Eat dirt

"[W]e call ourselves vegetarians," Edward says ominously (Meyer 188).

We've all heard the jokes (or made them); they're impossible to resist. There is a moment when you tilt your head to the side, scowl, and speak out loud to the character: "Edward, dear, Bambi is not a vegetable."

However, taxonomic confusion is not the point of this tirade. A question has been raised repeatedly. Can vampires feed on animal blood?

For my answer, I will pilfer the dialogue of Edward Cullen...again. "If someone dared you to eat dirt, you could, couldn't you?" (Meyer 207). Add in the condescending tone for authenticity's sake, and then contemplate the following. A vampire can consume animals, just as you can consume human blood. But, the ability to ingest a substance does not equip that product to be a diet staple.

Before you panic and ask a load of questions, I will pause and address this one: Can humans drink blood? My answer is: Yes, of course they can. Many do. Now, I don't know whether or not drinking blood makes a human sick. Certainly, I've seen humans vomit after consuming blood, but this may very well be the result of a mental reaction to consuming a taboo substance. I don't know, but I don't suggest doing it. You already know that I'm wary about the spread of disease; consequently, I've never explored the subject of human consumption of blood in a scientific manner. Ask someone else.

Now, I'll refer you back to my point. A human can drink blood, but that doesn't mean that a human can live by consuming blood alone. It lacks the nutritional value that humans receive from a varied diet. Humans are omnivores. Vampires are sanguivores...not vegetarians. Humans are generalized (not strictly adapted). Vampires are specialized (physiologically adapted to a specific function). While a vampire may derive some sustaining value from animal blood, it lacks the specialized ingredients that the vampire needs.

The staple of the vampiric diet is human blood. Live with it or die by it. It really doesn't matter to me. But, if you keep asking me to try a diet of animal blood, then I will insist that you try a diet of dirt and see how you fare.

Bah,
Ana


Sources:
Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. Little, Brown and Company 2006.

Vegetable Art. [Photo]
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Faster than the human eye

Flurrying fingers script the newest stories. Vampire fictions explode from the presses, and novels pile up in bookstores. Tales of blood drinkers are spun rapidly in unrelenting succession. The question is: Can vampires keep up?

Before innumerable writers invaded the genre, one novelist pumped out vampire novels, and she did so at a tolerable rate. Those days are gone, and there is no hope for a mortal to read every page written about vampire lore (prove me wrong; I dare you), but could a vampire? According to Anne Rice, vampires "read at preternatural speed", but such proficiency is to be expected, since her undead creatures tend to sprint faster than the human eye can follow (Armand 386). And, if a vampire can move faster than a human, then it's logical assume that he can read faster, too.

But, how fast are vampires, anyway? Marius' claim to "travel so fast that the world itself become a blur" is surely an exaggeration (169). Isn't it? Rice consistently raises the idea that vampires move quickly, swiftly, and abruptly. It's startling.

In the video version of Interview with a Vampire, Daniel pitifully asks "How did you do that?", referring to Louis' speed. "The same way you do it. A series of simple gestures," Louis answers with astonishing accuracy. "Only I moved too fast for you to see. I'm flesh and blood, you see," he continues. He's only flesh and blood?...I'd buy that. But, he claims to move faster than a human can perceive…Well, at least he doesn't dawdle.

Isn't that a terrifying thought?--A silent, invisible killer who brings death with a bite. If only I could get my hands on one of those vicious blood-drinkers.

Sere,
Ana

Sources:
Rice, Anne. The Vampire Armand, Interview with the Vampire, & Blood and Gold.

Stake your life on it

In this exposition, I generally steer clear of certain topics. Chief among the taboo subjects is: How to kill a vampire. Having said that, I would like to discuss the stake.

"What brought about this change of heart?" you may ask. Others among you may be angered that I am exposing such a delicate subject. Let's face it: the idea that staking a vampire will kill him (permanently) is not a hidden secret. "The most well-known way to kill a vampire" is to stake "it in the heart", so we're all familiar with this morbid practice (Melton 645).

However, you may not know the history or extent of staking. "The idea of staking the corpse of a suspected vampire or revenant was quite an ancient practice. It was found across Europe and originated in an era prior to the widespread use of coffins" (Melton 645). Presumably, these ancient people had trouble keeping track of their corpses. Vacant tombs were attributed to vile, demonic forces because it was more reasonable that an unseen evil had kidnapped a body than that wild animals had eaten someone's beloved. The practice of staking the bodies of "persons suspected of returning from their graves" was developed "as a means of keeping them attached to the ground" (Melton 645). You might note that in the ancient legends, the stake did not destroy the vampire, it simply restrained it.

