The Origin of the Vampire Myth
Oct. 6th, 2010 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_vultureIn response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ysabetwordsmith 's latest Poetry Fishbowl theme, vampires, I wanted to a provide a prompt regarding the real world origins of vampires. I can't seem to locate the original essay I had read many years ago that talked about this, but I do recall that vampire myths began with the Middle Ages peasants experience with death, especially in relation to plagues. The people of this time period would not have a scientific understanding of decomposition, or of the transmission of disease. Very simply, a body put into the ground was expected to be a skeleton the next time it was seen.
During normal times, bodies would've been buried at greater depths and the bodies forgotten, eventually meeting this expectation. However, during times of plague, survivors had little energy to dig proper graves, and often would be forced to dig, and re-dig, mass graves. Shallow mass graves led to numerous opportunities for gravediggers to encounter bodies that were not as expected. A corpse bloated from bacterial gases, along with flesh receding from teeth and nails (making them seem like they've grown) and numerous other actions of decomposition, would've been seen as unnaturally life-like, clearing 'growing fat' off the lives these 'vampires' were feeding upon. What about a body that, for whatever soil conditions existed, wasn't decomposing? Again, unnaturally life-like: obviously a vampire. And if wolves or other animals dug into a shallow grave to pull out a limb to gnaw on? The results in the morning were seen as the vampire actually trying to escape its grave.
What about all the bloodsucking? Some corpses, due to natural decomposition, may have been found with gore around their mouths, however, it all actually starts with life stealing. During times of plague, survivors would often be exhausted by both the effort of coping with the disease (like caring for all the ill and digging graves), and often the effects of disease themselves. Exhausted people often suffer from waking paralysis, where the mind awakes while the body is still essentially 'sleeping', the sensations of which typically include paralysis (as the bloodstreams is filled with the hormones that keep the body still during some stages of sleep), suffocation, and dread. These were often seen as the effects of predation by the vampires, proven by the eventual death of many such sufferers.
Methods of keeping the vampire in its grave were numerous ranging from placing lace over the vampire (as it would have to undo all the knots before arising), placing a coin or other object in the mouth which would then be trapped when the teeth 'grew', decapitation, and staking. Interestingly, the stake through the heart was an invention of later writers; most staking involved lancing the vampire in the gut (which would promptly deflate). Myths concerning garlic were a byproduct of myths concerning warding off disease by supplanting noxious smells of illness and death with something equally strong.
And thus concludes my quick explanation of the vampire myth. Yeah, the vampires of old are not at all like Edward, are they? :P
ysabetwordsmith 's latest Poetry Fishbowl theme, vampires, I wanted to a provide a prompt regarding the real world origins of vampires. I can't seem to locate the original essay I had read many years ago that talked about this, but I do recall that vampire myths began with the Middle Ages peasants experience with death, especially in relation to plagues. The people of this time period would not have a scientific understanding of decomposition, or of the transmission of disease. Very simply, a body put into the ground was expected to be a skeleton the next time it was seen. During normal times, bodies would've been buried at greater depths and the bodies forgotten, eventually meeting this expectation. However, during times of plague, survivors had little energy to dig proper graves, and often would be forced to dig, and re-dig, mass graves. Shallow mass graves led to numerous opportunities for gravediggers to encounter bodies that were not as expected. A corpse bloated from bacterial gases, along with flesh receding from teeth and nails (making them seem like they've grown) and numerous other actions of decomposition, would've been seen as unnaturally life-like, clearing 'growing fat' off the lives these 'vampires' were feeding upon. What about a body that, for whatever soil conditions existed, wasn't decomposing? Again, unnaturally life-like: obviously a vampire. And if wolves or other animals dug into a shallow grave to pull out a limb to gnaw on? The results in the morning were seen as the vampire actually trying to escape its grave.
What about all the bloodsucking? Some corpses, due to natural decomposition, may have been found with gore around their mouths, however, it all actually starts with life stealing. During times of plague, survivors would often be exhausted by both the effort of coping with the disease (like caring for all the ill and digging graves), and often the effects of disease themselves. Exhausted people often suffer from waking paralysis, where the mind awakes while the body is still essentially 'sleeping', the sensations of which typically include paralysis (as the bloodstreams is filled with the hormones that keep the body still during some stages of sleep), suffocation, and dread. These were often seen as the effects of predation by the vampires, proven by the eventual death of many such sufferers.
Methods of keeping the vampire in its grave were numerous ranging from placing lace over the vampire (as it would have to undo all the knots before arising), placing a coin or other object in the mouth which would then be trapped when the teeth 'grew', decapitation, and staking. Interestingly, the stake through the heart was an invention of later writers; most staking involved lancing the vampire in the gut (which would promptly deflate). Myths concerning garlic were a byproduct of myths concerning warding off disease by supplanting noxious smells of illness and death with something equally strong.
And thus concludes my quick explanation of the vampire myth. Yeah, the vampires of old are not at all like Edward, are they? :P
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Date: 2010-10-06 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 03:29 am (UTC)