Welcome to "The Zephyr of Vampires", the first site that tells you all about vampires, their history and their origin
A site from Zhang Hanyun and James D'Onofrio
Vampires walk among us. But these people aren’t the stuff of nightmares – far from it actually. Just sit down for a drink with one of them and ask for yourself. That’s if you can find one. They aren’t necessarily looking to be found.
I’ve spent five years conducting ethnographic studies of the real vampires living in New Orleans and Buffalo. They are not easy to find, but when you do track them down, they can be quite friendly.
“Real vampires” is the collective term by which these people are known. They’re not “real” in the sense that they turn into bats and live forever but many do sport fangs and just as many live a primarily nocturnal existence. These are just some of the cultural markers real vampires adopt to express a shared (and, according to them, biological) essence – they need blood (human or animal) or psychic energy from donors in order to feel healthy.
Becoming a Vampire
Their self-described nature begins to manifest around or just after puberty. It derives, according to them, from the lack of subtle energies their bodies produce – energies other people take for granted. That’s the general consensus anyway. It’s a condition they claim to be unable to change. So, they embrace it.
The real vampire community, like the legendary figure it emulates, knows few national boundaries, from Russia and South Africa to England and the United States. Particularly in the internet age, vampires are often well attuned to community issues.
This is more true for some than others though. I found the vampires of Buffalo to be keen to keep up to date with the global community, while those in New Orleans were often more interested in the activities of their local vampire houses (an affiliated group of vampires usually led by a vampire elder who helps his or her house members to acclimate to their vampiric nature).
The Varied Vampire Community
Some houses, and indeed whole vampire communities, as in the case of New Orleans, will combine their efforts to organize charity events, like feeding (not feeding on) the homeless. However, despite their humanitarian efforts, real vampires don’t go around advertising who they are for fear of discrimination by people who simply don’t understand them.
Some semblance of the real vampire community has existed since at least the early to mid-1970s, but my own dealings began in 2009 when I entered the New Orleans community clinging to my digital voice recorder.
I eventually met around 35 real vampires there, but the total number in New Orleans is easily double that. They ranged in age from 18 to 50 and represented both sexes equally. They practiced sanguinarian (blood) and psychic feeding – taking energy using, for example, the mind or hands.
Blood is generally described by my study participants as tasting metallic, or “coppery” but can also be influenced by the donor’s physiology, or even how well he or she is hydrated. Some psychic vampires use tantric feeding, that is through erotic or sexual encounters, while others use what could be described as astral feeding or feeding on another from afar. And others feed through emotion.
Afterwards, blood-drinking and psychic vampires feel energized or otherwise better than they would if they were to sustain themselves on regular food alone, like fruits, fish, and vegetables (which they eat too).
These vampires described themselves as atheistic, monotheistic or polytheistic. Some identified as heterosexual, some homosexual and some bisexual. Some were married, some were divorced and some were parents.
Unquestionably, I found the vampires I met to be competent and generally outwardly “normal” citizens. They performed blood-letting rituals safely and only with willing donors and participated regularly in medical exams that scarcely (if ever) indicated complications from their feeding practices.
Outside Mainstream Culture
What was perhaps most surprising about the vampires I met though was their marked lack of knowledge about vampires in popular culture. They seemed to know much less than you might expect – at least for vampires – about how their kind were depicted in books and films. By this I mean to say that the people I met with and interviewed hadn’t turned to drinking blood or taking psychic energy simply because they had read too many Anne Rice novels.
In fact, the real vampire community in general seems to have appropriated very few of the trappings mainstream culture attaches to creatures of the night. Many do dress in gothic clothes but certainly not all the time, and very, very few sleep in coffins. In fact, those vampire who do dress a certain way or wear fangs do so long after realizing their desire to take blood.
This is what might be called a “defiant culture.” Real vampires embrace their instinctual need to feed on blood or energy and use what mainstream culture sees as a negative, deviant figure like the vampire to achieve a sense of self-empowerment. They identify others with a similar need and have produced a community from that need.
But real vampires can also help us understand, and perhaps even shed, some of the ideological baggage each of us carries. They show us how repressive and oppressive categories can lead to marginalization. Through them, we see the dark side of ourselves.
More generally, this community shows that being different doesn’t have to force you onto the margins of society. Real vampires can and do exist in both “normal” society and their own communities, and that’s okay.
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The Vampire Legends of New Orleans
New Orleans is an eerie place. It's so Gothic in one sense, so dangerous in another. I have gone on a vampire tour in the French Quarter, so here, I share with you the details. Why? Because being frightened is better when you can share the experience, to release the fanciful fright of the mind, and so purge the imagination of terror by terrorizing the imaginations of others.
The Count St. Germain and Jacques Saint Germain
Vampire stories stretch back to France in the illustrious 1700s when there was a mysterious man who charmed the courts of Europe. The Comte Saint Germain was a very strange, extraordinary, enigmatical character. He was a master of the piano and the violin, could converse in six different languages, and his skills as a conversationalist were unrivaled (a skill that is, nowadays, a lost art). His wealth was unfathomable: He carried gems around in his clothing, and no one knew how he came into such wealth. No one knew anything about his family, where he came from, or who he was. One of his greatest passions was alchemy and he was believed to have an extraordinary talent for not aging. Maybe it was his vast knowledge of cosmetics and herbs that kept him young.
