Today, the word “vampire” brings many established traits to mind. You might envision a pale figure with long fangs who has an extreme aversion to garlic. You may also ponder the supposed fact that vampires cannot see themselves in the mirror but can be killed by driving a stake through their hearts. And finally, everyone knows that vampires drink human blood.
But, back in the day when the supposed existence of vampires first entered the human psyche, these characteristics were not so well defined.
Instead, modern depictions of popular vampires such as Dracula in 1897 and even Twilight in 2005 have drawn inspiration from numerous traditional beliefs fostered throughout Europe during the sixteenth century.
And interestingly enough, these beliefs– which were mainly centered around the fear of the dead coming back to harm the living– often stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the human body decomposes.
For example, after someone passes, their corpse’s skin will shrink– causing fingernails and teeth to appear larger than before. Additionally, while internal organs decompose, a dark fluid will often leak from the mouth and nose.
But, during the sixteenth century, most people were not familiar with this natural process. So, if they saw a corpse, it was easy to mistake the dark fluid for blood and assume that the being had sucked it from the living.
Nonetheless, these post-mortem functions were not the only thing driving vampire beliefs throughout Europe. Instead, vampires were also used to reason other unexplainable instances– such as the spread of disease.
As populations grew larger and travel became more common, the spread of disease was inevitable. But, before people understood the science behind infection, vampires were often blamed for ravaging communities.
Moreover, this belief only inspired more people to attempt to kill vampires or prevent their supposed feeding habits. In doing so, people were afforded a greater sense of control over their community’s fate.
Anatoly Tiplyashin godfer – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person
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This also explains why some of the greatest vampire scares in history coincide with plague outbreaks.
In 2006, for instance, archaeologists discovered a skull that had been buried alongside plague victims of the sixteenth century. This skull, though, was found with a brick shoved in its mouth– a tradition thought to prevent Italian vampires from exiting the grave and feasting on innocent people.
And the Germans had their own separate beliefs about vampires, too. In northern Germany, the bloodsuckers were not believed to actually leave their graves. Instead, they were thought to stay underground and chew on burial shrouds.
Nonetheless, these vampires were also believed to still wreak havoc above ground during plague outbreaks.
So, some people resorted to exhuming supposed vampire corpses and stuffing their mouths with soil. They thought that without the ability to chew, the vampires would eventually starve to death.
Then, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vampire folklore only continued to pick up steam throughout southern and eastern Europe– despite Pope Benedict XIV calling the monsters “fallacious fictions of human fantasy.”
Moreover, the final significant “vampire scare” actually occurred in nineteenth-century New England when, in 1892, a nineteen-year-old named Mercy Brown died of tuberculosis in Rhode Island.
Her mother and sister had already died, and her brother, Edwin, had also fallen ill. So, some worried neighbors started to think that one of the deceased Brown women might have been tormenting Edwin.
And after they decided to exhume Mercy’s grave, they, of course, saw the same dark fluid in her mouth and believed it was confirmation of vampirism.
So, the neighbors ended up burning Mercy’s heart and mixing the ashes into a concoction for Edwin to drink. The potion was intended to heal his sickness, but he still passed just a few months later.
This instance of supposed vampire activity coincided with at least sixty other known examples of anti-vampire rituals occurring in New England during that time. But, they were most common in western Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut.
And amidst this vampire fright in New England, the monsters were also emerging as popular entertainment tropes in Europe. The Vampyre, a short story written by John William Polidori, was written in 1819; meanwhile, Carmilla, a gothic novella, was penned by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1871.
But, while these characters did draw inspiration from folk legend and historic vampire scares, they also emerged as the more provocative and intriguing vampires we recognize in popular media today.
Since then, countless novels, comics, television shows, and movies have emerged in an attempt to satisfy the public’s apparently insatiable appetite for all things mysterious and horrific.
But, the next time you open a Stephanie Meyer novel or visit Spirit Halloween in search of the perfect Draculaura costume, you can remember the pure fear of the unknown that spurred these supernatural tales in the first place.
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