Mistaken Identity

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race... (Byron)

"Eight decades before anyone had heard of Dracula, the vampire Lord Ruthven" was unleashed "the world in the first vampire short story, 'The Vampyre,' published in 1819." Initially attributed to Lord Byron, 'The Vampyre' "was an immediate popular success" (Polidori vii). The true author, John Polidori had "accompanied Byron on a continental journey" and modeled his story after that sojourn. Lord Byron became Lord Ruthven, "a mysterious stranger who entered London society" and was eventually revealed to be a vampire.

Described as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre", 'The Vampyre' "took the crude entity of European folklore and transformed it into a complex and interesting character, the first vampire in English fiction" (Frayling, Melton 589). The story "exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public" and helped establish a literary fascination that would last centuries (Polidori vii).

In 'The Vampyre', the creature exploded from the folkloric mold. "No longer was the vampire simply a mindless demonic force unleashed on humankind, but a real person--albeit a resurrected one--capable of moving unnoticed in human society and picking and choosing victims. He was not an impersonal evil entity, but a moral degenerate dominated by evil motives, and a subject about whom negative moral judgments were proper" (Melton 589).

In his story, Polidori transforms Lord Byron, the poet, into Lord Ruthven, the vampire, and he transposes the vampiric being from the scapegoat for natural and moral ills to the embodiment of evil. In this case of Polidori's tale, who is the victim of the greatest misidentification? Is it Polidori himself, whose initial glory was usurped by the name of Byron? Is it the romantic poet who was equated with a devilish creature? Or, is it the vampire who was forever transformed into Evil incarnate?

So long,
Ana

Sources:
Byron, George Gordon. "The Giaour."
Frayling, Christopher. Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula.
Melton, J Gordon. The Vampire Book.
Polidori, John. 'The Vampyre'.

Full Moon

"As the moonbeams, in consequence of the luminary rising higher and higher in the heavens, came to touch the figure that lay extended on the rising ground, a perceptible movement took place in it. The limbs appeared to tremble, and although it did not rise up, the whole body gave signs of vitality" (Rymer, chapter 5).

In the early vampire fictions, the moon called the vampire from the ground and restored animation to its corpse. "Because the vampire is a nocturnal creature," it was expected to have "special relationship to the moon" (Melton 469). Moonbeams contained restorative powers, and the magic salve of lunar light healed all wounds.

In John Polidori's story The Vampyre (c.1819), "the vampire was killed in the course of the story" (Melton 469). After the "first cold ray of the moon that rose after his death" struck his body, the vampire revived (Polidori).

James Malcolm Rymer built vampiric healing on the same principle as Polidori in Varney the Vampyre (alternatively attributed to Jonathan Preskett Prest; published 1845-47). In this penny dreadful (a pulp-fiction story that was published as a series of short articles), the moon is so pivotal to healing that vampires "always endeavor to make their feast of blood, for the revival of their bodily powers, on some evening immediately preceding a full moon, because if any accident befalls them, such as being shot, or otherwise killed or wounded, they can recover by lying down somewhere where the full moon's rays will fall upon them" (Rymer, chapter 4).

Your logical question is: Does it work? And, for that I say: Bah. I've never been the type to howl at the moon imploring it to save me from my ailments. Full moon equates more light than normal, and superior luminescence encourages humans to risk nocturnal strolls. I harbor no ill-will against the moon goddess, but I'll leave the lunar worship to the wolves.

After Bram Stoker associated the moon with Dracula's "command over the wolves", "the moon became much more associated with werewolves" than with vampires in fiction (Melton 469).

Salud y vida,
Ana

Sources:
Melton, J. The Vampire Book.
Polidori, John. The Vampyre.
Rymer, James Malcolm. Varney the Vampire.

Homosexuality

Previous articles expounded upon the topics of sexuality and the female vampire and cross-dressing vampires. Following that train of thought, we reach the topic of homosexuality and the vampire.

In literature, the vampire "mixed elements of horror and sexuality. To many, it became a symbol of the release of the powerful emotional energies believed to be bottled up by restrictions on sexual behavior common to many societies" (Melton 341). Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduces the lesbian vampire relationship in his poem "Christabel". In the following verses, we read how "Geraldine leapt upon the bed, and with sudden vehemence enfolded Christabel in her arms".

She took two paces and a stride
And lay down by the maiden's side
And in her arms the maid she took (Coleridge 10).

In the short story "Carmilla", Sheridan Le Fanu draws out the idea of lesbian vampires: "Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever" (Le Fanu, Ch 4).