The philosopher Voltaire called him "the man who knows everything and who never dies." No one really knew his true age. He looked about 40 in all of his portraits and continued to appear so for over half a century. Although he was charming and engaging and graced the dinner tables of many dukes and kings, no one had ever saw him eat anything. He would only sip his wine, exquisitely, and ramble on about everything from history to chemistry.
Fast forward to New Orleans, Louisiana, and there appears a man by the name of Jacques Saint Germain who fits every description of the Comte above: Around 40 years of age, with heavy money bags, the most fascinating of dinner guests, and still a complete mystery. He would throw lavish parties and invite the elite. Everyone would sit enraptured in the conversation and food, but curiously enough,
this Jacques would never eat a morsel, only sip his wine.
But one night he had a lady stay a bit late. Out on his balcony (at the corner of Ursuline and Royal Streets), this Saint Germain grabbed her and tried to bite her neck. She escaped by falling from the balcony and then reported the incident to the police. When the police came to investigate, Jacques Saint Germaine had vanished. They searched his apartment and found tablecloths with large splotches of blood on them. They searched the kitchen, where they found no sign of food or evidence that food had ever been there. All they found where bottles of wine,
and after pouring themselves a glass, drinking it, and then spitting it out, they discovered that it was not only wine in those bottles, but wine mixed with human blood.
To this day, this mysterious figure has his own occult following, from theosophists to complete way-out-there mystics. The count was purported to die in the year 1784, although no one saw his death, and some claim to have seen him many years after this date. Nevertheless, he disappeared from court life (I would, too, if I knew that the French Revolution was coming, which some people claim he had foreseen).
John and Wayne Carter
In terms of murder, New Orleans rates among the highest. It has always been a notorious place for missing persons— that is, it is a place where people just disappear and no one ever knows what happened to them. The blood of the French, Spanish, Indian, African, Creole, and English all mix together here where the mosquito is not so picky. Nor, perhaps, are other creatures.
John and Wayne Carter were brothers. They seemed to be normal in every aspect, had normal labor jobs down by the river and lived on a street in the French Quarter. It was the 1930s during the Depression and times were hard, so a man worked all he could. One day, a girl was reported to have escaped from the Carter brothers' apartment and run to the authorities. Her wrists were cut— not enough to cause immediate death, but enough to cause her blood to drain slowly over the next several days. The policemen ran to the Carters' 3rd story apartment and found four other people tied to chairs with their wrists sliced in the same fashion. Some had been there for many days.
The story was that these brothers had abducted these people in order to drink their blood at the end of every day when they came home from work. Police also found about 14 dead bodies. The cops waited for the brothers to return and when they did, it took 7 or 8 of them to hold down the two averaged-sized men.
A few years later, when the Carters were finally executed, their bodies were placed in a New Orleans vault. Cemeteries in New Orleans are quite picturesque: Not only are they more ornate than the rest of the nation's, but they inter many generations of one family inside one vault. The remains sift down into the bottom of the vault and when it is all rubble, a new body is slid inside. Many years after the Carter brothers' death when they were placing some other Carter in the family vault, they discovered the vault was completely empty: No John or Wayne. They were gone. To this day, many sightings have occurred in the French Quarter that match the descriptions of these two brothers almost exactly. Years later, an owner of their apartment saw two figures that matched their descriptions outside on the balcony one night, whispering to each other. Both figures jumped off the top of the 3rd story balcony and took off running.
The rumor is that if a vampire drinks of your blood seven nights in a row, then and only then can you become a vampire. Some of those found in the Carter brothers' apartment had been there over 7 days. One warped fellow named Felipe went on to become a notorious serial killer. And of course, he would do more than just kill his victims; he was believed to drink all 32 of his victims' blood.
During the colonization of New Orleans, France was having a hard time getting women to go over there. This was mostly due to the fact that the men originally sent were thieves, murderers, and culprits of every type and cast (not to mention Louisiana's snakes, alligators, mosquitoes, and humidity). Eventually, some women were sent. Some sources say they were nuns, while others say they were prostitutes, but nevertheless, a few of them made it. Many of them snuck off the ship in Mobile, Alabama when they ported there and were told what type of riffraff they would be tricked into marrying if they stayed on board.
These girls had the most interesting luggage, shaped like little coffins. So, to the New Orleans men's dismay, all that arrived in New Orleans were 300 of these coffin-like suitcases. Some stories say they were empty, some say they contained the undead. These suitcases were reportedly stored in the attic of a convent in the French Quarter where they still sit behind windows that are nailed shut because they have a strange habit of just opening by themselves.
Years later, in 1978, two amateur reporters demanded that the convent's priest let them in to see these coffins. The priest, of course, denied their entrance, so one night these two men climbed over a wall with their recording equipment and set up their workstation. The next morning, the reporters' equipment was found strewn about on that street outside, and there on the convent's front steps were found the almost decapitated bodies of these two men. 80% of their blood was gone. To this day, this unsolved crime baffles investigators.
Such are the stories that were told to me, and the reason it was hard for me to get to sleep. We were also shown certain settings of the movie Interview with a Vampire, based on the vampire books of Anne Rice, which was set in New Orleans.
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A very interesting article published by Discover.Magazine
Vampires are a perennial favorite around Halloween, but they can be found year-round in movies and on television, in books and on blogs. The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood. Modern writers of vampire fiction, including Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice, Stephen King and countless others, have a rich vein of vampire lore to draw from. But where did the vampires come from?
