Vampires The paranormal has been embedded into our psyche for thousands of years and it could be a lot longer. We humans have always felt there was more to life than we could see. Some might say this is not true for them, and for those I say look deep into your mind and think about strange things you have seen or strange coincidences you can’t explain and rethink your answer. If you still feel that way, you are one of the exceptions to the rule. Just because modern people don’t act the same way to the paranormal in public, doesn’t mean they still don’t harbor the same feelings and thoughts about the paranormal, it could mean they are just more private in their views. Apparently, in Poland in the 17th century, these beliefs were still being expressed in public. Archaeologists uncovered a grave of a woman from that time period. That in itself was not unusual. What was unusual was the fact she had a sickle around her neck. Why would anyone be buried that way? It is believed the people of that time thought the woman was a vampire and put the sickle around her neck to stop her from rising from the dead. Personally, I don’t see how this would have accomplished that, and we could have the wrong meaning of this. Maybe some thought this was good luck, or put in there for her to use in the afterlife? Most agree however, with the vampire thing. In the ancient graves where people were suspected of being vampires, the person’s head was sometimes cut off to prevent them from rising again. What was the basis for the belief in vampires? Some believe someone must have dug up a body and saw the way it decomposed and misinterpreted it as changing into a vampire. Many people who hear the word vampire immediately think of Romania or Transylvania. In truth that is probably where the belief in vampires is at the strongest. It is said the vampire legend was at its height during the plague in the Middle Ages. It is believed the lesions it caused around the mouth of its victims made some believe they were dealing with vampires. Think about this, those poor people who had the plague were suffering terribly, and on top of that some of them were being murdered for being vampires. If we try and find out which vampire was believed to be the first, we have to go back 6,000 years to Mesopotamia. He was named the Edimmu of Mesopotamia. It is said he was not buried according to custom which made him very angry. He remained in a state between life and death and feasted on passersby by sucking out all their blood, which did them in. Some historians say the idea of a vampire started with the disease porphyria. It has been around forever, but only recently named. It is a disease which affects the blood and was said to have happened more often to European Royalty because of the intermarriages. It is not infectious. In later years it became known as the vampire disease, which reinforced the idea of vampires. Sometimes kits were created which contained every tool thought to fight off, or even be able to kill a vampire. This just shows how serious the idea of vampires being real was. Many of the kits contained holy water, a gun with silver bullets, a blessed crucifix, wooden stakes and a mallet. Some contained garlic. These kits were instantly identifiable by the smell. There was also a mirror in some of them. The idea was to place the mirror in front of someone and if they had no image this proved they were a vampire. Vampires were said to be deathly allergic to sunlight and if caught outside in the daylight, they would burn to extinction. The garlic would keep them away because they could not suffer the smell. Holy water would burn them and give them pain. The cross would hold them off. The silver bullets could kill them and the stake through the heart would also end their existence. Besides these remedies, many also believed cutting the head off of a vampire also killed them. Way before the word vampire was known, almost all races had stories of beings which would suck your blood and kill you. It was believed if a vampire bit you and did not take all your blood, you would turn into a vampire. There are some creatures in legends which while not named as vampires share the idea of drinking human blood. Two are the Succubus and Incubus. Among other things they were said to drink the blood of their victims. There is Irish folklore which states Dearg-due was a blood drinker which could be trapped by constructing a stone building over the grave. The ancient Chinese had a blood sucker in their folklore named Ch’ing Shih. It is said if it caught you, it would drain your blood. This time the defense was leaving a pile of rice on the ground. There are other legends of vampires in places like Portugal, Scotland, Malaysia, Ghana, and West Africa, among other places. As you can see, the legend of vampires has spread far and wide. While it seems humans have become more sophisticated in their beliefs, and not as many people particularly believe in vampires, there are still quite a few who do. One form of entertainment has latched onto the idea of vampires and has been running with it since that form of entertainment began. I am talking about the movies and to this we can now add television. The idea of vampires is very popular in movie and television stories. Perhaps it is because vampire supposedly live forever if not killed, or because the idea of a vampire is so frightening it is entertaining. Contrary to common belief the first vampire movie was not Nosferatu. There were two before it. One was Drakula, a movie made in Russia in 1920 and the other was Dracula’s Death made in Hungary in 1921. Nosferatu is the most popular of the early vampire movies and was made in Germany in 1922. Even today some give credit to that movie as being the scariest of all Dracula movies and even all vampire movies. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the book Dracula written by Bram Stoker in 1897. It started the modern vampire craze and was the basis for hundreds of movies and television shows. It seems shows about vampires are more popular than ever.
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