Vampires (4 page)

The surgeons duly diagnosed the exhumed corpses to be in ‘the vampiric condition’, as they put it, and allowed the village elders and some local gypsies to dispose of them as they thought fit. The gypsies cut the heads off the bodies, burned them, and threw the ashes in the river. Once again, when this official report was published, the story aroused tremendous interest, further fuelling the panic about vampires that was beginning to sweep across Europe from the Balkan states.

In the same way that superstitious, uneducated people in the medieval period misunderstood the way corpses naturally decompose after death and burial, there was widespread ignorance about communicable diseases. When a number of deaths among people closely connected in a single town or village occurred, peasant communities often imagined the deaths to be caused by the visitation of a local vampire, rather than attributing the deaths to outbreaks of disease. The vampire in question was often thought to be a neighbour who had died, been buried in a local churchyard, and who was seeking revenge for his or her sudden death by coming back to life as a vampire. The theory was that the vampire would emerge from the grave at night and come back to the village to prey on former family members and friends, trying to suck their blood and in this way achieve immortality. It is possible that this way of thinking arose from primitive feelings of guilt about the fact that, for no apparent reason, some individuals had died of the disease, while others had survived.

Although it is understandable that epidemics of terminal disease would terrify most ordinary people, as they do today, explanations of them in terms of vampires, evil spirits, and the like were quite damaging to the communities concerned. In the worst cases, they resulted in the persecution of innocent individuals and families: bodies would be dug up and ritually dismembered, burned, or otherwise mutilated. In a traditional, religious society, this would of course have been deeply disturbing for relatives, who would regard such exhumations as a desecration. Even more disturbing, individuals who were still alive, or suffering illness, might be suspected of being vampires, and would be persecuted or shunned.

There were a number of diseases that gave rise to specific fears about vampires, mainly connected to the bodily changes they caused. For example, tuberculosis was often thought of as a sign of vampirism. This was related to with the fact that sufferers from the disease may cough up blood, and may appear pale. (Significantly, tuberculosis in former times was known as ‘consumption’, because the sufferer’s body appeared to be eaten up from within, echoing the notion of the vampire’s bloodsucking ways.) Most commonly, one member of the family would become ill with tuberculosis (TB) and die, while other members became infected and would begin to waste away. As their illness progressed, they would suffer a number of unpleasant traits: their eyes might become red and swollen, and as a result they would develop an aversion to sunlight. Their body temperature would drop, making their skin cold to the touch, like a corpse, and they might become pallid and weak. One traditional story invented to explain this ‘wasting away’ was that victims had been captured by the fairies and made to dance all night at parties, so that they were exhausted during the day. Another fanciful suggestion was that the sick person had been put under a spell by a witch, transformed into a horse, and forced to carry the witch to her coven at night. Most such tales were an attempt to explain the transformation of a healthy person into a weak, ailing being who might, in some ways, resemble a ‘living corpse’.

Later, throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, TB remained a widespread terminal disease, and other myths began to surround it: for example, that it was caused by masturbation, or that it produced feelings of feverish euphoria, making artists more creative than they would otherwise have been. Indeed, the Romantics positively fetishized the pallor and waif-like appearance of the ‘consumptive’, especially in women, emphasizing their fatalistic beauty, as they saw it. This romantic version of the illness soon found its way into vampire lore, with the stories of doomed love that so much appeal to teenagers today.

Another disease associated with vampirism was porphyria. This is a disease of the blood that is often inherited and whose most unusual symptom is purple discolouration of the faeces and urine (hence the name, which derives from the Greek, meaning, ‘purple pigment’). As porphyria is a relatively rare disease, and has many different symptoms, including seizures and hallucinations, it has historically often been attributed to other conditions, including – most irrationally of all – the status of the sufferer as a vampire.

There are several reasons why this explanation should have been put forward. First, porphyria often affects the skin, making it extremely sensitive to light. Necrosis of the skin and gums may occur, so that these parts are eaten away, making teeth and nails look longer. Blisters may erupt on the skin, especially if exposed to the sun. There may be an increase of hair growth in unusual places, such as on the forehead. The sufferer’s urine may grow red or purple, and the teeth and fingernails might also appear red. The skin might also appear to glow in the dark. Not surprisingly, in former times, these alarming symptoms were attributed to the supernatural. With their red teeth and nails, and their pale or glowing skins, people with porphyria were often suspected of being vampires. If they grew hair on their faces, they might also be persecuted as werewolves.

