This is our second post of six.

5) The Vampire Myth

Concurrent with the written presentation below, which we invite all to read at some point, we’ll briefly reiterate on ZOOM this topic of The Vampire Myth, welcoming comment and fielding any questions.

We will then shift the conversation, opening the floor to discuss each other’s picks for most frightening books and movies (or television episodes).

6) The horror, the horror…

From our teenage or subsequent years, we all remember a particularly spooky, suspenseful, startling, shocking, book, movie, or TV episode that creeped us out, or scared us stiff, and has stuck with us all these years!

“The Monkey’s Paw,” The Exorcist, The Haunting of Hill House, “Children of the Corn,” Psycho, Alien, the Doctor Who episode “Blink,” Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Blair Witch Project, the X-Files episode “Home”?… Are any of these your picks, or do you have others to put forth?

Which are your picks, and what was it about this book, and that film or TV episode, that terrified you so?

Those unable to join our ZOOM chat this afternoon may contribute nevertheless by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature to type in their picks, and any brief commentary. We welcome your participation.

PRESENTATION—THE VAMPIRE MYTH: FOLKLORE AND FACT

In March 2004, MonSFFA welcomed as a special guest speaker locally-based writer/editor Nancy Kilpatrick, lauded by Fangoria magazine as “Canada’s answer to Anne Rice.” An award-winning author of numerous vampire-themed novels and short stories, Ms. Kilpatrick was joined on the dais by club members Cathy Palmer-Lister and Keith Braithwaite for a panel discussion/Q&A on the topic of vampires, perhaps the most iconic terrors of horror fiction and film. 

Keith’s notes on the panel capsulize that which the panel imparted to audience members:

The Vampire, an Ancient and Global Legend

Vampires, and supernatural entities that predate the term, are part of the folklore of almost every culture on Earth. While the word “vampire” is of relatively modern origin, revenants, spirits, and demons of vampiric attribute can be found in the mythologies of the ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and other civilizations, and undoubtedly influenced the folklore of ensuing societies. Generally human-like in appearance, these evil, undead creatures feasted on a diet of human blood, and sometimes flesh.

Descriptions of vampires vary from region to region, country to country.

Certain European vampires are distinguished by red hair and a characteristic cleft lip, or harelip. The Bavarian variety sleeps with its left eye open and its thumbs linked. Purple-faced are Russian vampires, according to legend, while the Bulgarian type is distinguished by its single nostril.

Some Chinese vampires are said to draw their strength from the light of the moon, others come to be by way of magic, these drawing “qi,” or life-force from their victims. A hopping gait and fuzzy, greenish skin are unique characteristics.

Several female vampires are to be found in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Appearing as beautiful women by day, they transform by night into winged freaks with a taste for entrails, blood, or human foetuses! These fiends sport an elongated, hollow tongue with which to feed. Some are capable of severing their upper torsos in order that they may fly off into the night to prey upon sleeping pregnant women.

The Mexican vampire is readily recognized as a ghastly chimera, its horrific face a fleshless skull. Further north, reportedly dwelling in the Rocky Mountains, is a vampire that feeds through its nose, sucking blood from its victims’ ears!

The Western Vampire

Stemming almost entirely from the Balkans in Eastern Europe, the Western archetype of the vampire, that of a preternaturally strong, virtually immortal, blood-feasting creature of the night, is but one of many variations when considering vampire mythology, worldwide. The Western vampire, however, is arguably the world’s best known and most popular, no doubt due, at least in modern times, to the widespread exporting of Western culture.

Travellers visiting the remote regions of 16th century Transylvania returned home with strange and terrifying tales of ungodly devils, monstrosities neither living nor dead, which feasted on human blood under darkness of night. These abominations were called, variously, “vurculac,” “wampyr,” and “vampire.”

Transylvanian and other Eastern European vampires shared common characteristics. The legends tell of hellions gaunt in appearance, pale of complexion, having full, red lips, pointed canine teeth, and long, sharp fingernails. They exuded a foul stench, likened to that of a rotting corpse. They possessed superhuman strength, supposedly derived from their diet of blood, and cast a hypnotic gaze upon their prey from behind demonically gleaming eyes. They also possessed an uncanny shape-shifting ability and were able to assume the forms of a variety of animals, and further, to command the nocturnal faunae of the forest.

