Notorious Vamps

The ironic thing about this part is that it contradicts most folklore. Most everywhere, the vampyre cannot spawn children or have sex. I mean...he's dead. His penis doesn't work. However the dhampir is found in the same areas that spawned the legends vampyres can't have kids. Anyway the dhampir is a child of a male vampyre and a female Gypsy. A dhampir could not be spawned by any other human.

Very rarely the woman would become pregnant from this unholy union. Almost always the child would be born
boneless..and thus would die quickly. However, on rare rare rare occasions, the child would be born with bones and lives.

Always the child of this union was male. And this child had special powers that allowed him to become a powerful vampyre hunter. He was able to feel a vampyre just by looking at him. He was able to destroy a vampyre without special weapons. As well, the Dhampir could enchant a pistol and make it slay a vampyre as surely as a wooden stake would.

The dhampir was considered a powerful member of the gypsy community, but treated normally. They were not immortal and they did not have powers similar to the ones Vampyre Hunter D displays...but some dhampirs did have a semi-slippery like body due to the fact they were normally born without bones.

The powers of a dhampir would be passed to the male offspring that he created and that they created and so on. These abilities could only be inherited, never learned. In the real world the dhampir was a bit different. Someone claiming to be a dhampir would come to a village looking for work as a hunter or else he would go to where a town reported a vampyre problem. He would start by mentioning an unholy stench in the air that only he could smell. He would then attempt to find the source of this scent. He hold then take off his short and look through the sleeve as if it was a telescope. He would then describe the shape and appearance of the invisible undead that only he could see. He would then engage in a dramatic fight with the undead...but sometimes would just shoot it.

Once killed the vampyre would stink even more...and sometimes a pool of blood would run on the ground. Most often he would not be killed and the vampyre would flee to another town. The dhampir would stick around long enough to get his pay and go to the next town...and fight the vampyre anew.


~ The Vampyres of Malaysia ~


The are two kinds of vampyre in Malaysia.

The first is the langsuyar. The langsuyar is a beautiful woman who reacted strongly to the loss of her stillborn baby. She flew into the trees and became a night demon who sucked the blood from other people's children. Another way to become a langsuyar is to die during childbirth. To prevent the dead mother from rising from the grave, the body would be treated with a needle in the palm of the hand, eggs under her arms, and glass beads were placed in the mouth. Sometimes the langsuyar would repent and live a normal life, marrying a new husband and having children.. Although at night she would still go off and feed from others. They also had long hair that would cover the tell-tale hole in her neck. It was through that hole which they sucked the blood.

The other vampyre of Malaysia is the pontianak. This is a stillborn child who would become a vampyre. It was similar to the langsuyar in every way though.

~ Vampyre's form ~


No doubt most of you think of a vampyre in terms of Annie Rice, Buffy, V:TM pictures or Hollywood films when picturing the vampyre. But that is a more modern vampyre.

You see, the vampyre of folklore was a lot ickier than that. (Although not as icky as Count Orlok. ew.)

The original vampyre of Eastern Europe was a corpse, but a corpse notable for several uncorpselike characteristics. It's body would be bloated and swollen, thus making the skin as tight as a drum. It's fingernails would be long and hard, still growing as the creature lived it's undeath. It would be buried in the rags it was sent to the grave in. It would stink of death. The ends of the appendages might be rotting away, after all...it WAS dead. In appearance, the vampyre's visage was horrible, but not because it was monsterous...but because it was still decaying. Not to mention all vampyres in recorded history were peasants and serfs.

Try living a life of hard labor in the fields for 40 years and see how pretty you are! So, if one was to take the vampyre of recorded history and use it's appearance for a modern day vampyre, you can bet a lot of teen-age girls would daydream about one coming to visit.....

~ Peter Kurten: a "real" Vampyre ~

Often cited as the real thing when it comes to the vampyric, Peter Kurten---the so-called Dusseldorf vampyre was a serial killer in Germany during 1929-1930.

He was born in Mulheim, Germany and was one of ten children. He was the son of an Alcoholic and a brutal father. He lived part of his youth with the town dogcatcher and enjoyed killing the unclaimed dogs. Kurten was 9 when he killed his first person. He pushed a playmate into the alter and repeated the act with a second boy to attempted to save the first. His next known attempt at homicide was 8 years later when he tried to rape and kill a young woman. He was sent to jail for 4 years for his unsuccessful effort. He lived on the streets after his release, but was back in the slammer a year later after a series of thefts and burglaries. He would later claim to have killed two of his prison mates with poison.

I in 1913, back on the streets in Dusseldorf, he killed again, this time a 10 year old girl. He cut her throat with a knife and repeatedly experienced orgasm as the blood spurted out.

It was not until 1929 that Kurten began his series of crimes that were to earn him his place in criminal history. In February of that year, he attempted the murder of one woman and succeed in the murder of 2 children, one male and one female. All died by stabbing. His attempts at murder, often unsuccessful, did not aid police. They accused a mentally-ill man to be convicted of the murder of the boy Kurten had actually killed! That summer, he was more successful, killing 9 people in August alone.

All of these crimes involved blood-drinking from the dead victim. He continued his killing spree until the winter of 1929-1930. In may he attempted the strangling death of a young woman, then for reasons unknown...stopped and let her go. She identified him and he was arrested. During his crime spree, he confused the police by continually changing his method of killing.

Only as he began his confession and accurately related each crime was any doubt of him perpetrating them removed. He was convicted and executed by decapitation on July 2, 1931.

~ The German Vampyre ~

Like in most of Eastern Europe, the vampyre and Germany have had a long history together. This country's version of the undead varies slightly from the commonly known folklore vampyre.

The most well-known German vampyre is the Nachtzeherer, which means, "Night waster." This was the vampyre of Northern Germany. In the southern part of the country it was named, "Bluatsauger" or bloodsucker. Other synonyms for these members of the Undead are, "NAchttoter" (Night Killer) and "Neuntoter" (Killer of nine).

These vampyres were created by unusual death and birth occurrences. As usual in folklore, a suicide victim would become a vampyre, but in Germany, any person who died through accidental death became undead as well. Similar to the Polish vamp, a German child born with a caulk on his head was destined to be a vampyre...especially if the caulk was blood red! A final quirky nature of German vampyres is that is a person's name is not removed from his/her burial clothing, it would rise from the dead as a vampyre!

The Nachtzehrer was also identified with epidemics and plagues, and thus could be associated with Nosferatu. When a group of people suddenly died from a similar disease, the first to die was deemed vampyre and was dispatched with. When the Nachtzehrer was found in the tomb/grave, it was known to have chewed on their own flesh and clothing, although this was most likely from rats and the like which dug up the shallow grave where there were no coffins. This type of vampyre would rise from the grave and attack the living, but unlike other vampyres...this one did not drink blood. Instead it consumed the entire body of it's victim, like a ghoul would. It would also raise from the dead a bride. This bride would be the corpse of a woman who died in childbirth. When the undead were unearthed from their coffins the Nachtzehrer would be found laying in pools of blood, because it had gorged itself to the point where it could not hold down all that the greedy vampyre had consumed. Here the vampyre was dispatched with..but not by the means we all are accustomed towards hearing. Sometimes the vampyre was destroyed by placing a clump of earth underneath it's chin. Other times a stone or a coin were placed in the corpses mouth.

Another method was to tie a white hankerchief around the vampyre's neck. And the most drastic measure of all was not the stake through the stomach, but the head was cut off and a spike was driven through it's mouth to pin the head and tongue into place. Some belief in folklore vampyre still exists in rural Germany to this day.

In the late 1980's Affons Schweiggert investigated reports in Germany that a Bluatsauger was terrorizing local villages. In these villages, the vampyre was still taken deadly serious.

~ The Italian Vampyre ~

The vampyre first reached Italy when "the vampyre plague" hit Serbia and Eastern Europe in the 17th century. The vampyre plague is the Golden Era for the undead. Countless sightings and reports from Man, clergy, officer and doctor remain from that time about firsthand accounts of vampyres.

As the plague was beginning, a Franciscan from Pavia, Ludovico Maria Sinistrari included the vampyre in his study of demonic phenomena, "de Daemonialitate, en Incubus et succubus." He then explained the vampyre in theological terms. He believed that vampyres were a separate race from those of Adam and Eve. Vampyres had souls like those of humans, but their corporeal selves were of a different, perfect nature. I could understand this thought if he used 20th century Americanized vampyres, but back then, the vampyre was a festering fat, balding exhausted reanimated corpse munching on family and cattle. Not too romantic, and a far cry from perfection in my opinion. He also stated vampyres were creatures that were parallel human beings....not evil opposites.

A more modern view of our vampyre bloodsucker came from JH Zedler and his "grosses volstandige Universal-lexicon aller wissenschften und kunste" in 1745. He stated vampyres were just a superstition and excuse to explain diseases science could not rationalize. Cardinal Giuseppe Davanzati echoed these beliefs, stating that vampyre outbreaks only occurred in rural and popular areas of the world...thus making vampirism, "The fruit of imagination" as well as ignorance, fear, superstition and to use a modern term, trendy. It became almost a fad to have a vampyre outbreaks. Hey, it got your town noticed and explained a lot of problems you were having. Besides, peasants didn't have much else to do besides mulch and die.

I'm sure this is much to the Cardinal's chagrin, but vampirism became even more widespread in the mid 18th century throughout central and eastern Europe. The first Romance to ever be published in Italy was, "IL Vampiro" by Franco Mistrali in 1869. This was preceded by an opera by the same name in 1801 by A. De Gasperini. I've never seen the opera, but I think it would be interesting. franco's tale took place in Monaco and revolved around blood and incest. His vampyre was presented in the same decadent, aristocratic manner akin to kaets, goethe, polidori and Byron. Only one real folklore work on the undead ever came out of Italy, and that
was 1908's Vampiro, by Enrico Boni. It is about the historic vampyre plague and is one of the only books ever printed about the superstitions and fear of Italy at that time of the plague.

Italy doesn't have much original works on the vampyre. It has tended to take from Western Europe and use their mythology. Perhaps this is because for the most part, as the vampyre mythos was being built up in the 1600's, the "plague" of the Undead passed over the boot shaped country until near the end of it.

~ The Greek Vampyre ~

I will tell you there are five variations of the Greek vampyre. I would like to start by saying This vampyre, like other Greek vampyres are and were not revivified corpses. Rather they were evil spirits.

The Lamiai was named after Lamia (Which is where the mistake of that word being used with vampyres comes from) who was a Libyan queen. Lamia was the daughter of Belus and Libya... the latter was was loved By Zeus, the King of the Greek Gods (But hey, back then, who didn't get it on with Zeus?). Hera, as usual, became jealous and took her vengeance on Lamia by stealing all her children that had been fathered by Zeus. Lamia retired to her cave, and being unable to strike at the Queen of the gods, used human mothers as her scapegoat and drank the blood from their children. Her actions transformed her into a hideous beast, and thus Lamia and her lamiai were born. Later Lamia became identified with the class of beings that resembled her; course ugly women with serpentine lower bodies. Their feet were totally different.

One would be brass, while the other was shaped like a goat, donkey or Oxen's hoof. The Lamiai were known primarily as demonic spirits that sucked the blood from children, as I have already said. They were, however, able to transform into beautiful woman in order to seduce men for breeding. Although the lamiai are not believed to exist any longer in Greece, they have become a method for scaring children, much the same way the US uses the bogeyman...