The most famous vampire is, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula, though those looking for a historical "real" Dracula often cite Romanian prince Vlad Tepes (1431-1476), after whom Stoker is said to have modeled some aspects of his Dracula character. The characterization of Tepes as a vampire, however, is a distinctly Western one; in Romania, he is viewed not as a blood-drinking sadist but as a national hero who defended his empire from the Ottoman Turks.
The vampires most people are familiar with (such as Dracula) are revenants — human corpses that are said to return from the grave to harm the living; these vampires have Slavic origins only a few hundred years old. But other, older, versions of the vampire were not thought to be human at all but instead supernatural, possibly demonic, entities that did not take human form.
Matthew Beresford, author of "From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth" (Reaktion, 2008), notes, "There are clear foundations for the vampire in the ancient world, and it is impossible to prove when the myth first arose. There are suggestions that the vampire was born out of sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some other." There are many variations of vampires from around the world. There are Asian vampires, such as the Chinese jiangshi (pronounced chong-shee), evil spirits that attack people and drain their life energy; the blood-drinking Wrathful Deities that appear in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," and many others.
Identifying vampires
While most people can name several elements of vampire lore, there are no firmly established characteristics. Some vampires are said to be able to turn into bats or wolves; others can't. Some are said not to cast a reflection, but others do. Holy water and sunlight are said to repel or kill some vampires, but not others. The one universal characteristic is the draining of a vital bodily fluid, typically blood. One of the reasons that vampires make such successful literary figures is that they have a rich and varied history and folklore. Writers can play with the "rules" while adding, subtracting or changing them to fit whatever story they have in mind.
Finding a vampire is not always easy: according to one Romanian legend you'll need a 7-year-old boy and a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a graveyard at midday. Watch the horse wander around, and whichever grave is nearest the horse when it finally stops is a vampire's grave — or it might just have something edible nearby; take your pick.
Interest and belief in revenants surged in the Middle Ages in Europe. Though in most modern stories the classic way to become a vampire is to be bitten by one, that is a relatively new twist. In his book "Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality" (Yale, 2008), folklorist Paul Barber noted that centuries ago, "Often potential revenants can be identified at birth, usually by some abnormality, some defect, as when a child is born with teeth. Similarly suspicious are children born with an extra nipple (in Romania, for example); with a lack of cartilage in the nose, or a split lower lip (in Russia) … When a child is born with a red caul, or amniotic membrane, covering its head, this was regarded throughout much of Europe as presumptive evidence that it is destined to return from the dead." Such minor deformities were looked upon as evil omens at the time.
The belief in vampires stems from superstition and mistaken assumptions about postmortem decay. The first recorded accounts of vampires follow a consistent pattern: Some unexplained misfortune would befall a person, family or town — perhaps a drought dried up crops, or an infectious disease struck. Before science could explain weather patterns and germ theory, any bad event for which there was not an obvious cause might be blamed on a vampire. Vampires were one easy answer to the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.
Villagers combined their belief that something had cursed them with fear of the dead, and concluded that perhaps the recently deceased might be responsible, having come back from the graves with evil intent. Graves were unearthed, and surprised villagers often mistook ordinary decomposition processes for supernatural phenomenon. For example, though laypeople might assume that a body would decompose immediately, if the coffin is well sealed and buried in winter, putrefaction might be delayed by weeks or months; intestinal decomposition creates bloating which can force blood up into the mouth, making it look like a dead body has recently sucked blood. These processes are well understood by modern doctors and morticians, but in medieval Europe were taken as unmistakable signs that vampires were real and existed among them.
A skeleton buried in the cemetery of Vecchiano in Pisa showing a similar condition to the purported "Venetian vampire."
Credit: Antonio Fornaciari
Vampire defense and protection
The best way to deal with vampires, of course, is to prevent them from coming back in the first place. A few centuries ago in Europe this was often accomplished by staking suspected vampires in their graves; the idea was to physically pin the vampire to the earth, and the chest was chosen because it's the trunk of the body. This tradition was later reflected in popular fiction depicting wooden stakes as dispatching vampires. There was no particular significance to using wood; according to folklore, vampires — like djinn (genies) and many other magical creatures — fear iron, so an iron bar would be even more effective than a wooden stake.
Other traditional methods of killing vampires include decapitation and stuffing the severed head's mouth with garlic or a brick. In fact, suspected vampire graves have been found with just such signs. According to a 2012 Live Science article, "The body of the woman was found in a mass grave on the Venetian island of Nuovo Lazzaretto. Suspecting that she might be a vampire, a common folk belief at the time, gravediggers shoved a rock into her skull to prevent her from chewing through her shroud and infecting others with the plague, said anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence." Other researchers later challenged this interpretation, and suggested that the brick may not have been placed in the mouth after all, but instead was one of many bricks surrounding the body that merely fell there after burial. Whether that burial reflected an accused vampire or not, other graves are much clearer. In 2013, archaeologists in Bulgaria found two skeletons with iron rods through their chests; the pair are believed to have been accused vampires, according to an article in Archaeology magazine.
The skull of the "vampire of Venice," found in a mass grave with a brick stuck in its jaw.