These early works introduce female homosexuality into vampire fiction; however, nearly a hundred years pass before male homosexuality rears its head. "Not until the sexual revolution of the 1960s did a male homosexual vampire appear...During the 1970s several...titles with gay vampires appeared," but "only Tenderness of Wolves was released to the general public. The movie was devoted to the case of Fritz Haarmann [Graphic violence warning], a homosexual serial killer who murdered a number of young boys and drank their blood" (Melton 342).

After the 1970s, homosexual vampires became common place. Most vampires were regarded as ambiguous in gender and sensual in nature. The product of these notions is the homosexual or bisexual vampire. However, the "most significant expression of a vampiric gay relationship" may be contained within Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, in which vampires are unable to consummate sex. Their sexual expression is translated to the sharing of blood, which is, according to Rice, "far superior" to sexual intercourse.

Whether or not blood transfer is more pleasing than a purely sexual connection, I will not say. However, it is important to note how the vampire in literature spearheads the evolution of social norms. The vampire rejects society's taboos and acknowledges alternative lifestyles. The creature of the night, who is considered dark and dead, acts as a guiding light for liberal lives.

Kisses,
Ana
I acknowledge that the above post contains a (quite obvious) pun. It's not meant to be offensive. I'm trusting that you have and exercise a sense of humor in the same way that I laugh off the stereotypes that seek to constrain me.

Sources:
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Christabel"
Le Fanu, Sheridan. "Carmilla".
Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book.

Hypnotic powers of vampires

"I watched [the vampires] with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me...I felt myself struggling to wake to some call of my instincts; nay, my very soul was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. I was becoming hypnotized" (Stoker 44).

Dracula, by Bram Stoker, "contains countless instances of vampires using hypnosis to overpower their victims" (Abbot 39). "The vampire's hypnotic hold on a person" intensifies and evolves after a blood exchange (Melton 357). "In Dracula, it becomes clear that after Mina is bitten, she has a subliminal awareness of her attacker's whereabouts. Under hypnosis, she can describe what she sees and hears as if she were inside the monster" (Ramsland 73). Van Helsing, the vampire hunter, dabbles with "hypnosis but in comparison with the vampire's inherent mastery of these forces, he is a novice." (Abbot 39). Exploiting the hypnotic link between vampire and victim, Van Helsing "hypnotized Mina, and while in a trance she was able to give him information on Dracula's progress on the return trip to his castle" (Melton 357).

"All of Dracula's characteristics" including "his use of telepathy and hypnosis...are products of a nineteenth-century reexamination of science and the supernatural, and suggest the entrance of scientific study into a period of extraordinary science where all systems of belief are challenged and anything is possible" (Abbot 40). Mind-control defied the autonomy of the individual and terrified in the populace by threatening to use their own bodies against themselves.

Approximately a hundred years before Stoker wrote his novel, the public heard the early whispers of hypnotic induction. "Franz Anton Mesmer late in the eighteenth century...first brought hypnosis to popular awareness," although scholars and a majority of the masses regarded it as quackery. In 1843, "John Braid coined the term hypnosis...in reference to Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep." (Ramsland 74). Around the time that Stoker wrote Dracula, the medical community investigated hypnosis as a possible alternative or supplement to medical procedures and as a treatment for psychiatric disorders.

However, "the use of hypnosis as a tool of a vampire" may not have originated "with Stoker. Many eastern European vampire legends suggest that the vampire could hypnotize the living in order to overpower their victims" (Abbot 37). Whether the idea of forced sleep or mind control is an authentic element of the folklore, or if it was attributed to the legends post-eighteenth century, is a mystery. Some experts assert that true "hypnotic powers were not evident in the accounts of the folkloric vampire," instead claiming that since the vampire "often attacked at night while its victims slept" hypnosis was not necessary. Victims who reported sleep-walking or waking with "the vampire hovering over them" may have simply been in deep, natural sleep.

To my loyal followers and faithful readers:
If you are brazen, take a stab at the answer to this question: Do I lure people with hypnosis?

Adeu,
Ana



Sources:
Abbot, Stacey. Celluloid vampires: life after death...
Melton, Gordon J. The Vampire Book: The encyclopedia of the undead.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula.
Ramsland, Katherine. The Science of Vampires.