~ Vampyre ~

One of the more famous "real vampyre" reports was that of a man who served the Lord of Alnwick Castle.

The man, who was known for being exceedingly wicked, was plagued by an unfaithful wife. Having hidden himself on the roof above his bed to spy on her, he fell to the ground and died the next day. Following his burial, the man was seen walking through the town. People became increasingly afraid and locked themselves in their houses after dark. During this time an unknown disease broke out, which of course, was blamed on the vampyre.

Finally, on Palm Sunday, the local priest assembled a group of devout residents, as well as some of the leaders of the community, and they entered the cemetery. They uncovered the body, which appeared gorged on blood and they struck it with a spade.
The body was deemed evil, set on fire and the epidemic ended.

The town went back to their happy little ways.

~ The blood is the life ~

Okay everyone and their gerbil has seen someone use "The Blood is the Life" with vamp lit, movies and the like. And most of you also know that it is a bible quote. Just for facts the line is Deuteronomy 12:23 and it reads, "Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life, and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh." It still has the same connotations in relations towards the Undead.

~ Polish Vampyres ~

A type of vampyre found amongst the Kashubian people of northeast Poland in the Vjesci, also spelled vjeszczi or vjescey. According the myths, a person who would become a vampyre was born with a caul (membrane cap) on his head at the time of birth. When such a child was born, the cap was removed, dried, ground up and fed to the person on their seventh birthday. These actions would prevent the man
from becoming a Vjesci. Otherwise...bam! Undead.

The Potential vjesci looked perfectly human, but was restless and easily excitable. He also had a ruddy complexion. At the time of his death he would renounce God. His body would cool much much slower then a normal corpse and the limbs would remain limber. The lips and cheeks would remain red and spots of blood would seep from his cheeks and fingernails. The Vjesci never actually died. At Midnight after his burial, he would awake and eat his clothing and then bits of his own flesh. He then left the grave and attacked family member, by sucking out all their blood. Not sated, he'd move on to the neighbors. There were several steps to be taken in ridding the community of the vampyre.

First all people in the town would receive a Eucharist wafer. Then a little earth was placed in the undead's coffin to prevent it from returning there. A crucifix or a coin would be placed in the Vjesci's mouth if it was till in the coffin for it to suck on. A net would be wrapped around the vampyre with the understanding that the vampyre could only untie one knot from the net a year and he could not rise from the coffin until all the knots were untied.

A bag of seeds would be placed in the coffin for similar reasons. Lastly the body would be placed face down in the coffin, so when the vampyre awoke, it would merely dig deeper into the earth instead of coming up to terrorize peasants. (Man, those polish don't mess around!).

REAL VAMPYRS

Types of Vampires

There are two types of vampires roaming the planet. There are your sanguinarians and your psi-vampires.

Sanguinarians are blood-drinkers. And unlike the myths of vampires,they do NOT go around killing people for their blood. They keep a ring of willing donors that willingly donate blood to them. They do not need great amounts of blood,just a small amount,no more than what would fill a shot glass is necessary to them.

Psi-vampires feed on life/pranic energy either by proximity or by touch. When one awakens their body automatically starts feeding on the energy at hand and it could take the young vampire months to realize what they are and how to control their growing abilities. Most prefer to feed from the strong emotions of others and not from the person directly. It is safer for both the vampire and the person(not victim) being drained.

It is easier to know sanguinarians than psi-vampires because you can physically see a sanguinarian drink your blood but it is harder to know a psi-vampire because you can not see them feed. Psi-vampires are responsible for the myths of incubus and succubus.

Vampires falsely have a bad reputation due to myths and movies, none of which is based on fact or reality


There are many myths surrounding vampirism in the context of reailty. Some of these myths serve to amuse real vampires and other tend to frustrate them. Perhaps most frustrating of all is that the myths perpetrate this idea of what a vampire is and the romantized version leaves some believing that they want to be a vampire Then of course there is the other end of this which mostly encompasses the unbelievers.

There is an inherent need to clear up the misconceptions and myths surrounding vampires. In the name of simplicity, there are two categories of vampires. Psi Vampires generally feed off of the energy or life force as it's called. Blood Vampires are just that, they feed on blood. Feeding duration and periods between feedings generally vary among vampires. The following is a basic introduction to what a real vampire is and is not.

Vampires are not immortal. Although it's not unheard of for a vampire to live longer than the avergage, by no means does it suggest a life spanning hundreds of years. Unless you count incarnations of the soul, which is not unique to vampires.

Vampires are not undead. They are very much alive. They did not suffer a literal death to be what they are. Being turned does not involve death. In fact, there is some difference of opinion within the vampire community about whether or not "turning" someone into a vampire is even possible. Some vampires believe they are just born what they are and others believe it possible to turn another individual. No judgements to confirm or deny are made here, it is just a presentation of these things.(although turning an individual into a vampire does sound more like something only done in fiction.)

Vampires cannot be destroyed by sunlight. Vampires are very sensitive to sunlight and have varying degrees of discomfort when exposed to it. For this reason most vampires are naturally nocturnal but are usually obligated to go out in daylight for work and other reasons.

Vampires do not have retractable fangs. Fangs do not appear and disappear magically upon will. Some vampires have sharp, rather unusual canines which may resemble fangs --- and some do not have them. In any case, most vampires do not bite the source to get the blood as it is not very practical or healthy and would be considerably painful.

Vampires do not have special inhuman powers. However, most do have some sort of altered or advanced sense. Some have more acute night vision than the average person, some have developed empathic and other psi abilites. Some are capable of dream walking(some vamps claim they do not dream but have visions instead) and astral projection. It is not unheard of for a vampire to have one or more of these traits, in addition to the ones that are not mentioned. Suffice to say vampires do not turn into bats, change into mist and drift under doors, or rise at sunset to destroy unsuspecting"mortals". Nor do they shun crosses, churches, and garlic. Although.... garlic has been known to make the blood taste slightly bitter.... so the vamps that feed on blood may like a garlic free source.

There is a lot of discussion in regards to what a good definition of a real vampire is and it almost always ends in a great debate. The term "real vampire" in itself to some suggests that the person is not a vampire but thinks they are. Others recognize the term"real vampire" as referring to a vampire that is not mythical - merely a human being who feels they need a little blood (or some pranic energy) to feel healthy. There are those who are vampiric in varying ways but do not refer tothemselves as vampires because they dislike labels and are not fond of the preconceived notions attached to the word vampire. Some have opted to spell vampire as vampyre thinking that seperates them from the mythical vampires. However, there are different definitions for the alternate spelling too and in some cases the meanings are opposite. Trendy spellings aside, it would be interesting to see what becomes of the term "real vampire" and if any new terms make the rounds in the future. It comes down to people assuming freedoms with the English language and then expecting everyone to accept the changes made to definitions - however this does not happen and a breakdown in communcation occurs. It is very difficult to communicate when the standard meanings for words are substituted to suit an individual or group.

This is meant as a basic introduction to what a real vampire is. Vampires, just like anyone else, are not all the same. The above information is a good starting point. And always remember that there are things in the universe that cannot be explained.

Animalistic Vampires

"The Animistic Vampire in New England"
by George R. Stetson
from The American Anthropologist, Vol. IX, No. 1,
January, 1896


The belief in the vampire and the whole family of
demons has its origin in the animism, spiritism, or
personification of the barbarian, who, unable to
distinguish the objective from the subjective,
ascribes good and evil influences and all natural
phenomena to good and evil spirits.

Mr. Conway remarks of this vampire belief that "it is,
perhaps, the most formidable survival of demonic
superstition now existing in the world."

Under the names of vampire, were-wolf, man-wolf,
night-mare, night-demon--in the Illyrian tongue
oupires, or leeches; in modern Greek broucolaques, and
in our common tongue ghosts, each country having its
own peculiar designation--the superstitious of the
ancient and modern world, of Chaldea and Babylon,
Persia, Egypt, and Syria, of Illyria, Poland, Turkey,
Servia, Germany, England, Central Africa, New England,
and the islands of the Malay and Polynesian
archipelagoes, designate the spirits which leave the
tomb, generally in the night, to torment the living.

The character, purpose, and manner of the vampire
manifestations depend, like its designation, upon
environment and the plane of culture.

All primitive peoples have believed in the existence
of good and evil spirits holding a middle place
between men and gods. Calmet lays down in most
explicit terms, as he was bound to do by the canons of
his church, the doctrine of angels and demons as a
matter of dogmatic theology.
The early Christians were possessed, or obsessed, by
demons, and the so-called demoniacal possession of
idiots, lunatics, and hysterical persons is still
common in Japan, China, India, and Africa, and
instances are noted in Western Europe, all yielding to
the methods of Christian and pagan exorcists as
practiced in New Testament times.

The Hebrew synonym of demon was serpent; the Greek,
diabolus, a calumniator, or impure spirit. The Rabbins
were divided in opinion, some believing they were
entirely spiritual, others that they were corporeal,
capable of generation and subject to death.

As before suggested, it was the general belief that
the vampire is a spirit which leaves its dead body in
the grave to visit and torment the living.

The modern Greeks are persuaded that the bodies of the
excommunicated do not putrefy in their tombs, but
appear in the night as in the day, and that to
encounter them is dangerous.

Instances are cited by Calmet, in Christian antiquity,
of excommunicated persons visibly arising from their
tombs and leaving the churches when the deacon
commanded the excommunicated and those who did not
partake of the communion to retire. The same writer
states that "it was an opinion widely circulated in
Germany that certain dead ate in their tombs and
devoured all they could find around them, including
their own flesh, accompanied by a certain piercing
shriek and a sound of munching and groaning."

A German author has thought it worth while to write a
work entitled "De Masticatione mortuorum in tumulis."
In many parts of England a person who is ill is said
to be "wisht" or "overlooked." The superstition of the
"evil eye" originated and exists in the same degree of
culture; the evil eye "which kills snakes, scares
wolves, hatches ostrich eggs, and breeds leprosy." The
Polynesians believed that the vampires were the
departed souls, which quitted the grave, and grave
idols, to creep by night into the houses and devour
the heart and entrails of the sleepers, who afterward
died.1

The Karems tell of the Kephu, which devours the souls
of men who die. The mintira of the Malay peninsula
have their water demon, who sucks blood from men's
toes and thumbs.

"The first theory of the vampire superstitions,"
remarks Tyler2, "is that the soul of the living man,
often a sorcerer, leaves its proper body asleep and
goes forth, perhaps in visible form of a straw or a
fluff of down, slips through the keyhole, and attacks
a living victim. Some say these Mauri come by night to
men, sit upon their breasts, and suck their blood,
while others think children alone are attacked, while
to men they are nightmares.

"The second theory is that the soul of a dead man goes
out from its buried body and sucks the blood of living
men; the victim becomes thin, languid, bloodless, and,
falling into a rapid decline, dies."

The belief in the Obi of Jamaica and the Vaudoux or
Vodun of the West African coast, Jamaica and Haiti is
essentially the same as that of the vampire, and its
worship and superstitions, which in Africa include
child-murder, still survive in these parts, as well as
in several districts among the negro population of our
southern states. The negro laid under the ban of the
Obi or who is vaudouxed or, in the vernacular,
"hoodooed" slowly pines to death.

