In Leviticus, so the Bible tells us, the life is in the blood. Thus, sacrifices meant to appease the gods involved blood and the offering of life to the forces that gave it. With civilization, more enlightened cultures substituted an animal or a bird for the human victim, but the great basic offering remained the same--the blood, the very life was offered, and what gave life to the flesh was also, of course, the blood that coursed through it.
The offering does not always allay this insatiable thirst for blood among those who bestow life, and those who remain alive do not always sacrifice enough to sufficiently offer their sacrifices for the dead. If the blood is not freely given, the dead will rise from their graves and attack the living in order to satisfy their unholy thirst for that which was not freely given. From such beliefs, perhaps, came the terrible legend of the vampire.
There are tales of vampirism in the chronicles of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and ancient China. Belief is still strong in Europe even today, especially in Greece, where the vampire apparently made his first appearance on the continent.
The vampire is not a walking dead man; although it cannot be said that he is a living man. And the most famous vampires, at least in our civilization, has a Slavic lineage. The vampire belief arose in this part of the world from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the era of the powerful robber barons who ruled their villages with bloody and brutal hands.
This was the time of the horrifying Countess Elizabeth Bathory, real-life Transylvanian Queen of the Vampires, who murdered and drank the blood of some 650 young girls.
There were many ways that a man or woman could become a vampire, such as leading an evil life. Other ways included copulation between the Devil and a witch--a master of the black arts during life and a vampire after death; in Transylvania, those born between Christmas and Epiphany possess the taint of the vampire; those born on a Saturday; or any corpse that has an animal leap over its grave, which is why doors are securely locked during funerals--windows are left open in order that the soul can find its way toward heaven, but one must watch to make certain that no animal or bird enters by that opening.
Vampirism is a belief current particularly in many Catholic countries of Europe: a man who is excommunicated will become a vampire. Montague Summers, the one-time priest who made an intense study of these creatures of evil repeats frequently that there are three necessities for the existence of the vampire: a dead body, the Devil, and the permission of God--although he doesn't say why God's permission is essential or why He would permit such evil (see his work The Vampire, His Kith & Kin, New York: University Books, 1960).
The spread of the belief of vampires was undoubtedly greatly assisted by the horrors of premature burial--a century ago it was not unusual for the burial of a person in a state of catalepsy or coma. Summers, in fact, states that at the turn of the century, there was at least one premature burial each week in the United States (he was writing in 1928). One can easily understand Poe's fascination with and repeated reference to premature burial.
Importantly, one must make a distinction between fiction and folklore when studying vampires. The vampire of legend is quite a different figure from that of fictional accounts. He is apt to be an untitled peasant, a quite average individual possessing nothing but the terrible vampire taint. He is lean and gaunt, extremely pale of face, except for the period just after feeding. His eyes are agleam with an unnatural redness reminiscent of hellfire, and his teeth are extremely white, the canines pointed as fangs. His nails, for some reason, are permitted to grow to an exceptional length and are dirty with bits of dried blood and torn flesh. His breath is remarkable for its foul odor. He lies generally with eyes open and is completely aware, even during the hours of daylight, of all that goes on about him.
There are variations on the methods for detecting a vampire. Most reliable is that he casts no reflection in a glass, mirror, or pool of water. In Grecian legend, there are vampires who can move about during daylight, but most often we find that he can only leave his grave two hours prior to midnight and must return before the first crow of the cock at dawn. He has hair, like the werewolf, in his palms and an index finger of unusual length. Vampires may have, in fact, been werewolves in their "normal" life.
The vampire lives in his coffin within its original grave, or it may strew the bottom with a layer of soil from its native soil. The love of a man fated to become a vampire is obviously perilous because he will first attack his loved one. The physical attack follows a predictable pattern: it begins with an embrace, during which the victim comes under his control by the forcefulness of his hypnotic eyes and then lulled into a sense of false security; a passionate, greedy kiss follows, after which the vampire moves down to the neck and bites through the jugular of his victim. He is possessed of curative powers as well, since, when he is finished, the bleeding stops and the bite is closed and healed.
The slightest taste of blood sends the vampire into a frenzied, orgy of feeding; yet he is in a constant battle for survival, feared by all creatures and constantly sought out for destruction. To avoid death, his most potent weapon is the ability to change shape. In fiction, he most often assumes the shape of a giant bat, which adds to the terror of a creature silhouetted against the silver of the moon, lingering menacingly outside a victim's window--he quietly leads the victim into a false sense of security before the attack, then gently lands on the sleeper's chest before biting the victim on the throat. One can picture the romance of such a picture even in the horror, which is why such a view of the metamorphosis is typical in fiction. The bat is, generally speaking, a feared and despised mammal.
In leaving his grave, the vampire can also turn himself into a mist and can enter through the smallest apertures to reach his victim. The form of a wolf is also assumed on occasion, which gives him the advantage of strength and quickness. He need not depend entirely upon his wit and talents for metamorphosis, however, for the vampire is
