Aubrey Sherman - Vampires: The Myths, Legends, and Lore

Avon, Massachusetts

IN THE SHADOWS of our imagination lurk the creatures of the night. Tall, bone-thin, possessed of an exotic, frightening beauty, their eyes glow with a red spark that holds you fast while sharp white teeth champ against ruby lips and then sink into your flesh.

Vampires have been our dark companions in literature and art, myth, and religion from the early centuries of civilization. But during the past 150 years, more than any other legendary figure the vampire has been romanticized and eroticized.

For many people, vampires represent the dichotomous relationship between love and death, between eros and thanatos. Even as you understand that vampires can only survive by drawing on the blood of the living, it is this very act that attracts you to them.

Le Vampire, lithograph by R. de Moraine, 1864

Why is the legend of the vampire so attractive? Perhaps because it mirrors human absorption with the phenomenon of deathvampires, after all, are suspended between life and death; they are what Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, famously referred to as the undead. From this shrouded world they hold forth the promise of eternal life, albeit at a terrible price. Or maybe they interest us because vampires are drawn to our blood, and blood is the essence of our existence; as Renfield, Draculas minion, puts it, The blood is the life.

Today vampires more often inspire lust than repulsionwhether its the sparkly Edward Cullen of Stephenie Meyers Twilight saga; the brooding Bill Compton and Eric Northman, the male vampires at the heart of Charlaine Harriss Sookie Stackhouse stories; or Angel, the tormented vampire and one-time lover of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires also play an influential role in a subculture: goths, who dress in black, sport multiple body piercings, and find their muse in the fiction of Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite.

As you explore the myths and legends of vampires in the pages of this book, you will come to better understand these mysterious, powerful, dangerous, exotic creatures and may even find the roots of your own fascination with them.

I am glad that [the house] is old and big. I myself am of an old family.

C OUNT D RACULA , D RACULA BY B RAM S TOKER

THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES and in dozens of cultures, vampires remain a centerpiece of the darker sides of lore and mythology, and our current passion for night terrors shows no signs of waning. Part of that fascination may be attributed to our fervent hope that there is life after death. If there is ongoing life in the spiritual world, is it really a leap of faith to believe that there may well be life after death that exists in the underbelly of our own world?

Any research of vampires or vampirism throughout history inevitably leads to the genesis of the bloodsucker as we know it todayBram Stokers seminal 1897 novel, Dracula. While much of the praise for Dracula is deserved, it must be noted that there exists a much richer history surrounding the legends of what are commonly referred to as revenantsindividuals who return from the dead. Like the revered Greek and Egyptian gods of mythology, there are numerous legends, superstitions, and beliefs highlighting a dark contingent of vampiric creatures that tour the underworld, and play on our most primal fears. Given that most vampire folklore rarely uses the word vampire, how has the traditional vampire evolved from these stories of the undead?