These mysterious, blood-sucking critters have long lingered in human nightmares. They can defy death and transform into bats (and other monsters, in some cases). Some accounts say they can read people’s minds and charm the heck out of mortals, too. Most also dress pretty snazzy. How did vampire myths get started, and why do they linger today? Let’s find out!
Humans have a natural dislike for things that suck their blood . Think mosquitos, fleas, bedbugs, leeches, and lampreys. These are a few examples of hemoglobin-downing animals that we love to hate. But humanity has glamorized vampires over the years.
The most famous real-life inspiration for vampire myths comes from Wallachia, Romania. Count Dracula—also known as Vlad the Impaler . This brutal Eastern European dictator lived in the 15th century. He ran a tight ship (or rather kingdom). One where punishment came swiftly for subjects. And for foreign invaders, like the Ottoman Turks? It got downright gruesome. Think impalement… Yikes!
Some rumors say Count Dracula liked dining in the presence of his tortured victims. Maybe even soaked his bread in their blood. Such historical trivia left a lasting impression. It may have even played into the vampire myth. But not all scholars agree on this. Some say Vlad wasn’t the ultimate inspiration for Bram Stoker’s famed classic Dracula .
If Vlad the Impaler wasn’t the first vampire, who or what was? Let’s explore the medieval psyche to answer this question. More specifically, we’ll examine what people knew about disease and mortality.
Between the 1850s and the 1920s, germ theory developed in North America and Europe. The theory claims that illness comes from microscopic organisms—germs—entering the body. Advances in technology and human anatomy helped this concept evolve. Before the 19th century, though, the origin of illness proved a big mystery. And a pressing one, because people were dying.
Some diseases captured the Western imagination more than others. For example, the plague swept Europe in waves for centuries. One of the symptoms included bleeding mouth lesions. What did people uneducated in medicine and disease think? They believed blood in the mouth was an aftereffect of blood sucking.
Another disease especially prevalent among royalty, porphyria, became associated with fanged bloodsuckers, too. People suffering from porphyria get blisters from the sun. They may find temporary relief from their condition by drinking blood. Sound familiar?
But the list of vampire-inspiring diseases doesn’t end there. They also include pellagra, caused by corn-heavy diets. Pellagra causes extreme skin sensitivity to sunlight and terrible halitosis. It became problematic after New World corn came to the Old World.
Vampire mania swept Europe again in the 18th century. Voltaire noted , “Vampires were the sole matter of conversation between 1730 and 1735.” What’s another condition that plagued Europe in the 18th century and seemed vampire-related? According to some researchers, rabies.
What were some symptoms of rabies synonymous with vampires? Both conditions predominantly affect males and can cause victims to bite others aggressively. Rabies also leads to insomnia and night wandering. It can make strong smells, like garlic, gross. And it can even make people avoid light and mirrors.
Tuberculosis ravaged North America and Europe throughout the 20th century. It was also another disease lumped into the Count Vlad category. It caused a pale, wan appearance. And it led to vicious coughing sessions and blood in the mouth. A common name for the disease back then was even consumption. For some, like poor Mercy Brown, the link to vampires had more to do with what happened to her body after death, though.
We won’t spend much time on this last puzzle piece. It gets gross quickly. If talk of dead bodies makes you queasy, stop here. Mercy Brown was the daughter of a farmer named George Brown, who lived in Rhode Island. In the late 19th century, Mercy, along with several other family members, passed away from tuberculosis.
It was wintertime. So, the ground was too frozen to bury her body. Instead, they buried her in an above-ground vault. Tuberculosis deaths continued to shake Mercy’s pastoral community. The townspeople grew desperate. Blaming the deaths on Mercy, they exhumed her body. On closer examination, they were shocked by its lack of decay.
Convinced she was the supernatural problem, they cut out and burned her heart. Then, they made her brother drink the ashes in a last-ditch effort to save his life. As you likely already guessed, it didn’t go too well for Mercy’s brother. He passed away a little while later. The point of the story? The vampire myth rests on misconceptions about how human bodies decomposed, too.
Bram Stoker appeared at the end of the 19th century. That means he had access to centuries of historical and medical material for inspiration. His novel Dracula came out in 1897; it contains the blueprint for modern-day vampire beliefs.
There is a subset of people—even in America—who self-identify as vampires. Some go the super gross route, consuming small amounts of a willing host’s blood. These people are known as sanguinarians and usually feed on no more than a couple of drops at a time. Others don’t go near bodily fluids. Instead, they claim to drain energy from their victims. These individuals call themselves psychic vampires.
What would old Vlad have to say about all of this? We need a time machine to find out. But either way, vampires have become a powerful symbol in our culture. Remember to share this story to make other people’s skin crawl!
November 23, 2024
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