Vampires in Belarus

"In films a vampire and werewolf are distinctly different monsters, but in folklore they are sometimes very much alike" (Maberry, Vampire 313). An interesting case emerges in Belarus with the Mjertovjec. Fabled to be the son of a werewolf, a witch, or a dead bridegroom, this creature "has qualities of both monsters" during its prolonged existence (May 10. Maberry, Vampire 213). Apart from birth and death, an individual can transform into a Mjertovjec by following the path of "an apostate...[someone who deliberately abandons faith or defies the church], heresy, or [commits] other crimes against God." (213)

"At the core of the legend is one of the strangest and most frightening twists of supernatural folklore: In Belarus, when a werewolf or witch dies, the spirit does not dissipate or 'move on'; instead it returns to Earth" "as a vampire" (Maberry, Vampire 213, Maberry, Bad 248). This is not an ordinary vampire, but a very powerful one who terrorizes people from midnight until morning. "The Mjertovjec is a night-hunter and must return to its grave once a rooster has crowed three times. If it does not, it loses its ability to fly and then flops to the ground, where anyone with a torch and some kindling can kill it" (Maberry, Vampire 214). The creature is only susceptible to fire, but a sharpened iron spike driven through its heart can immobilize it in the grave for a short while.

"[N]ot all of the Mjertovjec rises from the grave: Only its head and upper chest tear free of the corpse and float through the air to hunt for blood. This peculiarity is rarely seen...among vampires of Europe" although, it is a common phenomenon in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia (214).

Curiously, "the Mjertovjec does share in" the quintessential "obsessive-compulsive need to stop and count seeds left outside" (214). Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie reports that the way approaching the grave in Small Russia [Belarus] is covered with seeds, which the vampire (Mjertovjec) must pick up before it can return.

Der Weg zum Grabe wird in Kleinrussland mit Mohnkornern bestreut, welche der Vampyr (Mjertovjec) aufzulesen hat, ehe er wiederkommen kann (Berliner 143).

Among other European vampires, the Mjertovjec is particularly grotesque with a purple face and a mutilated body. During all stages of its existence, it proves itself to be an enemy to the Church and to the populace, and it continues to curse the villages even after its mortal death.

Sources:
Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, et al. Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie.
Maberry, Jonathan. Bad Moon Rising.
Maberry, Jonathan. Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings...
May, Heinrich. Die behandlungen der sage von Eginhard und Emma.

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 South Florida

Miami: "The happy hunting ground of the devil."

South Florida sets an idyllic stage for quite a few vampire dramas in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. "Miami beckons;" she offers "victims just waiting" to be ensnared(Rice: Queen; 491). It is "the vampires' city".

What an attractive opening scene is "South Beach at sunset, in the luxurious warmth of the winterless winter, clean and thriving and drenched in electric light, the gentle breeze moving in from the placid sea, across the dark margin of cream-colored sand, to cool the smooth broad pavements full of happy mortal children" (Rice: Tale; 9). South Florida provides a paradise for all who dwell near the Atlantic shore. Vampires stroll beneath the fronds of coconut palms, silhouetted in the moonlight. From perches in al fresco cafes, they watch the scantily-clad humans as they march down the promenade. Translucent sarongs cling to the oiled thighs of women from every nation. Men, fresh from the gym and glazed in sweat, gawk at halter-bound breasts as their bearers bounce between bars and nightclubs. Miami Beach is a market for flesh--in more ways than one.

"Most people have no idea how many vampires are out there" (Mooney). In South Florida a "community of vampires" thrives. These individuals "sometimes spell [the word] vampyre to differentiate" themselves "from the fictional...forms. They identify with the lonely, torn spirits in vampire stories, but these folks are not your typical goth kids. Nor are they role playing. Some of them claim to be psychic vampires with an ability to drain energy with their minds. And some are sanguine - vampires who lust after and feed on human blood."

The community in South Florida "consists of circles of like-minded vampires and donors, often called 'black swans,' who are willing to let a vampire drink from them." And, wherever vampires thrive, vampire hunters lurk. These "slayers" are "deranged individuals who sometimes try to harm or kill the vampires" (Mooney). Inspired by tales like Van Helsing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, these glory-seekers arm themselves with arsenals of ridiculous weapons and gallop off, unthinking, like tragic heroes. But, the "slayers" are not heroes and the vampires are not demons incarnate.

"As vampires become pop-culture icons...it's important for the public to understand the truth about this large, mostly unknown segment of society." Vampires are not necessarily devil-worshipers. "There are a lot of Christian vampires. There are Jewish vampires, Buddhist vampires, vampires of every religion. It's just about a philosophy on energy" (Mooney). "It's not Satanism, and we are not evil," declares Evan Christopher, who hosts a Vampire Gathering in Florida. In truth, most vampires of South Florida do not believe themselves to be evil, and they adhere to a strict code of ethics that protects the individuals and the community.

In Miami, the curtain opens in the real "Theatre Des Vampires," but whether you attend a comedy or a tragedy is a matter of perspective (Rice: Vampire).

Sources:
Mooney, Michael J. "South Florida's underground vampires lust for more than your heart." New Times. 03 Feb 2009.

Rice, Anne. The Tale of a Body Thief.

Rice, Anne. The Queen of the Damned.