In New England the vampire superstition is unknown by
its proper name. It is there believed that consumption
is not a physical but a spiritual disease, obsession,
or visitation; that as long as the body of a dead
consumptive relative has blood in its heart it is
proof that an occult influence steals from it for
death and is at work draining the blood of the living
into the heart of the dead and causing his rapid
decline.

It is a common belief in primitive races of low
culture that disease is caused by the revengeful
spirits of man or other animals--notably among the
tribes of North American Indians as well as of African
negroes.

Russian superstition supposes nine sisters who plague
mankind with fever. They lie chained up in caverns,
and when let loose pounce upon man without pity.3

As in the financial and political, the psychologic
world has its periods of exultation and depression, of
confidence and alarm. In the eighteenth century a
vampire panic beginning in Servia and Hungary spread
thence into northern and western Europe, acquiring its
new life and impetus from the horrors attending the
prevalence of the plague and other distressing
epidemics in an age of great public moral depravity
and illiteracy. Calmet, a learned Benedictine monk and
abb? of S?nones, seized this opportunity to write a
popular treatise on the vampire, which in a short time
passed through many editions. It was my good fortune
not long since to find in the Boston Athenaeum library
an original copy of his work. Its title page reads as
follows: "Trait? sur les apparitions des esprits et
sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de
Moravie, etc. Par le R. P. Dom Augustine Calmet, abb?
de S?nones. Nouvelle edition, revis?e, corrigie, at
augmentie par l'auteur, avec une lettre de Mons le
Marquis Maffei, sur le magie. A Paris; Chez debure
l'aine quay des Augustins ? l'image S. Paul. MDCCLI.
Avec approb et priv du roi."

Calmet was born in Lorraine, near Commercy, in 1672,
and his chief works were a commentary and history of
the Bible. He died as the abb? de S?nones, in the
department of the Vosges.

This curious treatise has evidently proved a mine of
wealth to all modern encyclopedists and demonologists.
It impresses one as the work of a man whose mental
convictions do not entirely conform to the traditions
and dogmas of his church, and his style at times
appears somewhat apologetic. Calmet declares his
belief to be that the vampires of Europe and the
broucolaques of Greece are the excommunicated which
the grave rejects. They are the dead of a longer or
shorter time who leave their tombs to torment the
living, sucking their blood and announcing their
appearance by rattling of doors and windows. The name
vampire, or d'oupires, signifies in the Slavonic
tongue a bloodsucker. He formulates the three theories
then existing as to the cause of these appearances:

First: That the persons were buried alive and
naturally leave their tombs.

Second: That they are dead, but that by God's
permission or particular command they return to their
bodies for a time, as when they are exhumed their
bodies are found entire, the blood red and fluid, and
their members soft and pliable.

Third: That it is the devil who makes these
apparitions appear and by their means causes all the
evil done to men and animals.

In some places the spectre appears as in the flesh,
walks, talks, infests villages, ill uses both men and
beasts, sucks the blood of their near relations, makes
them ill, and finally causes their death.

The late Monsieur de Vassimont, counselor of the
chamber of the courts of Bar, was informed by public
report in Monravia that it was common enough in that
country to see men who had died some time before
"present themselves at a party and sit down to table
with persons of their acquaintance without saying a
word and nodding to one of the party, the one
indicated would infallibly die some days after."4

About 1735 on the frontier of Hungary a dead person
appeared after ten years' burial and caused the death
of his father. In 1730 in Turkish Servia it was
believed that those who had been passive vampires
during life became active after death; in Russia, that
the vampire does not stop his unwelcome visits at a
single member of a family, but extends his visits to
the last member, which is the Rhode Island belief.

The captain of grenadiers in the Regiment of Monsieur
le Baron Trenck, cited by Calmet, declares "that it is
only in their family and among their own relations
that the vampires delight in destroying their own
species."

The inhabitants of the island of Chio do not answer
unless called twice, being persuaded that the
broucolaques do not call but once, and when so called
the vampire disappears, and the person called dies in
a few days. The classic writers from Socrates to
Shakespeare and from Shakespeare to our own time have
recognized the superstition.

Mr. Conway quotes from the legend of Ishtar descending
to Hades to seek some beloved one. She threatens if
the door is not opened--

"I will raise the dead to be devourers of the living;
Upon the living shall the dead prey."5

Singularly, in his discourse on modern superstitions
De Quincey, to whom crude superstitions clung and who
had faith in dreams as portents, does not allude to
the vampire; but his contemporary, Lord Byron, in his
lines on the opening of the royal romb at Windsor,
recognizes this belief in the transformation of the
dead:

"Justice and death have mixed their dust in vain,
Each royal vampire wakes to life again."

William of Malmsbury says that "in England they>believed that the
wicked
came back after death by the
will of the devil," and it was not an unusual belief
that those whose death had been caused in this manner,
at their death pursued the same evil calling.
Naturally under such an uncomfortable and inconvenient
infliction some avenue of escape must, if possible, be
found. It was first necessary to locate the vampire.
If on opening the grave of a "suspect" the body was
found to be of a rose color, the beard, hair and nails
renewed, and the veins filled, the evidence of its
being the abode of a vampire was conclusive. A voyager
in the Levant in the seventeenth century is quoted as
relating that an excommunicated person was exhumed and
the body found full, healthy, and well disposed and
the veins filled with the blood the vampire had taken
from the living. In a certain Turkish village, of
forty persons exhumed seventeen gave evidence of
vampirism. In Hungary, one dead thirty years was found
in a natural state. In 1727 the bodies of five
religieuse were discovered in a tomb near the hospital
of Quebec, that had been buried twenty years, covered
with flesh and suffused with blood.6

The methods of relief from or disposition of the
vampire's dwelling place are not numerous, but
extremely sanguinary and ghastly.
In Servia a relief is found in eating of the earth of
his grave and rubbing the person with his blood. This
prescription, was, however, valueless if after forty
days the body was exhumed and all the evidences of an
archivampire were not found. A more common and almost
universal method of relief, especially in the Turkish
provinces and in the Greek islands, was to burn the
body and scatter the ashes to the winds. Some old
writers are of the opinion that the souls of the dead
cannot be quiet until the entire body has been
consumed. Exceptions are noted in the Levant, where
the body is cut in pieces and boiled in wine, and
where, according to Voltaire, the heart is torn out
and burned.

In Hungary and Servia, to destroy the demon it was
considered necessary to exhume the body, insert in the
heart and other parts of the defunct, or pierce it
through with a sharp instrument, as in the case of
suicides, upon which it utters a dreadful cry, as if
alive; it is then decapitated and the body burned. In
New England the body is exhumed, the heart burned, and
the ashes scattered. The discovery of the vampire's
resting-place was itself an art.

In Hungary and in Russia they choose a boy young
enough to be certain that he is innocent of any
impurity, put him on the back of a horse which has
never stumbled and is absolutely black, and make him
ride over all the graves in the cemetery. The grave
over which the horse refuses to pass is reputed to be
that of a vampire.

Gilbert Stuart, the distinguished American painter,
when asked by a London friend where he was born,
replied: "Six miles from Pottawoone, ten miles from
Poppasquash, four miles from Conanicut, and not far
from the spot where the famous battle with the warlike
Pequots was fought." In plainer language, Stuart was
born in the old snuff mill belonging to his father and
Dr. Moffat, at the head of the Petaquamscott pond, six
miles from Newport, across the bay, and about the same
distance from Narragansett Pier, in the state of Rhode
Island.

By some mysterious survival, occult transmission, or
remarkable atavisim, this region, including within its
radius the towns of Exeter, Foster, Kingstown, East
Greenwich, and others, with their scattered hamlets
and more pretentious villages, is distinguished by the
prevalence of this remarkable superstition--a survival
of the days of Sardanapalus, of Nebuchadnezzar, and of
New Testament history in the closing years of what we
are pleased to call the enlightened nineteenth
century. It is an extraordinary instance of a barbaric
superstition outcropping in and coexisting with a high
general culture, of which Max M?ller and others have
spoken, and which is not so uncommon, if rarely so
extremely aggravated, crude, and painful.

The region referred to, where agriculture is in a
depressed condition and abandoned farms are numerous,
is the tramping ground of the book agent, the chromo
peddler, the patent-medicine man and the home of the
erotic and neurotic modern novel. The social isolation
away from the larger villages is as complete as a
century and a half ago, when the boy Gilbert Stuart
tramped the woods, fished the streams, and was
developing and absorbing his artistic inspirations,
while the agricultural and economic conditions are
very much worse.7

Farm houses deserted and ruinous are frequent, and the
once productive lands, neglected and overgrown with
scrubby oak, speak forcefully and mournfully of the
migration of the youthful farmers from country to
town. In short, the region furnishes an object-lesson
in the decline of of wealth consequent upon the
prevalence of a too common heresy in the district that
land will take care of itself, or that it can be
robbed from generation to generation without injury,
and suggests the almost criminal neglect of the
conservators of public education to give instruction
to our farming youth in a more scientific and more
practical agriculture. It has well been said by a
banker of well-known name in an agricultural district
in the midlands of England that "the depression of
agriculture is a depression of brains." Naturally, in
such isolated conditions the superstitions of a much
lower culture have maintained their place and are
likely to keep it and perpetuate it, despite the
church, the public school, and the weekly newspaper.
Here Cotton Mather, Justice Sewall, and the host of
medical, clerical and lay believers in the uncanny
superstitions of bygone centuries could still hold
high carnival.

The first visit in this farming community of
native-born New Englanders was made to ------, a small
seashore village possessing a summer hotel and a few
cottages of summer residents not far from
Newport--that Mecca of wealth, fashion, and
nineteenth-century culture. The ------ family is among
its well-to-do and most intelligent inhabitants. One
member of this family had some years since lost
children by consumption, and by common report claimed
to have saved those surviving by exhumation and
cremation of the dead.

In the same village resides Mr. ------, an intelligent
man, by trade a mason, who is a living witness of the
superstition and of the efficacy of the treatment of
the dead which it prescribes. He informed me that he
had lost two brothers by consumption. Upon the attack
of the second brother his father was advised by Mr.
------, the head of the family before mentioned, to
take up the first body and burn its heart, but the
brother attacked objected to the sacrilege and in
consequence subsequently died. When he was attacked by
the disease in his turn, ------'s advice prevailed,
and the body of the brother last dead was exhumed, and
"living" blood being found in the heart and in
circulation, it was cremated, and the sufferer began
immediately to mend and stood before me and hale,
hearty, and vigorous man of fifty years. When
questioned as to his understanding of the miraculous
influence, he could suggest nothing and did not
recognize the superstition even by name. He remembered
that the doctors did not believe in its efficacy, but
he and many others did. His father saw the brother's
body and the arterial blood. The attitude of several
other persons in regard to the practice was agnostic,
either from fear of public opinion or other reasons,
and their replies to my inquiries were in the same
temper of mind as that of the blind man in the Gospel
of Saint John (9:25), who did not dare to express his
belief, but "answered and said, Whether he was a
sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that
whereas I was blind, now I see."

