epidemic, like many similar mental diseases, has led to the belief that the living are brought into close connection with the dead and are infected by them, while in reality there is no bond between them but a common misfortune. ”

“ If a certain number of such cases of apparent death has really given rise to the faith in vampirism, then it is equally possible to suppose, that this kind of trance—for which there may exist a special predisposition in one or the other race—may become at times epidemic. ”

“ Some learned men have thought they discovered some vestiges of vampirism in the remotest antiquity; but all that they say of it does not come near what is related of the vampires. The lamiæ, the strigæ, the sorcerers whom they accused of sucking the blood of living persons, and of thus causing their death, the magicians who were said to cause the death of new-born children by charms and malignant spells, are nothing less than what we understand by the name of vampires ”

“ The opinion of those who hold that all that is related of vampires is the effect of imagination, fascination, or of that disorder which the Greeks term phrenesis or coribantism, and who pretend by that means to explain all the phenomena of vampirism, will never persuade us that these maladies of the brain can produce such real effects as those we have just recounted. It is impossible that on a sudden, several persons should believe they see a thing which is not there, and that they should die in so short a time of a disorder purely imaginary. ”

“ Although some writers have contended that no vampire has yet been caught in the act of vampirism, and that, as no museum of natural history has secured a specimen, the whole of the stories concerning vampires may be regarded as mythical, others have held firmly to a belief in their existence and inimical power. ”

“ If the corpse of a person suspected of vampirism is dug up, and its stomach pressed, an abundance of fresh blood flows from the mouth. The corpse is well preserved. The belief in vampires has likewise produced a kind of psychical pestilence which yet in the eighteenth century spread terror in the Austrian provinces. [57]
If sorcery was an imaginary people’s magic, [Pg 208] there existed also a real, and it consisted in an infinite variety of usages, observances and rules for all conditions of life. ”

“ VAMPIRISM IN HUNGARY, BAVARIA, AND SILESIA
The Hungarians believe that those who have been passive vampires in life become active vampires after death; that those whose blood has been sucked in life by vampires become themselves vampires after death. In many districts the belief also prevails that the only way to prevent this calamity happening is for the threatened victim to eat some earth from the grave of the attacking vampire, and to smear his own body with blood from the body of that vampire. ”

“ In the face of such facts vampirism cannot be dismissed as simply the product of heated and over-excited imaginations, although it must be admitted that its true nature is still to all intents and purposes a profound mystery. ”

“ To render such death definitive, swords were driven point upward into the vampire’s grave, for the phantoms of Astral Light are disintegrated by the action of metallic points, which attract that light towards the common reservoir and dissipate its coagulated clusters. To reassure nervous people, it may be added that cases of vampirism are fortunately exceedingly rare and that no one who is healthy in mind and body can be personally victimised, unless he or she has been abandoned, body and soul, to the creature in its lifetime by some criminal complicity or irregular passion. ”

“ Here we come at last to the grain of truth around which this mass of popular superstition has gradually accumulated, and the ignorance of which has caused hundreds of innocent human beings to die a miserable death. There can be no doubt that cases of "suspended animation" or apparent death have alone given rise to the whole series of fearful tales of vampirism. ”

“ He can ward off spiritual death so long as he can keep alive by means of blood his physical corpse. The Occult Review believes that probably only those acquainted with black magic in their lifetime can become vampires,—a thought comforting to some of us.
It is in Bram Stoker’s Dracula that one finds the tensest, most dreadful modern story of vampirism. This novel seems to omit no detail of terror, for every aspect of vampire horror is touched upon with brutal and ghastly effect. ”

“ This form of superstition created much anxiety in the public mind, none knowing when he might be bitten by one of those hated demons, and be thereby transformed into a vampire. Men of science bore testimony in favour of vampirism with seeming truthfulness and ability, worthy of a better subject. ”

“ Ghoulism bears a somewhat closer resemblance than vampirism to lycanthropy. A ghoul is an Elemental that visits any place where human or animal remains have been interred. It digs them up and bites them, showing a keen liking for brains, which it sucks in the same manner as a vampire sucks blood. ”

“ She was given into custody, and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of thousands of spectators. Among some of the races of India, among the Khonds of the mountains of Orissa, a superstition obtains like that of the loup-garou of France. In India the tiger takes the place of the wolf, and the metamorphosed witch is there known as the Pulta-bag.
A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night and sucking the bodies of the living. ”

“ My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal more.
"Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life ”

“ The infection of which the victim died remaining still within the odic medium of the sphere it occupied, passes into the nerves of others, who die also; and thus the disease spreads like any other epidemic. But mark—whence the true origin of this superstition of the ghoul and the vampire, so universal in the world? Is it not that mankind, everywhere, has felt, with an unconscious shuddering, the presence of the spiritual vampire? The instincts of the masses have, in their superstitions, foreshadowed all the great discoveries of science. ”

“ One charm employed by the Wallachians to prevent a person becoming a vampire was to rub the body in certain parts with the lard of a pig killed on St Ignatius’s Day.
In Poland and Russia, vampires make their appearance from noon to midnight [13] instead of between nightfall and dawn, the rule that generally prevails. They come and suck the blood of living men and animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows from them at the nose and ears, and occasionally in such profusion that the corpse swims in the blood thus oozing from it as it lies in the coffin. ”

“ A hawthorn stake was brought forward, and as often as they strove to drive it through the body the sharpened wood rebounded, and it was not until one of the number sprang into the grave and cut off the vampire’s head that the evil spirit departed with a loud shriek and a contortion of the limbs. ”

“ Whitney’s Century Dictionary says that a vampire is: “A kind of spectral body which, according to a superstition existing among the Slavic and other races on the Lower Danube, leaves the grave during the night and maintains a semblance of life by sucking the warm blood of living men and women while they are asleep. [2] Dead wizards, werwolves, heretics, and other outcasts become vampires, as do also the illegitimate offspring of parents themselves illegitimate, and anyone killed by a vampire.” ”

“ The vampire could not then enter the house till she counted every hair on its body.”
Calmet’s explanation of the spectres so much talked of in Hungary, Moravia, Poland, and elsewhere is that they are nothing but persons that are still alive in their graves, though without motion or respiration; and that the freshness and ruddy colour of their blood, the flexibility of their limbs, and their crying out when their hearts were run through with a stick, or their heads cut off, were demonstrative proofs of their being still alive. ”

“ The Slavonic belief in vampires is one of the characteristic features of their creed.
The Little Russians hold that, if the vampire’s hands have grown numb from remaining long crossed in the grave, he makes use of his teeth, which are like steel. When he has gnawed his way with these through all obstacles, he first destroys the babies he finds in a house, and afterwards the older inmates. If fine salt be scattered on the floor of a room, the vampire’s footsteps may be traced to his grave, in which he will be found resting with rosy cheek and gory mouth. ”