The Science and the Superstition

Fear and superstition fed the vampire myth during the late Middle Ages, the prevalent conjecture being that these nightmarish monsters were evil spirits capable of inhabiting and animating corpses for malevolent purposes. Alternately, persons viewed as sinful or wicked for one reason or another—suicides, those excommunicated from the church, or buried without appropriate rites—might return from the grave, some believed, “reborn” as vampires. Barred from the afterlife, the souls of these vile individuals continued to utilize their lifeless bodies.

But vampire lore did not grow exclusively from superstitious fantasy. Circumstances very real contributed, as well, to the making of the myth.

Unsolved mass murders and cattle mutilations by wild animals are among the kinds of incidents in those days that provided ample fodder for tales of vampirism. The surreptitious removal of corpses from graves by, for example, sexual deviants like necrophiliacs, left behind indisputable “proof” that the dead could leave the grave to any predisposed to such beliefs. And one can easily imagine that the rare, crazed person driven by a pathological or physiological thirst for human blood would quickly be deemed a vampire by his or her frightened neighbours.

Commonly believed to be a source of vampire legend was premature burial. Several centuries ago, it was not unusual for comatose or cataleptic individuals, or even falling-down drunks, to be mistaken for dead, and so buried alive. It is theorized that when subsequent exhumations found that their bodies had not decomposed as a dead body normally would, rumours that these poor unfortunates were vampires soon spread.

One episode in Serbia prompted the government to send a detachment of soldiers, including a few army surgeons, to investigate a village whose panicked inhabitants were suffering an apparent epidemic of vampirism. Thirteen graves were opened and only three bodies were deemed to be undergoing the normal process of decomposition. The others, some longer underground than those three, were reportedly rosy-cheeked, firm of flesh, and when dissected, found to have within them fresh blood. They were promptly decapitated and burned to ashes.

Such anecdotes, inevitably enhanced with each recounting, were picked up by travellers and spread throughout Europe, fuelling the vampire myth.

Also contributing to the myth were the noble Slavs of the 1400s, whose interbreeding resulted in a number of genetic disorders, including a rare disease, erythropoietic protoporphyria, which was not diagnosed until the 19th century. This disease is a pigment disorder which causes the body to produce an excess of protoporphyin, basic to red blood cells. Symptoms include unbearable itching, redness and edema, and bleeding cracks in the skin after brief exposure to sunlight. The physical appearance of those who suffered from this affliction, and their necessary avoidance of daylight, fed right into the belief in vampires.

The Vampire in Art

For centuries, artists have depicted vampires, from great works of fine art to commercial illustrations for books, comics, films and other forms of pop culture. Here is a sampling:

The Vampire (1897), by Sir Philip William Burne-Jones. This painting was exhibited at The New Gallery in London just a few months prior to the first publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The artist, son of British pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, never achieved his father’s level of recognition and fame, and is known largely for this single work of art, and the story behind it.

Sir Philip was, briefly, involved romantically with beautiful actress Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. But his infatuation with her was rather more than hers for him, and she soon left him heartbroken. Painting from memory, he modelled his vampire after her.

Inspired by the image, Sir Philip’s cousin, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem about a foolish man destroyed by a heartless woman, which helped to drum up publicity for the painting prior to its exhibition. Sir Philip displayed a copy of the poem alongside his artwork.

Shown here is a printed reproduction of The Vampire from an illustrated period publication of Kipling’s poem. The actual painting’s whereabouts are currently unknown; Sir Philip may have sold the work, or destroyed it.

Love and Pain (1895), by Edvard Munch. The esteemed Norwegian artist painted six different versions of this scene between 1893 and 1895, and later in his career, returned yet again to his depiction of a woman kissing a man on the neck. The kiss, the man’s submissive pose, and the woman’s flaming red hair led some to interpret the painting to be of a vampire embracing her victim. Though sometimes called Vampire, Munch never referred to as, or so named his work. Yet today, this painting is liberally interpreted as vampire-themed by enthusiasts.