At ------, a small isolated village of scattered
houses in a farming population, distant fifteen or
twenty miles from Newport and eight or ten from
Stuart's birthplace, there have been made within fifty
years a half dozen or more exhumations. The most
recent was made within two years, in the family of
------. The mother and four children had already
succumbed to consumption, and the child most recently
deceased (within six months) was, in obedience to the
superstition, exhumed and the heart burned. Dr.
------, who made the autopsy, stated that he found the
body in the usual condition after an interment of that
length of time. I learned that others of the family
have since died, and one is now very low with the
dreaded disease. The doctor remarked that he consented
to the autopsy only after the pressing solicitation of
the surviving children, who were patients of his, the
father first objecting, but finally, under continued
pressure, yielding. Dr. ------ declares the
superstition to be prevalent in all the isolated
districts of southern Rhode Island, and that many
instances of its survival can be found in the large
centers of population. In the village now being
considered known exhumations have been made in five
families, and in two adjoining villages in two
families. In 1875 an instance was reported in Chicago,
and in a New York journal of recent date I read the
following: "At Peukuhl, a small village in Prussia, a
farmer died last March. Since then one of his sons has
been sickly, and believing that the dead man would not
rest until he had drawn to himself the nine surviving
members of the family, the sickly son, armed with a
spade, exhumed his father and cut off his head." It
does not by any means absolutely follow that this
barbarous superstition has a stronger hold in Rhode
Island than in any other part of the country. Peculiar
conditions have caused its manifestation and survival
there, and similar ones are likely to produce it
elsewhere. The singular feature is that it should
appear and flourish in a native population which from
its infancy has had the ordinary New England
educational advantages; in a State having a larger
population to the square mile than any in the Union,
and in an environment of remarkable literacy and
culture when compared to some other sections of the
country. It is perhaps fortunate that the isolation of
which this is probably the product, an isolation
common in sparsely settled regions, where thought
stagnates and insanity and superstition are prevalent,
has produced nothing worse.

In neighboring Connecticut, within a few miles of its
university town of New Haven, there are rural farming
populations, fairly prosperous, of average
intelligence, and furnished with churches and schools,
which have made themselves notorious by murder,
suicides, and numerous instances of melancholia and
insanity.

Other abundant evidence is at hand pointing to the
conclusion that the vampire superstition still retains
its hold in its original habitat--an illustration of
the remarkable tenacity and continuity of a
superstition through centuries of intellectual
progress from a lower to a higher culture, and of the
impotency of the latter to entirely eradicate from
itself the traditional beliefs, customs, habits,
observances, and impressions of the former.

It is apparent that our increased and increasing
culture, our appreciation of the principles of
natural, mental, and moral philosophy and knowledge of
natural laws has no complete correlation in the
decline of primitive and crude superstitions or
increased control of the emotions or the imagination,
and that to force a higher culture upon a lower, or to
metamorphose or to perfectly control its emotional
nature through education of the intellect, is equally
impossible. The two cultures may, however, coexist,
intermingling and in a limited degree absorbing from
and retroacting favorably or unfavorably upon each
other--trifling aberrations in the inexorable law
which binds each to its own place.

The most enlightened and philosophic have, either
apparent or secreted in their innermost consciousness,
superstitious weaknesses--negative, involuntary, more
or less barbaric, and under greater or lesser control
in correspondence with their education, their present
environment, and the degree of their development--in
the control of the imagination and emotions. These in
various degrees predominate over the understanding
where reason is silent or its authority weakens.

S?nya Koval?vsky (1850-1890), one of the most
brilliant mathematicians of the century, who obtained
the Prix-Bordin from the French academy, "the greatest
scientific honor ever gained by a woman," "whose love
for mathematical and psychological problems amounted
to a passion," and whose intellect would accept no
proposition incapable of a mathematical demonstration,
all her life maintained a firm belief in apparitions
and in dreams as portents. She was so influenced by
disagreeable dreams and the apparition of a demon as
to be for some time thereafter obviously depressed and
low-spirited.

A well-known and highly cultured American
mathematician recently said to me that his servant had
seven years ago nailed a horseshoe over a house door,
and that he had never had the courage to remove it.

There is in the Chemnitzer-Rocken Philosophie, cited
by Grimm, a register of eleven or twelve hundred crude
superstitions surviving in highly educated Germany.
Buckle declared that "superstition was the curse of
Scotland," and in this regard neither Germany nor
Scotland are singular.

Of the origin of this superstition in Rhode Island or
in other parts of the United States we are ignorant;
it is in all probability an exotic like ourselves,
originating in the mythographic period of the Aryan
and Semitic peoples, although legends and
superstitions of a somewhat similar character may be
found among the American Indians.

The Ojibwas have, it is said, a legend of a ghostly
man-eater. Mr. Mooney, in a personal note, says he has
not met with any close parallel of the vampire myth
among the tribes with which he is familiar. The
Cherokees have, however, something analogous. There
are in that tribe quite a number of old witches and
wizards who thrive and fatten upon the livers of
murdered victims. When some one is dangerously sick
these witches gather invisibly about his bedside and
torment him, even lifting him up and dashing him down
again upon the ground until life is extinct. After he
is buried they dig up his body and take out the liver
to feast upon. They thus lengthen their own lives by
as many days as they have taken from his. In this way
they get to be very aged, which renders them objects
of suspicion. It is not, therefore, well to grow old
among the Cherokees. If discovered and recognized
during the feast, when they are again visible, they
die within seven days.

I have personal experience of a case in which a
reputed medicine-man was left to die alone because his
friends were afraid to come into the house on account
of the presence of invisible witches.

Jacob Grimm8 defines superstition as a persistence of
individual men in views which the common sense or
culture of the majority has caused them to abandon, a
definition which, while within its limits sufficiently
accurate, does not recognize or take account of the
subtile, universal, ineradicable fear of or reverence
for the supernatural, the mysterious, and unknown.

De Quincey has more comprehensively remarked that
"superstition or sympathy with the invisible is the
great test of man's nature as an earthly combining
with a celestial. In superstition is the possibility
of religion, and though superstition is often
injurious, degrading and demoralizing, it is so, not
as a form of corruption or degradation, but as a form
of non-development."

In reviewing these cases of psychologic
pre-Raphaelitism they seem, from an economic point of
view, to form one of the strongest as well as the
weirdest arguments in favor of a general cremation of
the dead that it is possible to present. They also
remind us of the boutade of the Saturday Review, "that
to be really Medieval, one should have no body; to be
really modern, one should have no soul;" and it will
be well to remember that if we do not quite accept
these demonic apparitions we shall subject ourselves
to the criticism of the modern mystic, Dr. Carl du
Prel, who thus speaks of those who deny the
miraculousness of stigmatization: "For these gentleman
the bounds of possibility coincide with the limits of
their niggardly horizon; that which they cannot grasp
either does not exist or is only the work of illusion
and deception."

PSI Vampyrs

Psi is an abbreviation that represents parapsychological phenomena collectively. Parapsychology is the "study of mental phenonmena outside the sphere of ordinary psychology".(The Oxford English Reference Dictionary) Telepathy, telekinesis,
ghosts, hypnotism, and energy work would more or less fall under the parapsychology umbrella. Few dictionaries carry a definition of psionics, but basically it involves working with and manipulating energy. It should be noted that psy vampire is merely a vampire who is psychic. Psy is the abbreviated form of psychic. People often confuse the psi and psy, they are often related, but not the same thing. A sanguinarian vampire could be psychic for example, but not a psi vampire.

A psi vampire is someone who requires pranic or life force energy from other sources in order to maintain good health. There is no evidence to suggest that vampires who do not feed will die, it is not as melodramatic as all that. In addition to feeding off of the energy of living things, some psi vampires can feed off of the earth such as nature or storms, and sometimes even power sources. Psi vampires do not need to be around people all the time. They do not need to feed constantly - just like everyone else does not need to eat constantly to meet their energy requirements. Some psi vampires feed on excess energy present in large groups like at shopping malls or at a concert. Others prefer to feed on individuals, and some do so with or without their permission.

In order to understand psi vampirism there is perhaps one example that makes it very simple. Almost everyone knows someone who is difficult to be around because after you have interacted with them you feel rather depressed and down, and quite drained. You don't feel happy or energized after your time with them. A lot of such people have constant drama and their demands on you for emotional support can sometimes tap into your energy reserves because they take and do not give back. Such people are often depressed individuals but they are not always vampires. This is just an example I use to help people understand the concept of psi vampirism. It does not mean that all psionic vampires have this affect on people, nor does it suggest the people who make you feel "drained" are vampires. Such people are not definitions of psi vampirism though, I was just using the concept to illustrate what is possible. It makes the possibility that someone can feed on energy a little more understandable. However, it is not something that is supernatural. I think it is something natural that has not been explored overly much in the world of science.

The person being fed off may or may not feel anything. If they do feel something it is usually a feeling of fatigue or tiredness. Individuals who are more sensitive may sense that something "strange" is happening but they don't know what. Fully awakened individuals(not just vampires, but any "aware" person) may know exactly what is happening. Skilled psi vampires may make the feeding quite pleasant for the donor because they can take some energy and then give it back. Not everyone would practice this kind of cycling though.

Some people believe that a vampire is a vampire, in other words, there is no difference between a sanguinarian vampire and a psi vampire. The difference lies in the method of getting the energy - the sanguinarian gets pranic energy from the blood, whereas the psi vampire gets it without using the blood as a "vehicle". There is quite the debate about this issue as some sanguinarians insist they cannot feed without getting the blood. There is the opinion that they can get the energy without blood but they have blocked that ability and are holding themselves back. It does not look like this particular debate will be resolved any time soon.

~*~*~Personalities~*~*~

Obscuro Valkyrie: Some people bring unexpected lightness and comfort to your life. They crackle with energy, practically electrify you with their presence. And then there are those who leave you feeling stressed out. Or guilty. Or exhausted down to your very last molecule. I call them energy vampires, and obnoxious or meek, they come in all forms. The sob sister, for one, always considers herself the victim. The world is always against her, and she'll recount every horrible thing that has happened to her, wallowing in every perceived slight. The charmer is a constant talker or joke-teller who has to be the center of attention. The blamer, on the other hand, doles out endless servings of guilt. And then there's the drama queen, the co-worker who claims she almost died from a high fever or the neighbor who lives in extremes of emotion...life is unbelievably good or horrifically bad.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Psychic Vampire Personalities
written by Dr. Bruce Goldberg

The Psychological dynamics represented by people who inadvertently portray a psychic attacker (energy vampire) fall into five major categories.This personality type is an accumulation of that individual's experience in their current life, as well as in prior lifetimes. Fear is the common denominator in these individuals, and you must learn to protect yourself from their negative influences. The five personality types are called ethereal, insecure, paranoid, passive-aggressive, and robotic.


The Paranoid Type


Betrayal is the main issue with a paranoid type. Their Karmic theme in past lives has possibly been that of warrior-like behavior, self-sacrifice, and victory in their battles. As a results of their experiences, they learned that there were enemies in the world who betrayed and possibly killed them in several incarnations. Paranoid types are soldiers still trying to win a war that no longer exists against an enemy and life is their battleground. Fear is everywhere and an ingrained part of their personality makeup.

Their energy fields tend to be more highly charged on the upper half of their body. They are especially fearful and distrustful of members of the opposite sex. Agression is the most common response to the world from a paranoid type. This aggression takes the form of physical behavior and energy projections to anyone in their path.