"Once coffins were in popular use, the purpose of staking changed somewhat. Where previously the object of the staking was to fix the body to the ground, the purpose of the staking became a frontal assault upon the corpse itself." Instead of restraining the vampire to his grave, the goal become to rid the world of the vampire. In Bram Stoker's famous story, Dracula, the idea of staking a vampire to terminate its existence is seen in the destruction of Lucy. "Lucy's three suitors and Van Helsing enter the undead Lucy's tomb and truly kill her, driving a stake through her heart..."(Dracula xvi). Eventually, the practice was prescribed as a preemptive strike against a possible revenant. "By attacking the heart, the organ that pumped the blood, the bloodsucking vampire could be killed" (Melton 645).

So, does it work? I won't say.
But, I will warn you of this:
While you may not land a lucky strike with a pointed stick, a vampire can quite easily slay you with the same weapon you drive against him.

Sources:
Melton, J. The Vampire Book
Stoker, Bram. Dracula.

Vampires in uniform

If a vampire were to choose a profession, what should it be? Fiction has offered many options: vampires adopt the roles of skilled artists, nightclub owners, and medical doctors. Only one of these professions has viable roots.

Vampires in colonial Africa were nearly indistinguishable from witches. And, the witch could be a revered medium or a "cannibal who consumes the life-force of victims". It often occurs that "accusations of witchcraft arise from incidents of sickness and death" (Stewart 81).

In colonial Africa, "rumors tended to fix on allegations that the European colonists used indigenous minions to collect blood from Africans, which they then consumed to augment their own life-force. Europeans in this image were therefore seen as similar to vampires. The clusters of rumors that formed around this theme fall under the category of urban legends. A central feature in these legends is that firemen in Nairobi, who traveled in red trucks, were ordered by their superiors to catch victims and bring them to fire stations where they were suspended over pits and drained of their blood." This practice created "the terrifying image of draining blood from people as if they were carcasses of meat" (Stewart 81).

Researchers suggest that these rumors originated from a linguistic confusion. The term for 'fireman' existed in Swahili before the institution of the fire brigades. Bestowed upon the health department personnel "in charge of yellow fever control", the term wazimamoto carried with it a "connotation of blood-extractor or vampire". According to researcher Luise White, these rumors serve as a "fairly obvious metaphor for state-sponsored extraction" (White 18). In this way, it is easy to see how vampires became associated with European immigrants and health professionals. "The image of the vampire...straddles the connection between medicine and violence and between indigenous ideas of the supernatural and introduced kinds of scientific technology such as dealing with public health and hospital procedures of taking blood donations" (Stewart 81).

"Vampire rumors purported to unmask the true malevolent intent behind colonial public services" (Stewart 81). It should be mentioned that the term 'vampire' was used loosely, and that neither "Europeans nor their supposed minions were thought directly to suck blood or other bodily fluids, hence the emphasis on the professionalized image of the wazimamoto, as vampires in uniform" (Stewart 81).

What career should a vampire choose? It's a question that even after all these years I cannot answer for myself. If I were to mold myself into a folkloric vampire, I would be forced to walk in the fictive footsteps of Stephenie Meyer's Doctor Cullen. But, we all know that's not going to happen. So, I am left torn between two positions: that of an elf in Santa's workshop (he's a vampire, you know) and that of a totalitarian dictator. Which is more discrete?

Baasi,
Ana

Sources
Stewart, Pamela. Et al. Witchery, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip.
White, Luise. Rumor and History in Colonial Africa.

Mistaken Identity

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race... (Byron)

"Eight decades before anyone had heard of Dracula, the vampire Lord Ruthven" was unleashed "the world in the first vampire short story, 'The Vampyre,' published in 1819." Initially attributed to Lord Byron, 'The Vampyre' "was an immediate popular success" (Polidori vii). The true author, John Polidori had "accompanied Byron on a continental journey" and modeled his story after that sojourn. Lord Byron became Lord Ruthven, "a mysterious stranger who entered London society" and was eventually revealed to be a vampire.

Described as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre", 'The Vampyre' "took the crude entity of European folklore and transformed it into a complex and interesting character, the first vampire in English fiction" (Frayling, Melton 589). The story "exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public" and helped establish a literary fascination that would last centuries (Polidori vii).

In 'The Vampyre', the creature exploded from the folkloric mold. "No longer was the vampire simply a mindless demonic force unleashed on humankind, but a real person--albeit a resurrected one--capable of moving unnoticed in human society and picking and choosing victims. He was not an impersonal evil entity, but a moral degenerate dominated by evil motives, and a subject about whom negative moral judgments were proper" (Melton 589).

