Vampire hunters

Preface:
A reader requested this topic. I am not an expert on vampire hunting, and I do not know the 'secrets' associated with the -sport-. The tradition of the vampire hunter is as complex and detailed as vampire lore. I can only give you a brief glimpse at this sinister world. Undoubtedly, someone will respond that vampire hunters and blood-drinkers are fictional. To that dear one I say: I wish you were right.

"Into each generation a slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a chosen one. One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers" (Buffy). Aficionados of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will recognize this legend, but vampire hunters are much older and much more prolific than you may imagine.

"The vampire slayer is cut from the same cloth, is the product of the same social or religious violations, as the vampire" (McClelland 107). "The vampire and the vampire slayer are similarly marked as 'non-Christian'; they are in a sense related to each other and in all likelihood reenact a mythological struggle that pre-dates Christianity. In other words, where Christianity finds the vampire, it also finds his slayer" (105). "The notion of a vampire slayer has a very ancient precedent, which existed in a time and place where it was socially more useful to produce a vampire as a guilty criminal than to incriminate one's friends and neighbors" (29).

As is often the case, the vampire is the scapegoat for socially shunned actions, ills, and evils. "Ordinarily, no one would admit to being a vampire of any sort (since to do so would be to acknowledge one's marginal or negative social status, as well as to confess that one was in fact dead)"; however, the same is not true for the vampire hunter (104). Like the vampire, the slayer operates outside of society and is not inhibited by law, yet often, the slayer is excused from immoral or questionable activities by the virtue of their abilities. Furthermore, "while the vampire slayer is marked by a connection to the demonic, this special status is not something that must be hidden" (104).

Surely, there are those hunters who prefer to hide their identity to maintain safety and sanity, but nondisclosure is not conscripted. Generally, vampire hunters know and abide by the rules of society provided that they do not interfere with their mission. Educated or well-trained individuals set the bench-mark for vampire hunters in fiction. Van Helsing appears "to represent the epitome of the vampire hunter: an older man experienced in both science and the occult who knows what to do but who remains fairly secretive" (157). Anne Rice transforms the idea of a vampire hunter into a semi-secret society that studies vampires--the Talamasca. In Rice's Vampire Chronicles, "the idea of the vampire hunter...is rather curiously inverted: it is the vampire protagonist who must tell the vampire hunter" (in the case of Interview with the Vampire, "the reporter-narrator-interlocutor) of his actions and therefore his evil identity" (28). The would-be hunters are not slayers in traditional sense, so much as they are watchers.

The notion of a watcher, who is very familiar with the legends and histories of vampires, resurrects in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here, the watcher fulfills the "wise old-man" role from Van Helsing. Buffy takes on the aggressive violent role and "restores some sense of the original power relationship between vampires and vampire slayers by establishing a fairly simple superhero who acts outside the rule of law...the structure also mimics the centuries-old folkloric idea that only someone who possesses special powers can see or destroy a vampire" (28).

Vampire hunters go by many names in folklore. Some of the more common are the dhampir, the glog, the vampirdzia, and the sabotnik. Each individual of these types has the possibility of becoming a vampire. The dhampir, glog, and vampirdzia are the hybrid offspring of humans and vampires. The individuals can awaken to their vampiric nature by consuming blood or they can transform into a "vampire hunter who had extraordinary powers" that are "derived from the vampire" (Ramsland 161).

The sabotnik is not necessarily the child of a vampire. These individuals are distinguished by the day of their birth. "Saturday, especially the Saturday before Easter, is a dangerous time to be born: if the native does not become a vampire, (s)he may become a sabotnik" (McClelland 100). A sabotnik is a seer of vampires. Often, these individuals regard their gift-of-sight as a curse.

All vampire hunters in folklore "can recognize vampires" easily and are in that way predisposed to acting as slayers, although they are often regarded as sinister individuals by average society (Handeland 131). "In order to quell the dead intruder without reinforcing the deceased's alienation, a special person is identified to take care of the social problem. That person becomes a vampire hunter or slayer, a surrogate and mediator who battles violence with counteractive violence" (McClelland 29).

An intriguing duality between the vampire and the slayer emerges in folklore. A vampire is brought into the world by violence, whether it be a violent death, the rape of a human mother, or the grisly bite of vampiric monster. Once the revenant exists in the mortal world, it can only be disposed of through violence by the hand of the slayer, "who has the capacity to become a vampire" by virtue of birth. In essence, the slayer "ritually reverses the vampire's coming into existence by reenacting the violent scene that promoted a victim to a villain" (McClelland 98).

In this dualistic scenario, who represents Evil, and who represents Good? Is the vampire, who struggles to survive against all odds, evil? Is the hunter, who tortures and murders an already abused victim, good? Obviously, I may be slightly biased...