Credit: Matteo Borrini
If your local villagers neglected to unearth and stake a suspected vampire and he or she has returned from the grave, there are steps you can take to protect yourself. The exact method varies around the world, but in some traditions the best way to stop a vampire is to carry a small bag of salt with you. If you are being chased, you need only to spill the salt on the ground behind you, at which point the vampire is obligated to stop and count each and every grain before continuing the pursuit. If you don't have salt handy, some say that any small granules will do, including birdseed or sand. Salt was often placed above and around doorways for the same reason.
Some traditions hold that vampires cannot enter a home unless formally invited in. This may have been an early form of the modern "stranger danger" warnings to children, a scary reminder against inviting unknown people into the house.
Real vampires
There are, of course, a few truly vampiric animals, including leeches, lampreys and vampire bats. And in all these cases the vampire's intent is to draw enough blood for sustenance, but not enough to kill the host.
But what about human vampires? There are certainly many self-identified vampires who participate in gothic-inspired subcultures. Some host vampire-themed book clubs or secret bloodletting rituals; others wear capes or get vampire-fang dental implants. It's all frightening and fun, but blood drinking is another matter entirely. The problem is that blood is toxic; because it is so rich in iron — and because the human body has difficulty excreting excess iron — anyone who consumes blood regularly runs a real risk of haemochromatosis (iron overdose), which can cause a wide variety of diseases and problems, including liver and nervous system damage.
In one form or another, vampires have been part of human culture and folklore in different forms for millennia, and the bloodsuckers show no signs of going away any time soon.
Vampires in the history and folklore
By Benjamin Radford
10 Truly Creepy Vampires From Around The World
Looking at the plethora of wimpy, tween-friendly vampires books and movies have given us in the last few years, it’s easy to forget that vampires began life as something a lot different—and a lot scarier. Centuries ago, our ancestors would quiver with dread at the mere mention of the word, which isn’t surprising when you consider just how downright unsettling and macabre their mythology could be.
Consider the following 10 vampires, taken from the traditions of 10 different countries, which, even by the standards of our ancestors, manage to stand out as some of the creepiest creatures mythology has to offer.
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10Callicantzaro
Greece
The Callicantzaro spends most of the year in the netherworld (wherever that is) and only emerges on the 12 nights between Christmas and the Epiphany, probably because it knows those are the nights we’re most likely to be too drunk on eggnog to run. Though just the sight of its black twisted face, red eyes, and fang-filled mouth are enough to sap the holiday spirit out of any party it crashes, the Callicantzaro isn’t content with merely ruining everyone’s fun, and will tear apart anyone it encounters with its long claws, before devouring them.
According to Greek lore, any child born between Christmas and the Epiphany will eventually become a Callicantzaro. Scary, huh? But fear not, parents, there is a cure: All you have to do is hold your doomed, newborn infant’s feet over a fire until its toenails are singed, thereby breaking the curse.
But what would the holidays be without a family reunion? Touchingly, the Callicantzaro remembers its family from back when it was human and is known to eagerly seek out its former siblings wherever it goes . . . only to devour them when it finds them.
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9Penanggalan
Malaysia
Arguably the most disgusting entry on this list, the Penanggalan is a creature that looks like a woman by day, but detaches its head from the rest of its body at night to go off flying in search of victims, with its spinal column and all of its internal organs dangling from its neck (before you ask, no, this is not something we just made up, but an actual Malaysian legend). The organs glow in the dark for that cool retro look and can be used like tentacles to remove any obstacles the Penanggalan comes across (it can also grow its hair at will for that same purpose, just like those Barbie dolls you can give haircuts to).
When it spots a house, the Penanggalan will zero in on it and try its hand (or should we say “tentacle”) at a little breaking and entering. If successful, it will devour any newborn babies within. If the house can’t be broken into (and for those babies’ sakes we’re hoping it can’t), the Penanggalan will instead stretch out its incredibly long tongue under the house and make it slither through the cracks between the floorboards to gain access to the sleeping occupants. Once the tongue finds its way to your bedroom, it will stick itself into you, and the Penanggalan will use it as a straw to drain you to death from a distance, like a warm Long Island ice tea.
And in case you haven’t found everything you’ve just read crazy enough to convince you to never, ever set foot in Malaysia, then consider this: At the end of every night, the Penanggalan has to “pickle” its entrails by soaking them in vinegar so they will shrink and fit inside its body again.
8Upyr
Russia
The Upyr may look like just any ordinary Russian person. It may even have the ability to walk in broad daylight like a Russian person. But a Russian person it ain’t—behind its innocuous facade hides a vicious vampire that would gladly pass up all the vodka in the world if it meant tasting a single drop of your blood. In fact, its love of blood is so great that, after tearing into you with its metal teeth, it might just eat your heart for kicks.
The Upyr also loves children (though, as you might have guessed, not in a reassuringly parental way), preferring the taste of their blood and always making a point of feeding on them first before draining their parents. It also doesn’t seem to mind the taste of frozen dirt, because it is said to use its metal teeth to chew its way out of its grave during the winter, when its hands have frozen solid due to poor coffin insulation.
7Asasabonsam
Ghana
Chances are you’re familiar with the old urban legend of the Hook Man. Well, as it turns out, the Ashanti people tell the similar (but much creepier) tale of the Asasabonsam, a strange vampire with curved iron hooks instead of feet that lives deep within African forests. It hunts by dangling from the branches of trees and thrusting said hooks into you when you pass underneath it. Once it’s hoisted you up into its tree, it devours you alive with its iron teeth, then presumably spends the rest of the night cleaning your stubborn bloodstains off its hooks so they won’t rust.