Paranoid Types constantly pick fights. They are seductive, but are incapable of long-term relationships. This person expects all others to betray them, and will assist in setting up others for this betrayal. A paranoid may initiate a betrayal as a preemptory strike.

To lose for a paranoid is to admit that they are bad. This is intolerable, so these people must win at any cost. They are hard workers, obsessive-compulsive, and are usually quite healthy physically. There is never enough time for them to accomplish their various goals.

Paranoid types insist you agree with their often-distorted view of the world. In reality, they want you to argue with them. This way they can win the argument and prove to themselves that they are good and you are bad. Never argue with this person. Refrain from making eye contact with them. Lower and soften your voice when you speak to them, and change the topic to something pleasant.


The Ethereal Type


Existential terror is the predominant issue of an ethereal type. Most often these troubled souls have been tortured to death in previous lives for their metaphysical beliefs or practices. Their only escape was to leave the body, so-out-of-body experiences are the norm with them today.

These individuals do not want much contact with others. They were afraid to incarnate in their present body, and show this fear by being unwilling to commit their consciousness completely into their physical body. Leaving their physical body often throughout the day is the most common method that ethereal types use to deal with problems. They have weak boundaries and spend as much time as possible on the spiritual realms. Since all time is simultaneous on other planes, these people find it difficult to relate to linear time.

The result of these inclinations is both withdrawal and aggression. They become aggressive and angry when forced to function on the earth plane. Their psychic attack on you is rarely premeditated, but, nonetheless you must protect yourself from these individuals.


The Insecure Type

Invasion and being controlled is the chief concern of the passive-aggressive type. During several past incarnations, they experienced being controlled and trapped in situations, and prevented from being able to express themselves in ways they wanted to. They may have been slaves, prisoners, or been victimized by religion or governments.

These souls absolutely desire freedom, but their fear prevents them from claiming it. they are angry and resentful for not feeling free, and lack a solution to this problem. Their response to the world is withdrawal, but with a subconscious wish to obtain permission from other people to come back into the world.

Passive-aggressive types lack autonomy. They constantly strive to involve other people in their lives. This individual makes demands and resists input at the same time. They live in the now, and never think about the future. Self-expression is unkown to them. It is common to observe others interfering with their development, completing their sentences, and taking them for granted.

This type of individual creates an internal world of unclear, undifferentiated fantasies and ideas, with fear at the core of this world. They imprison themselves and project loneliness, desperation, and resentment toward everyone they contact. It is impossible for them to express anger.

When you engage this type in conversation, they will request your advice. Unfortunately, all of your suggestions are wrong and you are of no help to them. These people ask but reject whatever is offered to them. Their classic response to your advice is, "yes, but.."


Robotic Type


The main issue of robotic types is authenticity. They are denying their true self. During previous lifetimes, they had to keep up the appearance of being perfect in order to survive. They were most likely in charge of running things, as they probably are now.

Their outer world is perfect, the inner world is denied, and there is no core essence. They constantly fear that something is missing and life is progressing without them. To deal with this reality, robot types try to become even more perfect. They have high-paying jobs, a good reputation, a perfect spouse and family, and look in perfect health.

The more inauthentic they act, the more meaningless the world appears. Others envy their lifestyle. People come to them with their problems. The robot types never attain satisfaction from life, and come across as a blank. they function as if on automatic pilot and are often removed from your conversation. Robot types never complain about the world. They are perfect and everything is beautiful. Appropriateness and being "politically correct" are more important than being than being real.


Obscuro Valkyrie: Dr. Bruce Goldberg is a very well known hypnotherapist who has conducted several seminars across the nation dealing with various metaphysical realms. He has guided many on how to deal with psychic vampirism on a more understanding level. If you are interested in attending one of his seminars or reviewing more of his research and studies, you can visit his official site at www.drbrucegoldberg.com

Sexual Vampires

I have added this category because I have met some that claim to be sexual vampires. I certainly believe that there are many kinds and variations of vampires just as there are different races in the world. I know very little about this kind at this time but I will share what I do know.

Those that I have met, often call themselves Succubus(female) or Incubus(male). Mythically, these were sexual winged demons that drained a victim to death through sexual activity. Realistically, they certainly wouldn't quite resemble that. From what I understand, they are simply vampires that aquire energy both directly and through bodily fluids to feed their needs from their sexual partners. Psychic vampires and blood vampires often feed through sexual activity as well, so I'm not sure how different these kind are. Maybe they are a combination of both psy and blood vampires which makes sexual activity the best way to aquire both at once.

I just recently met one who called himself a sensual vampire. I would have to say it was an interesting conversation. I also know that he was for real because there was an electrical energy about him which I picked up on as a psychic vampire. He said that the difference between him and others was his approach. He was gentle and erotic in his words and touches. His activity for feeding focused on romantic sexual encounters. He also confirmed that for him it was a combination of blood and energy that he fed from. Unlike many blood vampires, there was nothing rough about his approach or personality. I just thought I would pass this encounter along to everyone for its information value.

Vampire Sanguinarian

~*~*~Life of a Sanguinarian~*~*~

What is a Sanguinarian, you ask? Well, Sanguinarian is a term that was developed by Amy Krieytaz, owner of the Vampiric People's Resource Page, to describe those of us that have an affection and need for blood. A Sanguinarian is a Human Living Vampire, or HLV. We are people who have a biological need to ingest blood. We are human. We don't look any different from anyone else (except for those of us that are very fair complected due to sun-allergy.) We have jobs, families, children, regular friends, parents, and everything else that a non-sanguinarian has.

There are many concepts about why we have this need, compulsion or tendency.

Our own concepts range from a biological need to a spiritual need. Biologically we may need the blood to enhance our own deficiency in certain minerals, vitamins, cells or blood supply. Psychically it's possible that we need energy from other sources outside ourselves, because we have a deficiency in that area, possibly not able to provide our own, and we gain this energy from blood. Psychologically it could satisfy us with the closeness it provides, a merging, so to speak. Spiritually it's possible that we use it to gain prana, or spiritual energy or power from it.

We have no special supernatural powers (other than a heightened awareness of those around us, and heightened senses which makes life more acute) unless we choose to develop them within ourselves, just like an average person. We are not immortal (although some will try to disagree with me on this, that is just a fantasy.) We get ill, we weep, we bleed, we are born, and finally we die just like any other person. Our lives are not glamorous. There are only small portions of our kind who have chosen to live their lives completely as one would consider a "true vampire" (as in the movies.) Most of us look like your next-door neighbor we might BE your next-door neighbor and you'd never know. We go to Parent-Teacher meetings, raise our children, take care of our families, and the majority of us are not wealthy. We are normal, everyday persons. We eat we use the bathroom you get the jist!

Sarasvati describes it best:

"'Blood vampires' those self-defined HLV's whose main tendency is a compulsion, or need, to consume blood ... Blood vampires feel a physical craving to consume blood, and most do so on a regular basis ... Some blood vampires describe a life-long fascination with blood and blood-drinking, while others experienced an abrupt awakening of blood-craving which they may or may not be able to trace to a certain event"

"Blood-craving HLV's tend to regard their need for blood as a liability, sometimes an extremely severe one."

There is a big difference between categories of blood-drinking HLVs.

I'd like to start with the teenagers in this category. Teenagers have it rough during this time in their lives. They are going through hormonal changes, and they are becoming aware of who they are as people, defining themselves, and where they fit in with society. Some teenagers, who are extremely intelligent, creative, or have something that causes them to be different from other teenagers, have it a lot harder. They can be withdrawn from their peers, ostracized, tortured, or just not fit in somehow and be singled out because of it. Some of these kids are romanticists and dreamers; it's easier to deal with the pain and confusion by escaping from it. This escapism can take the form of playing any of the popular "Role Playing" games one of which is "Vampire the Masquerade" (by White Wolf) or by reading modern Gothic novels (for example, anything by Anne Rice or Chelsey Quinn Yarboro.) In some of these kids, it's possible that the concept of being all powerful and in control of their lives is a much better reality than feeling helpless and out of control. THESE are the teenagers who can be easily seduced by the fantasy of actually being a "Vampire."

These kids are NOT vampires. And one has to watch out for and take care of these misguided teens, lest they get themselves into a dangerous situation by believing themselves to be something they are not ultra-powerful, invincible, immortal. Many adults will take advantage of them, in their deluded, innocent, vulnerable state. Nowthere ARE teenagers who DO come out as Sangunarians. This need or desire for blood usually hits them at their puberty. They have no idea what to do with this desire, like they have no idea what to do with their hormones, at that stage. Many of them will also fall into the "fantasy vampire" themes, for a while. But their interest is MORE than just a passing phase, and is based on more than simply a need to gain control over their lives, feel a sense of self-worth or empowerment, or to fit in. These few kids eventually find their way through the fantasy and into the adult world of Human Living Vampires.

Another category that needs to be addressed early on in this essay is what Sarasvati rightly names the "Psychotic Vampire".

The psychotic "vampire" is a person with a severe psychotic illness, who believes themselves to either be a vampire, or who uses vampiric traits in their lust for cruelty.

Most Psychotic Vampires are the people who end up in the many diverse books and essays on "vampirism", as an example of what or who vampires are. While these mentally ill people may display a lust for blood, they are in no way True vampires. They are mentally ill persons, usually with abusive histories, who are not unlike Ted Bundy or Charles Manson, they just have an obsession with blood, and/or a delusion of being a vampire.

Sarasvati describes them thus:

"A psychotic vampire is a person who has a sociopathic mental illness that leads him (they are almost invariably male) to behave like a vampire, and sometimes to actually self-identify as one. In most cases, this identification is with folkloric/fictional vampires such as Dracula, Anne Rice's characters or the vampires in role-playing games. But more usually, psychotic vampires are simply obsessed with blood and will commit brutal crimes without remorse in order to see, taste, and feel it. They may also take on some of the trappings of Vamp[I]re Lifestylers by wearing capes, sleeping in coffins, filling their homes with skulls, bones, and souvenirs stolen from cemeteries, and so on, but they should not be confused with true Lifestylers."

These are people that impressionable persons should explicitly be aware of. They will be wherever groupings of persons who are into the vampiric or Gothic lifestyles tend to gather on the internet, in clubs, in religious groups, in vampiric groups. If you are new to the lifestyle, or are new to an area, it is simply common sense NOT to go any place by yourself, without a trusted friend, and with anyone you do not know. Do not allow yourself to be alone with ANYONE you do not know. Trust your gut-feelings about people you are usually right. Take any normal, maybe even further cautions that you would normally take when dealing with new people or a new environment. Don't walk around the streets around a club alone. Predators tend to lurk there, waiting for vulnerable victims. Just because YOU may be a vampire, does not mean that you are invulnerable to other predators! And remember what your mother taught you don't take "candy" from strangers!

Speaking of this topic, I would like to add that everything I've written here is from my own experiences, observations and beliefs. Not every vampire has the same views that I have. I tend to be a careful person, by nature. It's what's kept me alive in many sticky situations. Some vampires will even disagree with my views and that's fine. Everyone is different. Don't take what ANYONE (even myself) says as Law. Do your own research. Study from many people. Listen to your own heart. You are the only one who truly has your own answers.

The next category of vampires is average HLVs.