Vaarwel,
Ana

Sources:
Celebrity Wonder. (image)
Handeland, Lori. Doomsday Can Wait.
McClelland, Bruce. Slayers and their vampires: a cultural history of killing the dead.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Science of Vampires.

Vampires in Russia

A week ago I wrote an article about malaria in Russia, but I forgot to write the corresponding article on vampires in Russia...me ineptum.

In 1047 AD, a Russian priest penned the term Upir' Likhyi in reference to a Novgorodian prince. This is widely believed to be the first mention of the term 'vampire'. "There is a host of ideas about the origin of vampires. The most common is that sorcerers, witches, werewolves, excommunicates, and those who died unnatural deaths (such as suicides and drunkards) become vampires at their death. People can, however, be destined from birth to become vampires" (Dundes 50). In Russia, "The Upir [is] described as a vampire or werewolf and connected in folklore with wise women and witches" (Hubbs 16).

"The tendency to confuse vampires with werewolves is noticeable...in Russia, as indicated by a curious piece of information pertaining to vampires" (Dundes 50). Felix Oinas reported a "belief in Russia that while a dead vampire destroyed people, a live one, on the contrary, defended them. Each village had its own vampire, as if it were a guard, protecting the inhabitants from his dead companions." Kretzenbacker also "reports that the Russian villages are said to have two kinds of vampires--one bad and the other good" (Green 842). "The tendency of people to believe in good werewolves who counteract the reign of evil [vampires] through their powers of good" is indicated in these accounts. Another possible explanation is that of the dhampir (Balkans), which is an offspring of a human and a vampire. Often, a dhampir is a vampire hunter that protects humans by destroying vampires yet cannot fully assimilate into the human society.

In recent centuries, the term Upir has become almost unheard of in Russia; however, vampires still lurk in the country. "Father Gabriel Rzaczynski...in 1732, affirms, that in Russia...dead bodies, actuated by infernal spirits, sometimes enter people's houses in the night, fall upon men, women, and children, and attempt to suffocate them; and that of such diabolical facts his countrymen have several very authentic relations" (Green 8). In 1889 in Russia, the corpse of an old man who was suspected of being a vampire was dug up, and many of those present maintained that they saw a tail attached to its back" (48). Furthermore, reports of a vampire epidemic are prevalent beginning in "the late seventeenth century" in Russia. "One case from Belgrade in the 1720s involved an individual named Arnold Paole who "died an accidental death, after which several people died suddenly of what had been traditionally viewed as 'vampirism'. Forty days after his burial, Paole was exhumed:

[It was found] that he was complete and incorrupt, also that completely flesh blood had flowed from his eyes, ears, and nose...since they could see from this that he was a true vampire, they drove a stake through his heart, according to their customs, whereupon he let out a noticeable groan and bled copiously.

During this 'epidemic' "numerous cases of the mishandling of corpses believed to be vampires have become known" (50). In Russia, "the treatment of the revenant was somewhat different" from other corpses. "Vampires were apt to be disposed of in a desolate area, but not buried, and often were thrown into a body of water." This does not have to do with the idea that water restricts the vampire, instead it is "derived from the vampire's habit of causing droughts."(Barber 37). This superstition indicates the belief that the dead "influence the weather" and the vampires are particularly powerful with the gift of drought (34).

As in many other countries, "suicides, murder victims, people who drowned, and even victims of stroke were particularly at risk" for becoming vampires (Barber 34). Furthermore, there is an interesting belief about fatal communicable diseases that circulates in Russia. The tale indicates that "the first victim of a disease is a vampire" and will then cause the deaths of others in its vicinity (37).

"There are clear indications that the beliefs in vampires have deep roots among the Slavs and obviously go back to the Proto-Slavic period. These beliefs are...well documented among the early Russians" (Dundes 54). Countless stories exist, and I cannot tell them all here, but I will explain some other references that may be of interest to you. Creatures related to vampires in Russia are the Erestun, Eretiku, and the Kornwolf. The Kornwolf most obviously refers to a werewolf. And the Erestun and Eretiku (also known as Xloptuny; male and female respectively) is the "spirit of an evil sorcerer--one who has either learned to split his soul into separate but functional halves, or one who through some great misfortune has lost his mortal body" and possessed the body of "a person at the brink of death." Erestun attacks the friends and family of the host and "takes only a little blood, leaving the victim alive but weakened." Also, the Erestun can be killed by being "staked, beheaded and burned" (Maberry 113). These methods of eradication still echo in the vampire fictions of modern day. Is there truth behind it, or is it simply legend?

Do svidanja,
Ana


Sources:
Barber, Paul. Vampires, burial and death: folklore and reality.
Dundes, Alan. The Vampire.
Green, Thomas A. Folklore.
Hubbs, Joanna. Mother Russia.
Maberry, Jonathan. Vampire Universe.