In his story, Polidori transforms Lord Byron, the poet, into Lord Ruthven, the vampire, and he transposes the vampiric being from the scapegoat for natural and moral ills to the embodiment of evil. In this case of Polidori's tale, who is the victim of the greatest misidentification? Is it Polidori himself, whose initial glory was usurped by the name of Byron? Is it the romantic poet who was equated with a devilish creature? Or, is it the vampire who was forever transformed into Evil incarnate?

So long,
Ana

Sources:
Byron, George Gordon. "The Giaour."
Frayling, Christopher. Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula.
Melton, J Gordon. The Vampire Book.
Polidori, John. 'The Vampyre'.

Talamaur

Gathered beside the funeral fire, friends of the dead man whisper. Was that noise real, or is imagination playing tricks with their grieving minds? There it is again: an eerie scratching like the talons of a hawk grasping at bare bones. With a vicious growl, the corpse's brother blindly hurls a stone into the dark. Wounded, the darkness shrieks. The obstructed missile thuds to the spongy ground.

As dawn burns the charcoal sky into the ashy grey of morning, the skittish guards examine the dead. Along the ribs of the corpse, a new wound has opened as if by magic. Wailing, the watchers alert their neighbors, who clamor to spew their judgment. In the back of the crowd, a wrinkled woman feebly clutches her arm. She narrows her dark eyes at the brother of the deceased and rubs the swollen strike of his stone weapon. Dread falls heavily upon the crowd, quieting them into a stifled silence. Returning the glare, the distraught relative recalls a threat issued the evening before: On this, the very night of his death, I will feast upon his body.

"Talamaur," he groans. "What power have you gained over my brother?"

"The talamaur was the vampire[-]like creature of the Banks Islands in the South Pacific... described as a soul or tarunga," this creature "went out and ate the soul or life still lingering around the body of the corpse of a recently deceased person" (Melton 664).

"R.H. Codrington, the main source of information on the creature," reported one woman who "bragged that she would visit and eat the corpse" of each dead neighbor on the evening of his death (Melton 665). Individuals such as this woman are regarded as mediums "who possess the ability to speak with the dead" (Codrington 275). Codrington explains that the people of the Banks' Islands believe "in the existence of a power like that of Vampires. A man or woman would obtain this power out of a morbid desire for communion with some ghost, and to gain it would steal and eat a morsel of a corpse. The ghost then of the dead man would join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would" afflict anyone "against whom his ghostly power might be directed" (Codrington 222). "If people in the village felt afflicted" or if they "developed a sense of dread in the presence of one of their neighbors, that neighbor would be suspected of being a talamaur" (Melton 664).

"To be a Talamaur is not a crime, and some even advertise this service in order to make a living. However, being a Talamaur is risky because whenever something unlucky or disastrous occurs in a villagers the Talamaur is generally blamed, fairly or not, which results in the somewhat traditional throng of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks...Those Talamuar who work for the good of their fellow men are in the minority, however, and the darker-natured ones use this otherworldly ability to contact the dead in order to control them and enslave them, using these servant ghosts to do all manner of mischief" (Maberry 275).

Read about another fiend in this region.

Mbae mi lukem yufala,
Ana


Sources:
MELTON, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book.
MABERRY, Jonathan. Vampire Universe
CODRINGTON, Robert Henry. The Melanesians

Scholomance

What do Harry Potter and Dracula have in common? For starters, they both attended wizardry school.

Dracula learned the secrets of nature and magic at the Scholomance, an occult school that is described to lay nestled "amongst the mountains over Lake Hermannstadt, where the devil claims" every "tenth scholar as his due" (Stoker 383).

"In the novel Dracula...Dr. Van Helsing says that Count Dracula...studied at a school run by the devil himself known as Scholomance" (Stevenson 4). The "Scholomance was an occult school situated in a labyrinth of underground caves where men would make a pact with the devil to gain occult knowledge" (Ramsland 19). The headmaster was paid with the flesh and soul of one pupil who would become a servant to his evil ways. This sinister school remains "hidden at an unknown location variously said to be located in the mountains, the underground, or the other world" (Melton 604).

The scholomance reference in Stoker's Dracula "is important because it associates Dracula, hence Slavic vampires, with witchcraft and Satan, as well as with occult philosophical learning...In her papers, folklore researcher Emily de Laszowska-Gerard talks about the Scholomance as a school where people learned 'the secrets of nature, the language of animals, and all magic spells,' as taught by the devil" (Ramsland 20).

"Very little is known of the" origins of the "Scholomance legend. Bram Stoker read about it in a book about Transylvania called Land Beyond the Forest (1888) by Emily Gerard." Some scholars suggest that Gerard misunderstood the term 'Solomonari' as "spoken by a local with a German accent." Was this a case of a foreigner miserably failing to grasp the clear diction of the local region? Perhaps...If the assertion is true, 'scholomance' "is a misnomer." Its appearance "in no other known source, nor in Romanian folklore" leads me to believe that the fantastical label was conjured by the befuddled mind of Gerard (Ramsland 19-20).