Most of the HLVs that I have met and/or talked to have one thing in common. They are good, normal folks, and come from all walks of life. Some are professors, some work in the social fields or in medicine, some are artists or musicians, still others are simply working class people. How do they appear?

Well, some look like professors, some look like social workers, some look like doctors or nurses, some are gothic, some live their lives like the traditional American concept of the Vampire are getting what I'm getting at?

There is NO WAY to tell if someone is a vampire, blood, psychic or otherwise. Most vampires keep their lifestyle to themselves, or maybe sharing it with a few close friends. Otherwise, there are a few clubs specifically for vampires, in many major cities. However fun these may be, my previous warning standsand a lot of these clubs are also patronized by vampire wanna-bees, and people who like to think they're "vampire hunters" (I love Buffy, too, but PLEASE!) These so-called "vampire hunters" COULD form some danger, if only from their delusional nature, so stay precautious. Then there are the "blood-donors". DO NOT EVER EVER EVER drink from a stranger, under ANY circumstances. I will cover this in my next article on Feeding. Let's just say, for now, AIDS and Hepatitis would be no fun. And the last thing will be running into people who want you to "change them" (they have read too much Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and such.) Laugh at them, be kind to them, let them down easily and walk quickly away.

~*~*~Safe Blood Feeding~*~*~

The most important thing about being a Sanguinarian is the fact that you must have blood. You probably don't need it to survive, per se, as you're a Human Living Vampire, but it gives you the energy or high that you need to fulfill yourself. Some Sangunarians actually have severe blood cravings, and the physical illnesses (cramping, lethargy, withdrawal) that can be associated with it. So if you are going to feed, and if you are a Sang you will, make sure that you practice safe, sane, and consensual blood feeding practices.

Lets start with Consensual.

In light of the recent article I posted about the boy who killed an old woman in Wales in order to "become immortal" (another insane mortal trying to pretend about vampirism) I think that consensual feeding is a very important topic.

Lets define Consensual: The American Century Dictionary defines Consent as "1. Express willingness; agree 2. Voluntary agreement; permission.

To feed off of ANYONE who is non-consenting is the equivalent of rape. You will face the penalties of anyone who attacks another human beingspecifically you WILL go to jail or prison.

Some people in the SM Community have contracts that they insist that their partners sign. It's an agreement that they have discussed and agreed upon for the specific amount of "play" and the specific types of activities they will and will not be involved in. I have yet to see this in the Vampire community, however that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. However, for this article, I suggest that when you have a person who is willing to be your donor that you sit down with them and discuss the various means that you will use to feed off of them, what will and will not be involved (some people also add sexual intimacy with their feeding, and this should also be delineated.) Then both of you sign the contract and each keep a copy of it. This could save you some serious legal problems should your donor not be in the emotional or mental state of mind to deal with your feeding.

Which brings us to SANE.

GET TO KNOW YOUR DONOR. If you decide to pick someone up in a bar/club and bring him or her home and feed from them, you will get what you deserve. There are many out there who have the wrong impression about what vampirism isthanks to books and fantasy and role-playing games. You will be confronted with those who will want to become a vampire, but to add to that, you will also be confronted with those who want you to feed off of them or in other words, be a donor. If you don't take your time to weed out the weirdoes, masochists, role players, and fantasy addicts, you could end up with a big issue on your hands. You could end up in jail (teenagers are especially prone to the vampire scene, and if your donor isn't psychologically or emotionally able to handle you feeding they could get you in trouble for sexual abuse or an attack.) You could end up with AIDS, hepatitis, or any number of blood-born diseases. You could be attacked yourself.

The other half of being SANE is to NOT FEED WHILE UNDER THE INFLUENCE! And MAKE SURE YOUR DONOR IS NOT UNDER THE INFLUENCE! Many numbers of things occur while people are on drugs or alcohol, and people are more prone to do things that they are normally under control of. If you're wasted, what is to keep you from attacking your donor in your passion? If he or she is wasted, how do you know they are really consensual? Also, the donor may over react if under the influence. Finally we get to the most important, to me that is.

SAFE BLOOD FEEDING PRACTICES

Once you have gotten to know your donor well, spent time with them, explained things to them, talked things over with them, answered their questions and addressed their fears, and made a contract, you will want to go get tested for diseases. Since AIDS has a "window period" (may not show up for) of about six months, if you do this at the beginning of your new relationship (yes, this is a relationship, even if you're not partners) by the time you've gotten to know each other your results should be in. Don't just get tested for AIDS. Get tested for Hepatitis as well. Hepatitis is becoming more and more rampant these days. Don't feed off of anyone who uses intravenous drugs (needles) or is having unprotected or anonymous sex.


Punctures

Probably one of the safer means of blood drawing, but it does not yield great quantities, so it is not often used. Commonly used are the sewing needle, safety pins, and metal skewers found in every household. These tools are used to quickly prick the skin; usually finger and applying pressure pushes out toe tips, and then the blood. On the safer and more sanitary side of things, some choose to use Auto lances and small, disposable lancets, for these purposes. The prick is quicker, less painful, and often yields slightly more blood than the average safety pin. These are spring loaded devices that are used by diabetics for testing blood sugar levels, and are available quite inexpensively at most drug stores.

Drawing

This has been considered the safest way to acquire larger quantities of blood, but should only be used by professionally trained persons. These measures require access to medical equipment such as hypodermic needles and sharps, vacutainers, tubing, etc. I will refrain from expounding on this topic, because the only people who have access to such equipment legally are those who are trained to use them. In order for the average person to acquire such things, they would need to be stolen, and the hosts of this site do not condone such illegal acts. The only other means to obtain such things would be to utilize a farm supply or feed shop, where they often sell medicines and syringes for use by farm animal owners for their livestock. Again, I would not encourage anyone to proceed in this line of blood drawing unless one is fully trained and competent.

http://sphynxcatvp.nocturna.org/articles/sd-feedingfaq1.html

Author: [Mailto: Sarah Dorrance] 1999

BITING

Not the safest or most painless way to obtain blood. It can be very sensual to receive a hickey (less sensual to give it, if you are trying to get blood through the skin - you end up sucking so hard that you give yourself tongue burn). Breaking the skin, however, hurts. If you are going to use this method, be sure you have used mouthwash beforehand to minimize germs (I used to recommend brushing the teeth, but this can often cause bleeding gums, which makes swallowing blood very unsafe). Keep a first aid kit handy. The best way to bite someone is in the middle of sex, or sexual foreplay; you'll get a higher endorphin count, and your donor will not notice the pain as much. The neck is the most easily accessed place, and it is very sensitive, but the thighs are more practical in that they can be covered and are at least as sensitive as the neck. If your donor has breasts, they can be a good target area as well; although I don't recommend biting the nipple hard enough to draw blood. Go slow and gradually build up sensation. Then, after you are done with feeding (and sex, if this is in the middle of sexual activity) clean up with a local antiseptic.

You won't get much more than a few drops this way.

If you place your hickey on the carotid artery, you will get a large amount of energy, and you may also cause your partner to slowly asphyxiate. Be careful.

Asphyxiation is an advanced technique and most SM practitioners consider it edge play (most vanilla people consider it weird). You can get somebody off with asphyxiation, adding orgasmic energy and frantic struggle for air to your pool of energy taken, but if you don't know what you are doing you can cause brain damage. Do not strangle your partner for more than 30 seconds at a time. I know it doesn't sound like very long, but trust me, counting to thirty slowly is a very long time indeed, esp. for the person who is fighting for breath. After thirty seconds to a minute (one minute is REALLY not recommended) your partner will begin to pass out for lack of air.

CUTTING

Use a very sharp knife, a lancet, a scalpel, or possibly a very sharp razor. Do not use a dull implement or an exacto knife. This hurts! The sharper the blade, the better. Be careful not to cut any actual veins or arteries - you don't need a whole pint of blood, and you don't want to have to clean up the mess that spurting blood invariably causes. Many vampires think they need a lot more blood than they do, esp. when hungry. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. Visualize the spurting jets as you drain your victim of energy, but keep it on the astral level. Your physical body is just going to excrete the stuff anyway, mostly undigested; you're feeding off the release of the energy, and a little cut will work just as well. Again, the best way to get a lot of energy is if this is part of erotic play. If you practice SM fear may be very well part of desire - esp. if your donor is afraid of blades.

You can trace very fine lines on the back with a blade, and get a certain amount of blood to rise to the surface in the form of bleeding welts. I did this once with a pair of sewing scissors. Don't dig any deeper if this is what you are doing.

Avoid vital organ areas.

If you are trying to minimize pain, the best way is to get your donor to cut him/herself on the wrist (this is do-able without serious blood loss - I've done it myself, and avoided veins and arteries quite nicely). Or maybe the ankle. This will also minimize the fear. The best time for this is after coitus, when the body is still flooded with endorphins and your donor is relaxed. Hopefully not falling asleep. It makes for a very intimate, cuddly sort of feeding.

It is much better to use a sharp, fresh lancet, scalpel, or razor blade on an area of skin that isn't near any veins or arteries or internal organs. I cut on the back, the upper thigh, the chest, or (very occasionally and very carefully!) the hand or certain parts of the neck. Cutting deeply is unnecessary. What you are trying to do is cause the equivalent of a shaving nick. It doesn't hurt to accidentally cut yourself while shaving, does it? And you can get a lot of blood if you don't immediately stanch the flow. Making two small, shallow cuts in an X shape prevents the wound from closing immediately and allows you to get more blood from the wound, but it also increases scarring risk. Never make a circular cut, the skin in the middle of the circle might die once it has been cut off from normal blood flow, and fall off. Ick. (Ouch.) Most cuts of this nature close up in six minutes or so, although an X shaped cut sometimes stays open as long as fifteen or twenty minutes. Remember that you are only trying to get the equivalent of one mouthful of blood, at most. If you start to feel dizzy or queasy, stop drinking, because you have reached your limit.


JABBING

As in pins and needles. If you get into piercing at all, this is a great way to get little tiny amounts of blood. (Sometimes more, if you have hit a capillary) If you are a trained phlebotomist, then it is safe for you to use a syringe and needle to remove a small amount of blood from your donor's veins, but I discourage this unless you have actually been trained to do it. It's a painless technique, but it can backfire, and untrained practitioners can cause serious damage (a nasty hematoma being the least you can expect if something goes wrong!) (Great reason to take night school courses in medical assisting...)

The safest way for the amateur to get blood is with the use of a Soft Touch device (thanks for pointing this out to me, Tamazin! :)) It's how diabetics monitor their blood sugar. It's pretty idiot proof. I don't find them very erotic but they have their uses. Have first aid supplies handy (bandages/plasters, disinfectant). Use them after feeding. I don't use disinfectant before feeding because it tastes disgusting, and I am guilty of not always using it afterwards, and I haven't seen a wound get infected yet, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Be ready to use direct pressure, pressure points, or even a tourniquet if an accident happens (unlikely if you are avoiding veins and arteries). If you don't know the procedures for stopping a heavy blood flow, take a first aid course.

( note: Vodka works as an emergency disinfectant if you've run out of legitimate disinfectant. But don't forget to get a real disinfectant as well.)

Vitamin E oil or lotion helps reduce the risk of scarring.

( note: I can vouch for Vitamin E oil: 28,000IU strength is strong enough to get rid of my smallpox vaccine scar, and I got that scar over 30 years ago!)