Unlike most vampires, it feeds on both humans and animals (so maybe someone should alert PETA). One oddly specific detail about the Asasabonsam is that, when its prey is human, it will make a point of biting off the thumb first before moving on to the rest of the body, possibly to prevent you from hitching a ride home if you ever manage to escape its clutches.
6Varacolaci
Romania
The Varacolaci is probably the most powerful of all vampires, so it may come as a surprise that very little is known about it aside from the fact that it has a tongue-twister of a name (seriously, try saying it aloud). It is said to be a dermatologist’s worst nightmare, sporting pale, dry skin that no amount of body lotion can cure, but to otherwise have the appearance of a human being.
Strangely for so feared a creature, the Varacolaci only has one known power—but what a power! It has the ability to swallow the Sun and the Moon (or, in other words, to cause solar and lunar eclipses at will), which has got to be the mother of all party tricks. To do so, however, it needs to fall asleep, because apparently causing astronomical events that would still be terrifying to us today, but must have seemed downright apocalyptic to more primitive cultures, can be something of a drain on your energy reserves.
5Upier (or Upior)
Poland
Remember the Russian Upyr we discussed earlier? Well, it has a Polish cousin called the “Upier” that’s renowned for being even more cuckoo for blood. In fact, its blood thirst is so immense and insatiable that, aside from drinking enormous quantities of it, the Upier enjoys bathing in it and sleeping in it. Its body is also filled with so much of it that staking it will cause it to explode in a gigantic burst of blood worthy of the elevator scene from The Shining.
It takes particular pleasure in feeding on the friends and family it had back during its good ol’ human days, so if one of your friends or relatives has recently turned into an Upier, you should know you’re probably on its grocery list. When it eventually finds you, it will immobilize you in a powerful embrace (a kind of farewell bear hug) then stick its barbed tongue in your neck and drink you dry.
4Neuntöter
Germany
Warning: If you’re the hypochondriac type, you might want to avoid this entry. The Neuntöter is a walking biological weapon of mass destruction that does one thing and one thing only—it brings death wherever it goes. It carries any number of horrific plagues and lethal diseases, which it spreads around like candy in whatever town it happens to be passing through, contaminating anyone and anything around. Unsurprisingly, it is said to be only seen at times of widespread epidemics.
The Neuntöter‘s body is covered in open sores and wounds that are constantly oozing with pus, and which probably play a part in spreading its deadly germs (if reading that sentence gave you the sudden urge to shower in Purell, you’re not alone). Its awesome German name literally translates to “Killer of Nine,” a reference to the belief that a buried corpse takes nine daysto transform into a Neuntöter.
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3Yara-ma-yha-who
Australia
Hold on to your didgeridoos, because this is a weird one. Aboriginal legends from Down Under describe the Yara-ma-yha-who, a 1.25-meter (4 ft) humanoid with red skin and a massive head who spends its time perched in a tree. If you happen to pass under that tree, it jumps down onto you, sticking to your body with the small suckers that cover its fingers and toes, so that no matter how hard you struggle, it can’t be shaken off.
So far, so creepy, but what really ensures the Yara-ma-yha-who a place on this list is its method of feeding. Because it has no fangs of any kind, it sucks your blood through the suckers on its hands and feet until you’re too weak to escape or even move, then leaves you on the ground like a discarded, half-empty can of juice while it wanders off, presumably to frolic with the koalas and kangaroos.
When it returns from its evening of fun, it gets down to business, swallowing you whole with its immense mouth, then regurgitating you after some time, still alive and in one piece (yep, it’s a vomiting vampire). The process is repeated again and again, with you growing a little smaller and a little redder each time as a result of being digested. Finally, you guessed it, you turn into a Yara-ma-yha-who yourself. Crikey.
2Nelapsi
Czechoslovakia
Leave it to the Czechs to come up with something this unsettling. The Nelapsi is a walking cadaver that can’t be bothered to wear clothes, and so goes around hunting prey in its birthday suit. That, combined with its glowing red eyes, long filthy black hair, and needle-thin teeth, is enough to make us want to keep the lights on at night, but unfortunately it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, the Nelapsi is easily one of the most powerful and downright evil of all vampires. It can destroy entire villages at once, and, like that guy you know who keeps getting banned from “all-you-can-eat” buffets, won’t stop feeding until daybreak, no matter how much it’s already had in one night. It’s not a picky eater, feeding on livestock as well as humans, and will either kill you by ripping you apart with its teeth or by crushing you in its trademark “hug-o’-death,” an embrace so powerful it shatters your bones. If it gets the chance, though, it will try to make you last as long as it can before finishing you off and is known to torture its victims for weeks before they die (because you can’t really call yourself evil unless you torture people for weeks at a time). But that’s not all, folks: If the Nelapsi happens to leave survivors behind (not a likely scenario, as you’ve probably already gathered), they will be quickly killed off by the deadly, Neuntöter-style plague that follows after it wherever it goes.
Finally, as if all of that wasn’t terrifying enough already, the Nelapsi can also kill people simply by looking at them. One of its favorite pastimes is to play a game of “I spy with my little eye” from the top of church steeples, causing anyone in the surrounding village that falls under its gaze to instantly drop dead. We’re really not trying to run this whole “the Nelapsi is evil” thing into the ground, but he’s just such a jerk that it’s hard not to.