In recent years, historians and medical commentators in Britain have advanced the theory that hereditary porphyria affected many of the nobility, including the monarchy. Retrospective diagnoses of the illnesses affecting such monarchs as Mary, Queen of Scots and King George III, have been made, suggesting that they were all suffering from porphyria. This idea has appealed so greatly to novelists, film-makers and the like that it is now commonly assumed to be a matter of fact that there was hereditary porphyria among the British monarchy, and possibly the whole of European nobility. Furthermore, people suppose that this was largely due to intermarriage and inbreeding. In fact, the theory has never been proved and remains a matter of conjecture.

Most of the work done to investigate the link between porphyria and vampirism has resulted in nothing more positive than stigmatizing sufferers from the disease. In 1985, biochemist David Dolphin argued that the age-old connection had arisen since porphyria sufferers in the past might have craved blood. This, he argued, was because consumption of blood eased their symptoms. There was no medical basis to this theory, which seemed to have come about as a result of misunderstanding the nature of the disease. In addition, Dolphin noted that, in the past, the porphyriac’s sensitivity to sunlight could have given rise to the belief that he or she was a vampire. However, as many commentators have pointed out, the idea that vampires are sensitive to sunlight is not originally part of European folklore, but was an addition to the myth introduced in 1922 in the film
Nosferatu
. Despite the weaknesses of Dolphin’s medical and cultural research, the theory was widely reported, thus forever establishing the connection between porphyria and vampirism in the public mind.

From earliest times, the disease of rabies has terrified human beings. Like TB and porphyria, it transforms the mind and body of the sufferer, but usually more dramatically, in a way that brings agony to the sufferer and horrifies the onlooker. Since rabies is a virus that inflames the brain, it causes acute personality and behavioural changes, and if untreated results in death. And as it is transmitted by animals – humans are usually infected by a bite from an animal such as a dog or a bat – many fears have risen up over the centuries about this phenomenon, and have found their way into folkloric tales of werewolves and vampires.

Symptoms of rabies include headache, fever, the inability to swallow water, violent behaviour, and intense pain. So irrational is the behaviour of the infected person that the disease was named from the Latin word meaning ‘madness’. In a rabid condition, human individuals may well become so violent that they bite other people. Since biting people is a behaviour usually attributed to animals, in former times onlookers feared that after being bitten, the sufferer had somehow turned into an animal. Not only this, but if a sufferer did bite someone else, they too would fall victim to the disease, and suffer the same agonizing death.

It is easy to see how, in primitive cultures with very little access to scientific knowledge or medical intervention, societies would interpret the phenomenon of rabies as a sign that an evil spirit from an animal source had, through being bitten by a wolf, dog, or bat, entered a human being. For this reason, anxieties about the largely unknown nature and behaviour of nocturnal animals such as bats and wolves, about the bites that these animals may inflict on humans, and about the terrifying consequences of this, have, from time immemorial featured in folklore from across the world. (For more information on this, see Chapter 3). In societies where people lived close to nature, wolves and bats were greatly feared. Wolves were known to attack humans at night; and bats were possibly even more alarming, since they might fly into a house and bite a sleeping individual without them knowing about it. (It is quite possible to be bitten by a bat at night and not to notice the bite the next morning). Thus, folk tales were full of warnings about these rather mysterious animals who could bring such horror to human beings, merely by biting them, and they became part of the mythology of vampires and werewolves.

There are certain animals whose behaviour – for example, hunting at night, and living off human or animal blood and flesh – has always struck fear into human beings. These include bats, wolves, and owls, who play important roles in European folklore, and who also appear, in different guises and with different meanings, in folklore from other parts of the world.

Of all these, the common vampire bat is perhaps the most ghoulish. The vampire bat lives on a diet of blood, a habit known as haematophagy. As well as the common vampire bat, there are two other kinds of bat that feed solely on blood: the white-winged vampire bat, and the hairy-legged vampire bat. These bloodsucking bats are mostly found in Latin America, and are especially common in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, where they feature prominently in folk mythology (see Chapter 3).

As we all know, bats hunt at night, and sleep in the day, often in caves. This nocturnal behaviour accords with the vampire legend, in which the vampire only emerges at night, from the cave-like grave, to strike its victims. The body of the vampire bat in particular is well evolved to locate warm-blooded creatures: it has thermoreceptors on its nose, and these help it to find areas on the skin of its victims, such as the neck, where the blood flows close to the surface. It also has relatively large front teeth that it uses to bite into the victim’s skin. These teeth have no enamel on them, so they are very sharp. If its victim is an animal whose body is covered in fur, the bat’s canine teeth are used to shave off the hair around the area where it makes its incision.