Another work so interpreted is Une semaine de bonté (1934), a collage novel and artist’s book by Max Ernst. Created by clipping images from Victorian novels and encyclopaedias, and combining and arranging these to create new pictures, Ernst was inspired by the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He divided his work into seven sections, each named for one of the days of the week, with each having a theme, one of which was “Blood.” The work consists of five volumes, for which the artist created 182 dark, bizarre, dreamlike images. One in particular has been widely taken to be that of a vampire, here reproduced.

Creatures of the Night (1969), by Frank Frazetta. The venerated “Godfather of Fantasy Art” celebrated two classic monsters with this canvas, perhaps the two most famous of all. And one of them is a vampire!

Vampirella is a comic book superheroine and, for all intents and purposes, vampire pin-up girl! She was co-created in 1969 by noted science fiction fan/literary agent/magazine publisher Forrest J Ackerman and pioneering underground comix artist Trina Robbins—it was Robbins who came up with the lovely lady’s revealing costume. Frazetta painted Vampirella for the first edition of her self-titled comic book series, but the artist most associated with the character is José Gonzáles, whose iconic rendering (left) was made into a popular poster (1972).

In 2010, Joe Jusko employed Vampirella to pay homage to Ackerman, who had died two years earlier (right).

Zora la Vampira (1972-1985) was an erotic/horror comic book series about a female vampire’s sexually-charged adventures as she sought to satisfy her taste for both blood and sex! She was one of many such supernatural characters in the fumetti tradition of sex, violence, and horror. Fumetti are, simply, Italian comic books. This cover illustration was painted by one of the most talented artists of the genre, Alessandro Biffignandi.

Commercial Art: A British merchandise and jewellery designer, and contemporary fantasy illustrator, Anne Stokes (www.annestokes.com) has produced artwork for books, record albums, and games, including Dungeons & Dragons. Her art has also been licenced for posters, T-shirts, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, tarot and greeting cards, coffee mugs, and jewellery. This piece (left), entitled Await the Night, is from her Gothic Collection and was adapted, too, as a collectible figurine.

To the right is cover art produced for a paperback vampire novel, circa 1960; the artist is unknown and likely one of the many unsung in-house commercial illustrators hired to turn out such artwork.

The best Vampire Movie Posters featured dynamic designs and gloriously garish artwork rendered in a variety of styles.

The Vampire on Page and Screen

History’s poets and writers have showcased the vampire over the centuries, some adding to the mythology an erotic element. Among the most influential works of the early 19th century was “The Vampyre” (1819), a short story written by John William Polidori (1795-1821), personal physician to Romantic poet Lord Byron.

During the summer of 1816—the so-called Year Without a Summer, a recent volcanic eruption having caused unusually cool temperatures and heavy rain over Europe—Byron welcomed guests to his rented villa near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. In the evenings, the group amused themselves telling ghost stories by the fire, until their host proposed that they each write a horror story of their own. Polidori’s “The Vampyre” came of this challenge, which also, famously, begat Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818).

Victorian vampire tales often featured an alluring, elegant neck-biter, seductively preying on young, virtuous women who find themselves at the same time repelled by and attracted to the gentleman. Gothic horror virtuoso Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s (1814-1873) novella, Carmilla (1872), offered readers a Sapphic angle, his titular character the template for many a lesbian vampire to come.

Byron, Goethe, Tolstoy, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas, pére are among the literary greats who were inspired by the vampire. Contemporary novelists Anne Rice, Chelsey Quinn Yarbro, Laurel Hamilton, Montreal-based Nancy Kilpatrick, Stephanie Meyer, Richard Matheson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, and countless others, followed in their footsteps.

Advancing the genre on screen were films like F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), Tod Browning’s definitive Dracula (1931), and the numerous vampire pictures of the Hammer Horror oeuvre (1958-1974) starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, and others.

More recent fare has included The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985; remade 2011), The Lost Boys (1987), the Francis Ford Coppola-directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), 30 Days of Night (2007), the Swedish Let the Right One In (2008; remade in English as Let Me In, 2010), as well as television series like the Canadian-made, Toronto-set Forever Knight (1992-1996), Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and its spin-off, Angel (1999-2004), True Blood (2008-2014), and The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017).