1Brahmaparusha
India
The Indian Brahmaparusha may not be as powerful as the Nelapsi, but, incredibly, it is even creepier. Like all the best serial killers, it enjoys taking trophies of its victims—in this case, their intestines—and is so proud of its kills that it wears said trophies wrapped around its head like a turban for the whole world to see (a pretty gutsy wardrobe choice, if you ask us).
This is one vampire you definitely don’t want to fall prey to. When it catches you, it first drains your blood into a skull that it carries around wherever its goes, then slowly drinks from it like it was a glass of 30-year-old scotch. After that, it’s skull-cracking time: The Brahmaparusha removes your brain, its favorite delicacy, and feasts on it.
Due to its immense hunger, the Brahmaparusha needs to consume several humans before it can feel truly sated, so by the time it is done feeding, its lair is littered with bodies. What does it do then? Clean up its mess and throw away the bodies? Nope. What it actually does is wrap its entire body in its victims’ intestines, then start to perform a ritual dance around their butchered corpses.
Oh, and one last thing: unlike just about any other vampire there is, you can’t just garlic this one back whence it came to save your life. In fact, there is not a single thing you can do to protect yourself from the Brahmaparusha, so . . . nice knowing ya.
Hercules Rockfeller
8 Recently Discovered Medieval Vampire Burials
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The mythology of vampires is well-known throughout the world. Most countries have some variation on the vampire legend. Remarkably similar, too, are the ways in which vampires can be dispatched, or at least prevented from rising from the grave to plague the living. Modern science has usually dismissed these tales as folklore, however, recent evidence has emerged showing that our ancestors did indeed take these stories seriously. Over the past few decades, an increasing number of medieval burials have been excavated showing incredible brutality performed on the corpses that exactly matches the methods folklore said must be used to keep a vampire safely in its grave. And these graves are not only being found in the vampire’s traditional home of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, but in Western Europe too. Here are 8 of the best-attested cases of medieval vampire burial
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Prostejov, Slovakia
In 1991, an archaeological investigation of the ancient church of the Holy Trinity in Prostejov discovered a crypt burial in the presbytery. The body had been buried in a coffin reinforced with iron bars, held to be one method of keeping a vampire buried, since vampires allegedly could not tolerate the touch of iron. In addition, stones had been placed on the victim’s legs, and the torso severed from the legs. The find has been dated to the 16th century. The burial is considered somewhat unusual because of its location in a church, but it has been argued that the extra sanctity of the church may have been thought by those who buried the victim to have been more likely to have kept the corpse in its grave.
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Drawsko, Poland
In 2009, at Drawsko in Poland, an archaeological investigation of a medieval cemetery turned up something quite unexpected. Three graves were discovered in which the bodies had been subjected to very unusual treatment post-mortem. Two bodies of middle-aged adults had iron sickles placed on their throats. The body of a younger adult had been tied up and had a heavy stone placed upon his throat. This is in keeping with folklore, traditionally sharp iron implements being held to be anathema to vampires, hence the placement of the sickles as a measure to ensure that the alleged vampire would not rise again. Another method of keeping a suspected vampire in their grave was believed to be the placement of heavy weights upon the body, and the positioning of heavy stones upon bodies has been found in a number of vampire burials. The cemetery has not been fully excavated and archaeologists expect to find similar burials in future years.
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Lesbos, Greece
In 1994, on the Greek island of Lesbos, near the city of Mytilene, archaeologists investigating an old Turkish cemetery found a medieval skeleton buried in a crypt hollowed out of an ancient city wall. This was not an unusual discovery, however, the post-mortem treatment of this body was very much unexpected. The corpse had been literally nailed down in its grave, with heavy iron spikes driven through the neck, pelvis and ankle. The use of iron and the practice of staking down a corpse are both well-attested in vampire folklore. The body was almost certainly that of a Muslim, believed to be the first time a corpse of a person other than a Christian had been found treated in this fashion.
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Celakovice, Czech Republic
In the early 1990s, archaeologists found what is believed to be the first vampires’ graveyard—an entire cemetery of vampire burials. In Celakovice, about 30 kilometers north of Prague, 14 graves have been excavated so far with metal spikes driven through their bodies or heavy stones placed upon them. The graves are believed to date from the 11th or 12th century. Most of the victims were young adults, of both sexes. It appears that the victims all died at around the same time, possibly in a epidemic, but it is unclear why the villagers thought these individuals were at risk of becoming vampires.
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Sozopol, Bulgaria
One of the most well publicized cases of recent years, as a Google search will quickly show. Bulgaria is no stranger to vampire burials. More than 100 have been discovered in the past century, but the bulk of those were in remote rural areas. Sozopol is one of Bulgaria’s most popular Black Sea tourist resorts, so the discovery of two skeletons with iron spikes jammed through their bodies caused a sensation. The bodies are believed to about 700 years old, and were located buried near a former monastery. Archaeologists have confirmed that this practice was common in Bulgaria up until the 20th century, and Bulgaria subsequently has become the center of interest for those studying vampire burials.
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Venice, Italy
As has already been noted, the discovery of vampire burials has been common in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the heartland of vampire mythology. However, until recently, they were unknown in Western Europe. This is now changing, as archaeological examination of medieval cemeteries in the West is starting to reveal that people here were just as afraid of the dead returning to plague the living. A well publicized discovery in 2006 on the island of Lazaretto Nuovo near Venice confirmed that Italy had its own vampire burials. The skeleton of a woman dating from the 16th century was discovered in a cemetery of plague victims. She had had an a large brick rammed into her mouth prior to burial. This is in keeping with medieval folklore, which held that vampires literally chewed their way out of their burial shrouds, so preventing them from doing this was seen as an effective way of stopping them rising from the grave.