The bat’s saliva contains a substance called draculin, isolated by Venezuelan researchers working with the common vampire bat in 1995. This functions as an anticoagulant, which stops the blood from the victim clotting, so that the bat can drink it. (This anticoagulant is extremely strong, and thus has been used in medicine to help patients suffering from blood clotting conditions which may result in heart attacks and strokes.) Contrary to what is generally believed, the vampire bat does not suck blood out of the victim’s wound, but waits until it begins to pour out, and then laps at it.

Bats have an extremely sensitive hearing system, and the vampire bat is able to detect the sound of sleeping victims, which are their main source of nutrition. The common vampire bat seeks out mammals, while the white-winged vampire bat and the hairy-legged vampire bat feed on birds. Once the vampire bat has found its slumbering prey, it flies over to it and lands silently beside it. Using its infrared sensors, it finds a place to bite, and proceeds to tuck in. Its feed can last as long as 20 minutes, and as it feeds its body quickly digests the blood, and it begins to urinate.

After its gruesome dinner, the bat weighs considerably more than it did beforehand. A bat weighing 40 grams can amazingly increase its weight to 60; thus it can eat up to half its weight in blood. So its next problem is how to fly off. It does this by crouching down and hurling itself into the air, propelling itself upwards and flying quickly to its roost, before settling down for a good long sleep. After a few days, the blood fully digested, the bat will be hungry again, and ready to seek out its next victim.

Most animals or humans bitten by a vampire bat in this way, while they are sleeping, will not know what has happened, as the actual bite is small and causes no pain. It is rather similar to being bitten by a mosquito. However, some bats may carry serious diseases such as rabies, so for this reason, it is unwise to handle them, or to allow them into the house. This has been known since ancient times, and bats are avoided as a consequence. The old wives’ tale about getting bats tangled in the hair has no real foundation, however, it may have arisen because gnat-eating bats appear to sometimes dart towards the heads of human beings at dusk.

For centuries, in many parts of the world, human beings have lived side by side with wolves. Not surprisingly, these enigmatic creatures figure heavily in the folklore and mythology of these regions. In some cultures, notably Native American and Nordic, they are regarded with awe and respect. However, in Slavic folklore, they tend to be seen in a negative light, in stories that emphasize their hunting as bloodthirsty and aggressive, and their twilight howling, which can be heard for miles, as eerie and threatening. There are also many European tales of werewolves, in which human beings transform into hybrid creatures capable of great violence and destruction. Some of these stories originate partly in the observed behaviour of the wolf, while others are in the realm of pure fantasy.

The European grey wolf is generally thought to be the wild ancestor of the domesticated dog. It has survived since earliest times as a predator, though today its numbers are depleted, and as a rule it no longer lives side by side with human beings (except in a few countries, such as Romania). Wolves can run fast, up to 40 miles an hour, and have great stamina. Their relatively large feet, with a slight webbing between the toes, help them to navigate difficult terrains, including snow, and their thick winter coats insulate them from water as well as cold. They have yellow eyes, long legs, and strong teeth for holding their prey, crushing its bones, and tearing off its flesh. They are known to be carriers of many killer diseases, including rabies and anthrax. If suffering from rabies, they can become extremely aggressive, and can run wild, biting and killing many people.

Wolves have a strong pack mentality, with a hierarchical system of dominant and submissive members, and mark out their territory by a system of communication that includes scent marking (with urine, faeces, and pheromones from their scent glands) and howling. At twilight, many members of the pack may gather together and howl, which is a way of communicating that their territory is out of bounds to other packs. They hunt mainly hooved or pawed animals, but also subsist on carcasses killed by other animals, and rubbish left outside by humans. When they catch their prey, they first tear at the legs, to stop it running away; then they may sever the windpipe, biting at the head and neck. If catching prey smaller than themselves, they will grab the animal, carry them off, and feed on them in a private place. This may happen while the prey is still alive. When the wolves begin to eat an animal, such as a deer, they will begin with the liver, lungs, and heart. They will continue with the stomach, the leg muscles, and finally, the hide and the bones, until almost nothing is left.

Before the twentieth century, wolf attacks on humans were a well-known though not very common occurrence. However, the damage to livestock was extensive, and this is perhaps why wolves came to be hated in many parts of Europe. There were also incidences of small children being carried off by wolves, and this may have led to fairy tales that warned children of this danger. It may also have inspired mythological stories of children being raised in the wild by a wolf pack.