Thomas Peckett Prest (1810-1859), a hack writer and prolific author of penny dreadfuls, co-wrote with James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884) perhaps the first vampire best-seller, Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (serialized 1845-1847; book, 1847). The gory tale predated by 50 years that undisputed masterwork of vampire fiction, penned by a relatively unknown Irish writer who, early in his career, had served as an unpaid theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, a newspaper co-owned at the time by the aforementioned Le Fanu.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker’s (1847-1912) Dracula was first published in 1897 and his Transylvanian count has come to epitomize the vampire.

Stoker’s research of Eastern Europe’s vampire legends, while preparing to write his novel, led him to the grisly stories surrounding one of history’s most savage figures, Vlad Basarab.

Vlad the Impaler

Stoker based his fictional blood-thirsty count in part on this very real and equally blood-thirsty late-1400s ruler of Wallachia, now part of southern Romania. Vlad III, also known as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, was a son of the notoriously cold-blooded Prince Vlad Dracul (translates as “dragon”). Vlad the younger thus became Draculaea, or Dracula, son of the dragon.

Vlad Dracula was a formidable warrior but it his sadistic brutality that earned him his inhuman reputation. According to various historical accounts, he would have his victims flayed, dismembered, and roasted or boiled over flame, among other torments. But his favourite means of execution was to impale his victims on long wooden stakes, which brought about a slow and excruciatingly painful death. Men, women, even children, noble or peasant, were not spared his unusual malice. The crossroads and fields surrounding his castle were a hellish display of impaled corpses. In one rampage, some 30,000 met their end on the stake! While reports of his barbarity differ as to details, there are sufficient affidavits from various sources to conclude that Vlad Dracula was, indeed, one of history’s most diabolical personages.

Elizabeth Báthory

Another historical figure whose supposed cruelty contributed to the vampire myth was the comely Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, who began a bloody spree about 100 years after Vlad Dracula died.

Initiated into the black arts by her manservant and her nurse, she is believed to have engaged in macabre pleasures which involved the drinking of human blood. With her husband often away at war, and later, following his death by undetermined causes, Báthory and her minions would lure young, chaste girls to her castle with promises of employment as servants. But once there, these innocents would be hung on chains, their veins opened, and their blood drained so that the countess, obsessed with her own beauty, might bathe in their virgin blood, which she apparently believed would preserve her youthfulness. This and other devilish tortures awaited any maiden who found herself within the walls of the countess’ Castle Csejthe!

Having grown careless disposing of her victims’ bodies, she was eventually found out, arrested, and brought to trial. As a noblewoman, she was spared the execution meted out to her accomplices. Instead, she was walled up in her bedchamber, with only a narrow slit in the masonry permitted, through which she received food and water. She died after four years of this imprisonment.

Báthory’s depraved excesses may well have been exaggerated with repeated tellings, and some historians argue that her crimes might also have been purposely embellished to politically benefit her aristocratic rivals. Others speculate that she was almost certainly that rarity, a female sexual sadist and serial killer.

Often cited as an inspiration, it must be noted that Stoker’s research for Dracula may, or may not have extended to Báthory’s blood-soaked story.

The Vampire Endures

Today, the vampire is a fixture of popular culture and, arguably, the most preeminent monster of horror literature and film, with tabletop RPGs and video games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Castlevania extending the mythos further still.

The unquestionable appeal of the vampire has been tied by some to blood, coursing through our bodies, the life-sustaining essence of our very lives, and additionally has been posited as our means of metaphorically coping with a supressed desire for sexual abandon, as well as the dread of our own mortality. So beguiling are Dracula and his cohorts that within the Goth subculture, for example, adherents of “sanguine vampirism” actually drink each other’s blood, motivated by a potent fascination with the fiction, the established aesthetic and lifestyle, an occult belief, or for some, a cult-like devotion to the long and terrible legacy of the vampire throughout human history.

A less expansive version of this primer was published in Warp 57 (Spring 2004).

Next post: The mid-meeting break, at 3:00PM.