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Kilteasheen, Ireland
The vampire burial phenomenon struck even deeper into the West with the discovery of two skeletons at Kilteasheen in Ireland between 2005 and 2009. Officially described as “deviant” burials, the skeletons of a middle-aged man and a man in his twenties were discovered lying side by side with rocks rammed into their mouths. The discovery caused a sensation in Ireland and the UK and became the subject of a TV documentary released in 2011. It has been argued that the victims may have been considered plague-carriers rather than true vampires, because their early burial in the 8th century predates vampire legends in Europe, however, the vampire burial tag has since well and truly stuck in the public consciousness.
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Southwell, UK
If complacent Britons had thought their ancestors were far too sophisticated to be taken in by vampire legends as primitive peasants in Eastern Europe had been, they were in for a shock. It was revealed in 2010 that a deviant burial had been found in the Nottinghamshire town of Southwell in 1959, attracting much publicity in the British media. A long-lost archaeological report compiled during construction of a new school detailed the discovery of a skeleton dating from between A.D. 550 and 700 with metal spikes jammed through heart, shoulders and ankles. The placement of a spike through the heart in particular attracted public interest because of its long association with vampires in myth and legend. Archaeologists have in fact thrown cold water over the idea the man was considered a vampire because the burial predates vampire legend in Europe, but the idea has seized the public imagination and inspired new research into vampirism in Britain.
The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler
Marc Lallanilla, Live Science Contributor
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Few names have cast more terror into the human heart than Dracula. The legendary vampire, created by author Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel of the same name, has inspired countless horror movies, television shows and other bloodcurdling tales of vampires.
Though Dracula is a purely fictional creation, Stoker named his infamous character after a real person who happened to have a taste for blood: Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia or — as he is better known — Vlad the Impaler. The morbid nickname is a testament to the Wallachian prince's favorite way of dispensing with his enemies.
But other than having the same name, the two Draculas don't really have much in common, according to historians who have studied the link between Stoker's vampire count and Vlad III.
The real Dracula
By most accounts, Vlad III was born in 1431 in what is now Transylvania, the central region of modern-day Romania. However, the link between Vlad the Impaler and Transylvania is tenuous, according to Florin Curta, a professor of medieval history and archaeology at the University of Florida.
"[Stoker's] Dracula is linked to Transylvania, but the real, historic Dracula — Vlad III — never owned anything in Transylvania," Curta told Live Science. Bran Castle, a modern-day tourist attraction in Transylvania that is often referred to as Dracula's castle, was never the residence of the Wallachian prince, he added.
"Because the castle is in the mountains in this foggy area and it looks spooky, it's what one would expect of Dracula's castle," Curta said. "But he [Vlad III] never lived there. He never even stepped foot there."
Vlad III's father, Vlad II, did own a residence in SighiÅŸoara, Transylvania, but it is not certain that Vlad III was born there, according to Curta. It's also possible, he said, that Vlad the Impaler was born in TârgoviÅŸte, which was at that time the royal seat of the principality of Wallachia, where his father was a "voivode," or ruler.
In 1431, King Sigismund of Hungary, who would later become the Holy Roman Emperor, inducted the elder Vlad into a knightly order, the Order of the Dragon. This designation earned Vlad II a new surname: Dracul. The name came from the old Romanian word for dragon, "drac." His son, Vlad III, would later be known as the "son of Dracul" or, in old Romanian, Drăculea, hence Dracula. In modern Romanian, the word "drac" refers to another feared creature — the devil, Curta said. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]
The Order of the Dragon was devoted to a singular task: the defeat of the Turkish, or Ottoman Empire. Situated between Christian Europe and the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, Vlad II's (and later Vlad III's) home principality of Wallachia was frequently the scene of bloody battles as Ottoman forces pushed westward into Europe, and Christian forces repulsed the invaders.
This painting, "Vlad the Impaler and the Turkish Envoys," by Theodor Aman (1831-1891), allegedly depicts a scene in which Vlad III nails the turbans of these Ottoman diplomats to their heads.
Credit: Public domain
Years of captivity
When Vlad II was called to a diplomatic meeting in 1442 with Sultan Murad II, he brought his young sons Vlad III and Radu along. But the meeting was actually a trap: All three were arrested and held hostage. The elder Vlad was released under the condition that he leave his sons behind.
"The sultan held Vlad and his brother as hostages to ensure that their father, Vlad II, behaved himself in the ongoing war between Turkey and Hungary," said Elizabeth Miller, a research historian and professor emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.
Under the Ottomans, Vlad and his younger brother were tutored in science, philosophy and the arts. Vlad also became a skilled horseman and warrior, according to Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally, former professors of history at Boston College, who wrote several books about Vlad III — as well as his alleged connection to Stoker's Dracula — in the 1970s and 1980s.
"They were treated reasonably well by the current standards of the time," Miller said. "Still, [captivity] irked Vlad, whereas his brother sort of acquiesced and went over on the Turkish side. But Vlad held enmity, and I think it was one of his motivating factors for fighting the Turks: to get even with them for having held him captive."