Regardless, some society of magical tradition existed, and from the mists of enchantment surrounding the magic men, Gerard spun her article. "Traditional Romanian society recognized the existence of solomonari, or wise ones, considered successors of the biblical King Solomon and bearers of his wisdom...The solomonari were basically wizards whose primary ability was affecting the weather, which they accomplish[ed] through their power over the balauri, or dragons. By riding the dragon in the sky they [brought] rain or drought. The solomonari were thus the Romanian equivalent to shaman" (Melton 603).

A solomonari is recognized as a "large person with red eyes," [possibly permanently swollen from ceaseless studying for the impossible final exam] "and red hair and a wrinkled forehead. He will wear white clothes and will arrive in a village as a wandering beggar. Around his neck will be the 'bag of the solomonari' in which he keeps his magical instruments, including an iron ax (to break up the sky ice thus producing hailstones), a bridle shaped from birch used to capture the dragon, his magical 'book' from which he 'reads' the charms used to master the dragons" (604).

"Legend has it that the Scholomance would admit students ten at a time", and that some of these would become solomonari. "Upon acquisition of the devilish insight" nine would be freed from apprenticeship and one would be retained by the Devil as payment (Leatherdale 107). The students' "final examination involved copying all that they knew about humanity into the Solomonar's book" (Ramsland 20). "Students received their own 'book' at the end of their training, described as a stone talisman with nine mysterious letters in it. In any given situation, the solomonari concentrates on the book, and from it discerns what he should do" (Melton 604). Once initiated, they become full-fledged alchemists with the power to maintain the balance of nature and to preserve order" (Ramsland 20). Stoker's Dracula boasted such powers. Mina Harker writes in her journal, "he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder, he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small, and he can at times vanish and become unknown" (Stoker).

Pa,
Ana

Sources:
Leatherdale, Clive. Dracula: the novel & the legend
Melton. The Vampire Book.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Science of Vampires.
Stevenson, Jay. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires.
Stoker. Dracula.

Fritz Haarmann [Extreme Violence]

We have written case studies about Lamia and the Chupacabra, but other blood-drinkers have been immortalized in rumor and popular stories. [Warning: material covered in this entry contains extreme violence.]

Referred to as "The Vampire of Hanover" (also Hannover), Fritz Haarmann (also Haarman) is the subject of a well-documented case of vampirism as perceived by the law enforcement community. You can read about this ruthless killer ad nauseam in the sources listed below, or you can read my gruesome summary.

Fritz Haarmann was a "military man turned vampire". He was born in 1879 but did not enter the world of the vampire until the early 1900s (Konstantinos 69).

"Haarmann was institutionalized during the late nineteenth century for mental instability, but he escaped" and "became a homeless vagrant." While on the streets, "he learned to butcher meat, but his growing interest was in molesting young boys" (Ramsland 149).

"Sometime around 1917 or 1918, Haarmann met a male prostitute named Hans Grans, who would become his partner in some sadistic and vampiric crimes." The duo would lure young men to their house with the promise of dinner, alcohol, and possibly a home. Satiated and lulled into a stupor, these young men became the perfect victims. Haarmann would attack the lethargic youth, "seize him and bite into his neck, sucking on his blood until the helpless victim died."

"He would kill them after the fashion of a vampire" (Summers 192). "It is estimated that Haarmann vampirized some fifty young men." After drinking their blood, Haarmann and Grans "chopped the bodies into steaks and sold them on the streets as beef. That 'underground' meat market went on from 1918 to 1924" (Konstantinos 71). The meat he sold, but the bones were disposed of in the Leine canal, and ultimately, this act lead to the downfall of the pair. "Skulls floated to the surface in 1924. The police were already suspicious of Haarmann because of his" psychotic and criminal "history and went to question him about the cases of missing men from the area" (Konstantinos). "In 1924, the police investigated the disappearance of one boy and caught Haarmann assaulting him. They arrested Haarmann, but what they did not realize was that he had the head of another missing young man right there in the room...He'd been committing crimes of this kind for several years" (Ramsland 149).

"Haarmann eventually confessed to the crimes and became known as the 'Vampire of Hanover.' He was sentenced to death, and...decapitated" (Konstantinos 71). "Certainly in the extended sense of the word, as it is now so commonly used, Fritz Haarmann was a vampire in every particular" (Summers 193). But, was he simply a "disturbed individual...imitating fictional vampires," or was he "acting on some monstrous instinct"? (Konstantinos 71).

Bis dann,
Ana


Sources:
Konstantinos. Vampires.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Science of Vampires.
Summers, Montague. The vampire his kith and kin.