WHIPPING

If you have a masochistic donor, great! Whipping is one of the best ways to get LOT AND LOTS of endorphins and energy release. You'll tire yourself out a little, but the energy will be more than replaced if the scene goes well. Discussion of whipping techniques, and ways to make an SM scene great, have taken up entire books, so I'll just restrict myself to how to draw blood. Use a rubber whip, or a braided cat with steel tips at the end, or possibly a cane or a really vicious crop. These are by far the nastiest of the common toys. Signal whips are also pretty efficient, and the sound of a signal whip usually inspires terror in the heart of even the stoutest of bottoms, so you'll get some adrenaline out of it too. (Signal whips were originally designed to motivate sled dogs. By making a really scary noise.)

You can either build the scene slowly, gradually increasing sensation, or you can start fast and nasty and get nastier. It is really up to you and the bottom. Both methods have their merits. The usual rule of courtesy is that the bottom has the right of veto, and can stop you at any time, so keep this in mind. You don't want to be a date rapist, after all. And whipping to the point of drawing blood HURTS. Most bottoms are not strong enough to find this erotic. It takes either a lot of natural endurance, or a lot of training, to get a bottom to endure a seriously severe whipping.

You will want to immobilize your bottom very well indeed, because s/her WILL fight to get away even if s/he really wants to be there; and you will almost certainly need a gag, preferably a ball gag although if you have nothing else you can make do with a wadded up handkerchief of scarf in the moth (do not cause your bottom to asphyxiate, and watch out for hyperventilation).

PICKING SCABS

This is gross. I am sure there are some people out there who do this. My only response to this is: yuck.

ANIMAL BLOOD

if you are a city dweller and you don't like the idea of bleeding your pets (I know I don't) your best bet is to eat really juicy rare steaks. Which are not always the best thing for your health, as there is a slight risk of food poisoning. Drinking the blood from the package is not only dangerous, it's also really gross. I don't recommend it. If you live in the country and can slaughter or drain your own livestock, more power to you. You can get a lot more blood this way, if you need volume, and you can be sure of where it came from, which has its health merits.

Hunting is an even better way to get lots of animal blood, and I personally think it is more ethical to hunt your dinner than it is to buy it from a factory farm.

I prefer human blood myself.

MENSTRUAL BLOOD

Some people get a thrill from it; I personally think it's yucky. It sometimes has a pleasant musky odor, but the texture is too gloppy and reminiscent of ectoplasm for my tastes; the actual taste is very pungent, and I find it unpleasant. Also, the energy is totally different. Usually it is all the negative stress that has been stored up for the past month - the nutrients in the uterine wall do not make up for the huge amount of PMS that is being shed. Yuck. Why bother. Do you know that menstruating women have been known to make souffles go flat and curdle milk, with their pheromones? My anthropology teacher bragged about her tendency to do this, in a classroom discussion. This should tell you something about the nature of the energy.

If you want something raw and sexual and intimate, why not just go for the fluids that are usually produced during oral sex? They have lots of energy in them too, although it isn't blood.

FEEDING ON YOUR OWN BLOOD

This a contradiction in terms. If you crave blood, not energy, you don't have much to lose, but you'll expend energy by cutting yourself. OTOH, if it's only blood you want, go for it. At least this way you are assured of a regular donor.

SAFE SEX

As for safer sex - for God's sake use a condom, and put gloves on if you are fisting your partner and have cuts on your hand. And use a barrier with oral sex if you have cuts in your mouth but still want to perform oral sex anyway. (Saran Wrap is much nicer than a dental dam - thinner, and it doesn't taste as yucky. It does NOT make a good condom, alas) Make sure your condom is latex, not sheepskin, and is lubricated with nonoxynol-9. During sex, don't just save the condom for when you are just starting to come (if you are male), as men are wont to do. Pre-cum has sperm in it too, and besides, if you have a sore on your "love rocket" it won't make any difference how close you are to coming if it comes in contact with infected vaginal fluid (of course, if you have a sore, what are you doing having sex? Go to the doctor! Sheesh!) All this you probably know.

OTHER SAFETY TIPS

As for other forms of sickness flu bugs, etc -

Don't feed from a partner who is sick. Not only will the energy be polluted (and weak) but your partner needs all the energy s/he has to get well. Let your partner heal up first. Feed your partner things that boost the immune system and general energy level: ginseng, garlic, ginger, goldenseal, Echinacea, damiana, cayenne pepper.

(Hopefully your partner's chicken soup is not spiked with all of these things at once. Yech!)

Don't feed while YOU are sick. You might spread your germs, and besides, you'll spend more energy feeding than you will recover while eating.

Vampire the Awakening

What is an Awakening

There is more to the world than just ordinary, physical reality. There is not just body. There is also spirit. All of the material things around us have a vital, spiritual component that our current culture encourages us to be blind to.

However, for some of us, it is impossible to remain blind. Those who we term "Awakened" have their eyes open and are able to see all of those things that make the universe a richer and more profound experience than one of just the material senses.

Awakening comes at various points in people's lives. Some of us are born Awakened, and we have known nothing else. Others come to their Awakening later in life. Most often, we are born with the capacity to Awaken, and latent talents and abilities manifest in early childhood. But as our parents, teachers, and all other authority figures in our lives repeatedly reinforce the notion that our subtle senses are just our imagination, that spirits aren't real and that magick doesn't exist, we start to block off this aspect of our experience.

These self-imposed mental blocks often do not start to come loose until the onset of puberty or later adolescence. Sometimes latent abilities manifest with renewed strength as puberty comes upon us, and then our sensations and perceptions become something which we cannot deny. More often, as we go through that period of individuation in adolescence wherein we question the rules and boundaries set by society and by our parents, we start to also question those boundaries that tell us what we can and cannot believe.

It is very common in this stage of Awakening to re-evaluate the experiences and beliefs of childhood in an attempt to discern what was real and what was truly imagination. At this stage it is also common to experiment with different belief systems in an attempt to understand what is really going on with a reality that does not seem to conform to the accepted rules. A person at this stage has a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of experiences that seem to defy the very rules of possibility.

It is not uncommon to have spontaneous numinous experiences at this stage as well -- episodes of precognition, strong moments of empathy or telepathy, visual perception of auras or spirits, and other feelings which cannot be explained.

The challenge with Awakening is breaking through those barriers imposed by your parents, your society, and your birth religion. This is not an easy thing to do. It takes a strong personality and a profound belief in yourself to be able to reject the accepted paradigm and seek to define one of your own. This is one of the reasons so many Awakened people are such egoists -- it takes a strong ego to survive the process of Awakening without buckling under the pressure to just disbelieve.

Belief is the crux of Awakening. There is usually a critical point at which a person who is Awakening makes a decision to believe or not to believe. If they choose to accept that there is more to reality than they have been told, then the process continues and, with work, they will eventually come to understand and even master the latent abilities that they have. If they choose not to believe, those latent abilities do not just go away. Instead, the Awakened person enters a period of deep repression that can continue their whole lives. Either way, the road before the person is not an easy one. On one hand, they must work their whole lives to believe in something most other people regard as fantasy. On the other, they must work their whole lives to forcibly keep their spiritual eyes shut when seeing and experiencing things on that level are as natural to them as breathing.

Vampireology

"MAY THE GROUND NOT RECEIVE THEE"
An Exploration of the Greek Vrykolakas and His Origins

In the field of vampirology, few cultures in the world
have a vampire folklore tradition as long-standing, as
rich and as carefully analyzed by scholars as Greece.
Although the most famous mass panics recorded in
seventeenth and eighteenth century annals occurred in
Eastern Europe, and although Slavic countries in
general and Romania in particular have a varied and
creative tradition of vampire folklore, the
persistence of the belief in Greece surpasses that of
any other nation. For a scholar taking a broad
perspective of the phenomenon, this raises an obvious
question: why? What is peculiar to the Greek culture
and society that has led to the maintenance of vampire
beliefs and reported incidents right up to the first
half of this century? Are there more reasonable
explanations than the claim of older writers that the
Greeks are overly superstitious, or the Occam's Razor
solution that perhaps Greece simply has a lot of
vampires? An examination of these beliefs, their
ancient origins and the way in which the Greek
Orthodox church has both encouraged and discouraged
them may shed some light on the issue.

Before diving into this question, it will be helpful
to explain just exactly what is meant by the term
"vampire" as applied by English speakers to anything
related to Greece.

The English word "vampire" is a Slavic borrowing and
is found in almost identical (certainly homophonic)
form in Russian, Polish, Serbian, Czechoslovakian and
Bulgarian, along with similar related words. Its
origin is uncertain, but the OED suggests that it may
be related to the Turkish uber, "witch". "Vampire"
entered the English language during the eighteenth
century panics in Eastern Europe and is first cited by
the OED in 1734. Modern vampirologists now sweep under
the aegis of this term a wide variety of ancient myth,
traditional folklore, "fairy-tales" and other crafted
oral tradition, unexplained phenomena, sociology, and
occult theory. Cogent to a discussion of Greek
vampires are two particular types of being to which
the term "vampire" is applied. The first, common to
ancient myth worldwide, is the wholly inhuman,
supernatural being that preys most especially upon
infants, children, women in all stages of pregnancy
and early motherhood, and young people on the cusp of
sexual maturity and marriage. "Child-killing demons"
often are included in this category, as well as
sexually alluring creatures such as the lamia. The
second type of being is a revenant, a human who has
died and returned from the grave in physical
form--whether literally in his own corpse or in some
sort of materialized second body is open to
interpretation--to perform actions that have physical
effects on the living and their environment, including
the begetting of children and the inflicting of death.
Whether such revenants necessarily drink blood, as we
will see, is not always clear. Blood-drinking per se
is not a requirement for a "vampire". However, beings
defined as "vampires" do, in some way or another, take
sustenance or vitality from living creatures.

In Greece, belief in the second type of vampire--the
corporeal revenant who preyed upon or plagued the
living--developed only after the arrival of Slavic
immigrants beginning in 587. But although the various
themes that coalesced into that most unquenchable of
all folk vampires, the vrykolakas, are heavily
influenced by foreign concepts, they found a rich soil
in the traditions of ancient Greece. Three such
traditions clearly play a role in developing later
beliefs. First, the belief in supernatural creatures
that drank blood and attacked human beings to obtain
it; second, the belief that under certain conditions,
bodily return from death was possible, although
greatly feared; and third, that blood itself contained
power sufficient to allow the dead to cross the gulf
that separated them from the world of the living.

The Mormo and the Empusas were child-killing demons
who attended upon the Goddess Hecate they have not
survived into contemporary tradition except, in the
case of the Mormo, as a "bogeyman" for threatening
unruly children. Similar to them were the Gelloudes
nd the Stringla, female monsters that were said to
specifically suck the blood of children and kill them
. Almost every human culture has
such a myth, a personification of the unknown (to this
day, in the form of SIDS) killer of children in their
cradles at night, or their mysterious "failure to
thrive" and wasting away. Yet the horror of these
monsters lay not in their inhumanity but in their
perversion of the human. Child-killing demons are
almost invariably female, the evil mother that kills
instead of nurtures, devours instead of feeds. These
demons often are also presented as seductresses,
preying on young men as well as children. In other
words, they are not only evil mothers, but evil
wives--wanton, promiscuous and devouring. Summers
cites the well-known story from Philostratus' Life of
Apollonius of Tyana, aboutMenippus, the eager
suitor who is barely prevented
from marrying an Empusa, or Lamia. She is forced to
confess that she was "fattening up" Menippus, "because
it was her pleasure to feed upon young and beautiful
bodies, because their blood is pure and strong"
. Stringles also were sometimes
equated with the seductive Lamiae .

