Vampire Mythology: Different Species Part 2

Ah, yes, the continuation on the bombshell I dropped last week: different species of vampires?! Get ready to throw your original thoughts on vampires out the window! I'm going to take you back many years ago and talk about the real history of vampires from different lands rather than my own opinions (which I hope you all enjoyed last week). Here we go!

Different Species Part 2

Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world (I know what you're probably thinking; Buffyrules, you already told us this stuff-well I'm telling you again! Plus this is for those who are just now joining us). The vampires we know of today, although altered my fiction and film, are largely based on Eastern European myths. The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East and were transported from places like China, Tibet, and India with the trade caravans along the silk route to the Mediterranean. Here they spread out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans, and of course, the Carpathian mountains including places like Transylvania (now Romania) and Hungary (where my ancestors are from, go us!)

Our modern concept of vampires still retain threads, such as drinking blood, return from death, preying on humans, etc. in common with the Eastern European myths, but most of the stuff we're familiar with are just recent inventions. Vampires wearing capes for example or the fact that vampires are always highly attractive people. Sadly that is not the case, that is what fiction and film has given us. For instance, I bet some of you didn't know that in the old myths if you placed millet or poppy seeds in the graves of vampires they will spend all night counting them. Believe it or not, this is true and this very myth is what the Count on Sesame Street is based off of. In the words of Xander Harris: "Von, two, three-three victims, mwa ha ha!"

I'm going to give you two examples now of how vampire myths differ in different countries. The first vampires are Slavic-whoo!

Slavic Vampires

The Slavic people (including most east Europeans from Russia to Bulgaria, Serbia to Poland) have the richest vampire folklore and legends in the world. The origin of Slavic vampire myths developed during the 9th century as a result of conflict between pre-Christian paganism and Christianity. Christianity won out with the vampires and other pagan beliefs surviving folklore.

Causes of vampirism included: being born with a caul, teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, irregular death, excommunication, improper burial rituals etc. Preventative measures included: placing a crucifix in the coffin, or blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, placing millet or poppy seeds in the grave because vampires had a fascination with counting, or piercing the body with thorns or stakes (that's right, wield your roses!)

Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighborhood included: death of cattle, sheep, relatives, neighbors, exhumed bodies being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, or if the body was swelled up like a drum, or there was blood on the mouth and if the corpse had a ruddy complexion.

Vampires could be destroyed by staking, decapitation, burning, repeating the funeral service, holy water on the grave, exorcism.


Romanian Vampires

Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising that their vampires are variants of the Slavic vampire. They are called Strigoi based on the Roman term strix for screech owl which also came to mean demon or witch. There are different types of strigoi: strigoi vii are live witches who will become vampires after death. They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches or with Strigoi mort, who are dead vampires. The strigoi mort are the reanimated bodies which return to suck the blood of family, livestock, and neighbors.

A person born with a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. As was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. Naturally, being bitten by vampire meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.

The Vircolac, which is sometimes mentioned in folklore, was more closely related to a mythological wolf that could devour the sun and moon and later became connected with werewolves rather than vampires. The person afflicted with lycanthropy could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.

The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St Georges Day is still celebrated in Europe.

A vampire in the grave could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing who didn't eat it.

Graves were often opened three years after death of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.

Measures to prevent a person becoming a vampire included: removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle, especially on St George's and St Andrew's days.

To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and given to family members as a cure.
Fascinating isn't it? People went through all that trouble over myths! Can you imagine what life would be like if we still believed in all that stuff? I'm really glad we don't and we have all that stuff from fiction and films to help us sleep at night.
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Disclaimer: I'd like to thank the historians who have spent their lives researching all of this vampire mythology. Without them I would not be able to do the research for this column; everything belongs to them except for my wit.