Vampires
The legend of the vampire is a scary one, indeed. Dead souls rising from their graves at night to feed on the blood of the living has been a worry of countless centuries of European peoples. The tools of fighting vampires have been specifically created as well. A stake to drive through the heart, a string of garlic worn around the neck to keep the vampire from biting, both are designed purely for the vampire legend.
The legend of the vampire was given a literary footing with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although the book was written in 1897, the influence for the vampire character, Count Dracula, has a real life counterpart. Vlad III, a prince of a region in present day Romania.
 Vlad the Impaler |
Vlad inherited the name the Impaler due to a particularly gruesome method of execution he used during his reign. Captives were impaled through the anus on a tall wooden stick which would then be placed in the ground. The victims weight would then gradually push the stake through the victims innards.
Helping influence vampire hysteria was the fear of the people coupled with the natural process taking place after death. Suspected vampires were dug up shortly after death to find that the bodies appeared to be growing hair and nails, suggesting that they were not quite dead, but roaming around at night as vampires. The body does this naturally after death, the nails and hair are in fact not growing, but the skin is receding as it loses moisture, causing the nails and hair to appear longer.
To kill the suspected vampire, the local people would dig up the body. Upon finding a body which appeared to be growing hair and nails, the people would “kill” the vampire. Destroying a vampire required a wooden stake driven through the heart with a mallet. Then the head of the vampire would be removed to insure that the body could not rise again.
The word vampire appears in many language, particularly in Eastern Europe much farther back than Bram Stoker’s novel and Vlad the Impaler. There is a reference to an Old Russian word dating back to 1047. Many much older cultures also hold references to similar blood drinking creatures.
For more reading on vampires, please check out these links:
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