But far more fearful than these exotica were the fates
that might befall oneself during the passage from the
state of life to the state of death. Lawson examines
at great length the theme found in Greek tragedy of
corporeal return to avenge blood-guilt--a hidden theme
due to the conventions of the Greek stage, but
nevertheless clearly discernable. A detailed look at
Lawson's arguments is beyond the scope of this paper.
However, Lawson reports that oaths are found in Greek
literature binding both the speaker and others to
being rejected by the earth, being turned out of Hades
by Tantalus, and of remaining incorruptible after
death. Euripides' Hippolytus, for example, says to his
father, "in death may neither sea nor earth receive my
flesh, if I have proved false" . Lawson
proposes that, for example, Aeschylus in Choephori

presents a true climax. As the victim is to be
excluded in his lifetime from all intercourse with the
living, so in his death, by the withholding of that
dissolution without which there is no entrance to the
lower world, he is to be cut off from communion with
the dead. He is to die with none to honor him with the
rites due to the dead, none to love him and shed the
tears that are their just meed, but even in that last
doom which consumes all others is damned to be
withheld from corruption.
Even a modern reader almost shudders. The importance
of proper burial rites in ancient Greece is
well-known, and the greatest shame of all was to leave
even one's enemies unburied, to "not even throw
handfuls of earth upon their dead bodies" as Pausanias
accused Lysander . Antigone suffered
capital punishment for fulfilling this obligation to
her kin against royal decree. But the precise
consequences of ignoring this obligation are less well
documented. Few ghosts or revenants haunt surviving
Greek literature. Lawson argues at great length that
the conventions of Greek drama permitted such return
only to be hinted at. Outside of this sphere, the sole
extant story of a corporeal Greek revenant is so
famous that it is cited in nearly all of my books: the
return of Philinnion, a young woman, for nightly
liaisons with an unwitting guest of her bereaved
parents. Yet the
reason for Philinnion's restlessness is never
explained, she appears in no way horrific or demonic,
and in fact her poor lover is so besotted by her that
when she has been laid to final rest by cremation, he
commits suicide.

Lawson, however, argues that bodily return was tacitly
expected and feared in the case of blood-guilt and
vengence. He points out that in ancient times
murderers frequently mutilated their victims by
cutting off their hands and feet and tucking them
under the corpse's armpits, or binding them to its
chest with a band. One rationale for
this action that suggests itself is that such
mutilation prevents the murdered victim from returning
bodily to avenge itself on the murderer--who would, in
turn, become a revenant wandering cursed between life
and death. In this discussion, Lawson presents the
roots of two primary later vampire beliefs: that
vampires are fierce marauders, and that their victims
become vampires as well. He says,

the character of these Avengers approximates very
closely to that of the modern vrykolakes. True, there
is one fundamental difference; the ancient Avenger
directed his wrath solely against the author of his
sufferings...the modern vrykolakas is unreasoning in
his wrath and plagues indiscriminately all who fall in
his way.
Qualities that Avengers and vrykolakes share:
Modern stories there are in plenty, which tell how the
vrykolakas springs upon his victim and rends him and
drinks his blood; how sheer terror of his aspect has
driven men mad; how, in order to escape him, whole
families have been driven forth from their native
island to wander in exile; how death has often been
the issue of his assaults; and how those whom a
vrykolakas has slain become themselves vrykolakes.

Myth goes on to suggest that when Aeschylus makes
the Erinyes such horrific, bloodthirsty pursuers of
Orestes, when they should have been goddesses worthy
of worship, he is casting a proxy role upon them. They
are substitutes for the actual Avenger that could not
be properly shown in Greek drama. Their qualities of
blackness, ferocity, bloodthirstyness and horror are
those of the vrykolakes.

Some close comparison of the characteristics of
ancient Avengers and the Furies, or Erinyes, with the
characteristics of modern vrykolakes may not be as
revealing as he believes. Some claim that these common
themes indicate that both ancient writers and modern
folklore derive from the same older tradition, while
it might be argued that the modern folklore took its
imagery directly from ancient literature and not from
some common source.

Nevertheless, the modern Greek vampire gains a rather
respectable pedigree. Long before the Slavs and Greek
Orthodoxy, the ancient Greeks recognized that with
extraordinarily bad fortune, one might be trapped
indefinitely in a liminal state in which one's soul
could not become free from one's body, one's body
could not dissolve and free itself from earth, and one
was forever doomed to roam trapped, yearning or
ravening, between life and death. The only release was
the forced "dissolution" of cremation, as was done to
Philinnion. To be left unburied was to be flung upon
the surface of the cold earth, to be cursed as
"incorruptible" (however obvious it was that unburied
bodies rotted). To be left unmourned and without
proper rites was to invite the soul to linger around
its former home and possibly reanimate it. Lawson
concludes a discussion of terminology for such
restless dead,

Thus then the problem of ancient nomenclature of
revenants is solved, and the results are briefly
these: all revenants were originally called,
alastores, "Wanderers"; but subsequently that name was
restricted only to the vengeful class of revenants, to
which the names miastores and prostropaioi had always
belonged; and for the more harmless and purely
pitiable revenants no name remained, but men said of
such an one simply, "He wanders."
Finally, the most well-known ancient text describing
the power of fresh blood to revivify the dead occurs
in the Iliad, when Odysseus fills a pit with sheeps'
blood to feed the shade of the seer Tiresias. Once the
ghost has drunk the blood, he is able to speak. After
Odysseus has spoken with the seer, other ghosts also
drink the blood and converse with him, but when he
attempts to embrace one, the shade of his mother, she
disappears . For the non-corporeal,
even blood can only do so much. Nevertheless, the
results it effects in returning some powers of life to
the disembodied are profound.

The word vrykolakas itself is a borrowing from Slavic
and is derived from root words meaning "wolf" and hair
or pelt . It originally appears to have
meant "werewolf" or lycanthrope, and still carries
this meaning in isolated local regions of Greece. The
Greeks did not adopt the word "vampire" from the Slavs
to indicate a revenant, although oddly, vompiras is
occasionally found as a term of contempt. Lawson
concludes from this that the Greeks already had an
active tradition of a fierce type of revenant and
applied the new word to that. If they had borrowed the
entire concept of undead vampires from the Slavs, they
would have borrowed the name for them as well.
However, all the arguments in this area remain shakey.
It is unclear why the Greeks replaced their own words
for a fierce Avenger with a new word for werewolf, and
whether or not this represented the introduction of a
unique new folkloric tradition or the evolution of an
old one. The point made by several writers that the
transferral of the word occurred because of the
documented Slavic belief that werewolves became
vampires after death, also seems unsupported by any
evidence in Greek tradition specifically.
Occasionally, a child whose siblings died mysteriously
would be (rather cruelly) named a "vrykolakas" by its
mother , and there are a few
stories of "living vrykolakes" that behaved as
lycanthropes. But the etymological leap from werewolf
to vampire is obscure. Moreover, there is certainly a
broad gap in the evidential record between the ancient
texts cited above, and the first descriptions of the
Greek vrykolakas as a full-fledged and active belief.
The earliest mention of the vrykolakas is made by Leo
Allatius in 1645 (by coincidence, possibly, his work
was published just as all of Eastern Europe was about
to explode into a century of its own vampire panics).

I would like to summarize some well-known, and less
well-known, vrykolakas stories chronologically in
order to bring out some of their significant aspects.

Leo Allatius (Leone Allacci), De quorundam Graecorum
Opinationibus, 1645: According to Allatius, the word
vrykolakas derives from words meaning cesspool. The
vyrkolakas is an evil and wicked person who may have
been excommunicated by a bishop. Its body swells up so
that all its limbs are distended, it is hard, and when
tapped it thrums like a drum. For this reason it is
called tympaniaois, "drumlike". The devil animates
such bodies and causes them to roam about at any time
of day or night. On Chios, residents will not answer
until a caller has called their name twice, because
the vrykolakas is believed to only be able to call
once, and if it is answered, its victim will die
within twenty-four hours. If seen during the day, the
vrykolakas is so horrible that witnesses die of
fright--unless they speak to the monster, which
immediately disappears. If a village has an epidemic
of deaths or illness, the inhabitants open graves
searching for a body in the "drumlike" condition
described. If one is found, it is cremated. Allatius
claims to have witnessed the discovery of such a body
in a tomb while a boy in Chios, but he does not say
what was done with the body.

Father Francois Richard, Relation de l'Isle de
Sant-erini, 1657: Richard argues that the devil keeps
certain bodies incorrupt and animates them. Under his
command they are able to wander around, enter houses,
strike people mute with fear, and assault them, even
killing them. When a village is beset by such a
vrykolakas, Richard says, they huddle together all in
one house for protection, and apply to their Bishop
for permission to exhume the suspect. This is done on
a Saturday, the only day when a vrykolakas may rest in
its grave. If the body is found "fresh and gorged with
new blood", it is "exorcised" with prayer until it
dissolves before their eyes. If prayer is ineffective,
the body is cremated.

Richard tells the story of the gentle vrykolakas
Alexander, in the village of Pyrgos, who had been a
shoemaker. He returned from the grave to mend his
children's shoes, carry water for the family and chop
their firewood. Although his family's reaction to this
is not noted, his neighbors were finally frightened
enough to exhume and cremate his body, after which his
visits ceased. Other vrykolakes were reported on
Amorgos roaming fields in broad daylight, eating green
beans.

A much fiercer vrykolakas was Patino, a merchant from
Patmos who died on a buying trip to Natolia and
revived in his coffin while being shipped home. His
wife had him buried with full honors, and he then
began appearing in houses in the area, violently
assaulting people and causing damage. Prayers and
exorcisms were fruitless in stopping the haunting.
Patino's body was ordered sent back to Natolia, but
the thoroughly spooked sailors charged with its
transport stopped on the first island they passed and
burned it, which ended the phenomena. Richard notes
elsewhere that vrykolakes were commonly thought to be
unable to cross salt water, and they were often
dispatched on uninhabited islands.

Richard's final story is very similar to that of de
Tournefort [see below] in a number of interesting
respects. A "usurer" of Santorini named Ianettis
reformed in the last year of his life, and died asking
his wife to pay his remaining debts, which she did not
do. Ianettis began haunting his village with very
similar poltergeist-like activity as the Mycone
vrykolakas: yanking the bedclothes off of sleeping
people, waking up the priests for matins, emptying
wine kegs, and generally abusing and terrorizing
people. He visited the Mother Prioress of a Dominican
convent, awakened her by rolling her rosary on the
floor, jeered at her prayers and as a parting joke,
threw her shoes into the water cistern. His body was
finally exhumed, and Richard examined it and reported
that it displayed no signs of unusual incorruption,
but was badly decayed. The body was exorcised for a
full day and then dismembered and reinterred, but the
vrykolakas' activity did not stop until his wife made
good his debts.