Vlad the Prince
While Vlad and Radu were in Ottoman hands, Vlad's father was fighting to keep his place as voivode of Wallachia, a fight he would eventually lose. In 1447, Vlad II was ousted as ruler of Wallachia by local noblemen (boyars) and was killed in the swamps near Bălteni, half way between TârgoviÅŸte and Bucharest in present-day Romania. Vlad's older half-brother, Mircea, was killed alongside his father. [7 Strange Ways Humans Act Like Vampires]
Not long after these harrowing events, in 1448, Vlad embarked on a campaign to regain his father's seat from the new ruler, Vladislav II. His first attempt at the throne relied on the military support of the Ottoman governors of the cities along the Danube River in northern Bulgaria, according to Curta. Vlad also took advantage of the fact that Vladislav was absent at the time, having gone to the Balkans to fight the Ottomans for the governor of Hungary at the time, John Hunyadi.
Vlad won back his father's seat, but his time as ruler of Wallachia was short-lived. He was deposed after only two months, when Vladislav II returned and took back the throne of Wallachia with the assistance of Hunyadi, according to Curta.
Little is known about Vlad III's whereabouts between 1448 and 1456. But it is known that he switched sides in the Ottoman-Hungarian conflict, giving up his ties with the Ottoman governors of the Danube cities and obtaining military support from King Ladislaus V of Hungary, who happened to dislike Vlad's rival — Vladislav II of Wallachia — according to Curta.
Vlad III’s political and military tack truly came to the forefront amid the fall of Constantinople in 1453. After the fall, the Ottomans were in a position to invade all of Europe. Vlad, who had already solidified his anti-Ottoman position, was proclaimed voivode of Wallachia in 1456. One of his first orders of business in his new role was to stop paying an annual tribute to the Ottoman sultan — a measure that had formerly ensured peace between Wallachia and the Ottomans.
A woodcut from a 1499 pamphlet depicts Vlad III dining among the impaled corpses of his victims.
Credit: Public domain
Vlad the Impaler
To consolidate his power as voivode, Vlad needed to quell the incessant conflicts that had historically taken place between Wallachia's boyars. According to legends that circulated after his death, Vlad invited hundreds of these boyars to a banquet and — knowing they would challenge his authority — had his guests stabbed and their still-twitching bodies impaled on spikes.
This is just one of many gruesome events that earned Vlad his posthumous nickname Vlad the Impaler. This story — and others like it — is documented in printed material from around the time of Vlad III's rule, according to Miller.
"In the 1460s and 1470s, just after the invention of the printing press, a lot of these stories about Vlad were circulating orally, and then they were put together by different individuals in pamphlets and printed," Miller said.
Whether or not these stories are wholly true or significantly embellished is debatable, Miller added. After all, many of those printing the pamphlets were hostile to Vlad III. But some of the pamphlets from this time tell almost the exact same gruesome stories about Vlad, leading Miller to believe that the tales are at least partially historically accurate. Some of these legends were also collected and published in a book, "The Tale of Dracula," in 1490, by a monk who presented Vlad III as a fierce, but just ruler.
Vlad is credited with impaling dozens of Saxon merchants in Kronstadt (present-day BraÅŸov, Romania), who were once allied with the boyars, in 1456. Around the same time, a group of Ottoman envoys allegedly had an audience with Vlad but declined to remove their turbans, citing a religious custom. Commending them on their religious devotion, Vlad ensured that their turbans would forever remain on their heads by reportedly having the head coverings nailed to their skulls.
"After Mehmet II — the one who conquered Constantinople — invaded Wallachia in 1462, he actually was able to go all the way to Wallachia's capital city of TârgoviÈ™te but found it deserted. And in front of the capital he found the bodies of the Ottoman prisoners of war that Vlad had taken — all impaled," Curta said.
Vlad's victories over the invading Ottomans were celebrated throughout Wallachia, Transylvania and the rest of Europe — even Pope Pius II was impressed.
"The reason he's a positive character in Romania is because he is reputed to have been a just, though a very harsh, ruler," Curta said.
Vlad's death
Not long after the impalement of Ottoman prisoners of war, in August 1462, Vlad was forced into exile in Hungary, unable to defeat his much more powerful adversary, Mehmet II. Vlad was imprisoned for a number of years during his exile, though during that same time he married and had two children.
Vlad's younger brother, Radu, who had sided with the Ottomans during the ongoing military campaigns, took over governance of Wallachia after his brother's imprisonment. But after Radu's death in 1475, local boyars, as well as the rulers of several nearby principalities, favored Vlad’s return to power.
In 1476, with the support of the voivode of Moldavia, Stephen III the Great (1457-1504), Vlad made one last effort to reclaim his seat as ruler of Wallachia. He successfully stole back the throne, but his triumph was short-lived. Later that year, while marching to yet another battle with the Ottomans, Vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed, and Vlad was killed.
There is much controversy over the location of Vlad III's tomb. It is said he was buried in the monastery church in Snagov, on the northern edge of the modern city of Bucharest, in accordance with the traditions of his time. But recently, historians have questioned whether Vlad might actually be buried at the Monastery of Comana, between Bucharest and the Danube, which is close to the presumed location of the battle in which Vlad was killed, according to Curta.
One thing is for certain, however: unlike Stoker's Count Dracula, Vlad III most definitely did die. Only the harrowing tales of his years as ruler of Wallachia remain to haunt the modern world.
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