Vampires before the 19th century?
Hopefully you know that the 19th century was between 1800-1899, and it was in that time period Bram Stoker wrote Drakula. Since then there have been a lot of vampire novels, movies, and even "actual/real" vampire sightings/reports. I want to know not only WHERE bram stoker got his idea. i know that there was a dude way back when named vlad drakula, but that is about it. all knowledge online seems to talk about chupacabra, and 19th century-present vampire tales. from what i've read modern vampire tales are very charming beautiful vampires but the oldest tales i read they sound like they look more like zombies and act weird too.help me find some concrete and sound ancient or midevil vampire legends and stuff like that. would be appreciated. ty.
Tagged with: 19th century • bram stoker • drakula • sightings • time period • ty • vampire legends • vampire novels • vampire tales • vampires • zombies
Filed under: Vampire Sightings
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Vampires are as old as recorded history. They are creatures of the night — blood sucking shape-shifters who can change into smoke, mist, bats, wolves, dogs, or cats. In Japan it is the vampire cat of Nabeshima who is the most feared. Female vampires in India linger at crossroads to suck blood of elephants. Vampire legends come from China, Egypt, Greece, Malaysia, Africa, Arabia, the Americas, and - most obviously - from eastern Europe.
Vampir is a Magyar, or Hungarian, word for "undead," and similar words are used all over Europe. Another title is Nosferatu, which means "living corpse." Vampires cast no shadow and have no reflection. Folklore describes them as red-eyed, and unshaven with loud voices, ever-open mouths, and pronounced canine teeth, or fangs. It also says that they leap on their victims and crush and smolder them into the dust while drinking their blood. The pale, elegant, clean-shaven vampire — like Count Dracula — who leaves two small holes in the back of the neck of a victim — didn't appear until the late 1800's.
The common way to become a vampire is to get bitten by one, just like the most common way to become a werewolf is from a bite. In fact, vampires and werewolves are closely related, and they both have wolves and bats in their power.
Traditionally a vampire can cross a threshold if invited in by an insider. So because of that the first way to defend yourself from a vampire is to close the door on one. Garlic, the bulb of a plant f the onion family commonly used in foods has been relied on for centuries for defense against evil of all types, but most especially vampires. Medically, eating garlic helps prevent the blood from clotting, and you might think this appealing for vampires , but they don't. Iron and, to lesser extent, silver are also deterrents. Vampires are only active from dusk to dawn, so the daylight hours are safe. During the day, they have to return to their coffins to rest. Finding the coffin, and destroying it with the vampire inside it will bring the reign of terror to an end, but it's a very messy process. Recommended ways to annihilate a vampire are to stab a wooden stake through its heart, or behead it, or burn the body, or all three.
If you want to know more, e-mail me at lilqtkaiden@yahoo.com, I could tell you more, but this is getting way too long, lol.
The chupracobra
is a wolf like animal that kills people.
who many people believe in.
Also many people believe in Vampires
and even more after the people found a "Vampire" skull last week.
Many people think of Bats when they hear "Vampire."
The "Vampire Bat" got that name because people believed it was a real vampire because it was seen drinking blood from farm animals and other things
Who knows? Maybe they did Exsist
No, They don't look like zombies
The book Twilight makes them look like zombies though because edwards face turns alittle purplish…
Some people believe "Vampires" Drink the blood of dead people somehow after they are buried or set off to sea…
And no one Knew about Bats or Vampires or cupracobras until someone wrote about it and people believed they seen the creature
Most of the world had never heard of a vampire before Bram Stoker.
Bram Stoker got his information from a 15th? century pamphlet on Vlad Tepesh, and from old folk tales from the area. There was 0 romance in any vampire story or legend before Bram Stoker. So you have him to thank him for modern vampire stories. Before Bram Stoker, all you had was one blood thirsty dictator, and legends that tried to explain things that happened to decomposing bodies after death. Stoker was the first to put the two together.
you can try to Google it? Annywhoo, Dracula was from a long time BEFORE the 1800-1899
magy_garcia21@yahoo.com
A lot of Bram Stoker's ideas appear to have come from a mid-19th century penny dreadful called Varney the Vampire. (I don't recommend reading it, it's really long and really bad.) In Varney, which is mainly set in England, most of the characters are only mildly familiar with the idea of vampires, and often go to look up more information about them in books about Norway and Hungary, which indicates it was a semi-new idea at the time.
As you say, earlier vampires were not much different from the modern 'zombie' concept (and incidentally, the modern idea of zombies didn't come about till the 1960s.) The first mention of the term vampire in English is from the 1730s, in a book about Hungarian vampires. The Online Etymology Dictionary says "An Eastern European creature popularized in Eng. by late 19c. gothic novels, however there are scattered Eng. accounts of night-walking, blood-gorged, plague-spreading undead corpses from as far back as 1196. Applied 1774 by Fr. biologist Buffon to a species of South American blood-sucking bat."
Whatever people may think, Vlad Dracula was not a vampire. He was a murderer and torturer.
Erzsebet Bathory was claimed to be a vampire in the 1500s. She was not a vampire in the fictional sense, that is not being able to go out in sunlight or the whole garlic thing. But she did drink blood and even bathed in it.
People suspected that she was insane from years of inbreeding or that her husband gave her the sick ideas before he died.
The vampire myth partially started around rabies. Garlic sensitivity and not being able to go out in sunlight was actually from hypersensitivity, which was a symptom of rabies.
The disease can also affect portions of the brain that could lead to disturbance of normal sleep patterns (thus becoming nocturnal).
Legend once said a man was not rabid if he could look at his own reflection (an allusion to the legend that vampires have no reflection). Wolves and bats, which are often associated with vampires, can be carriers of rabies. The disease can also lead to a drive to bite others and to a bloody frothing at the mouth.
Also, if an animal (mostly a cat or dog) jumped over a corpse the person was considered to be a vampire.
There was also legends from the bubonic plague, symptoms of the plague would cause blood to appear on the lips and thus being accused of vampirism.
Hope it helped
Bram Stoker worked for a man named Sir Henry Irving and based his vampire tale in part on him and Vlad Dracula who was known as Vlad Tepes ( or the Impaler). Bram Stoker was born in Ireland and grew up during the time known in Ireland as the Potato Famine and seeing skeletal people near death who looked undead to his eyes also played a part in inspiring his story. to find gothic vampire tales i would google vampire myths and see what comes up.
Hi Guys- There is a lot of good ideas here, and some misinformation as well… 1)Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897… It was not a hit. (Two other Gothic novels published in 1897 were much bigger hits: Richard Marsh’s “The Beetle” outsold Dracula and Marie Corelli’s “Ziska” outsold them both.)Stoker NEVER knew about Vlad the Impaler- Really!(though he was aware that the last name ‘Dracul’ was a part of history)The Vlad connection is the biggest mistake about Stoker and is the result of bad research. Read Dr. Elizabeth Miller’s “Dracula: Sense and Nonsense” She is the #1 scholar on Stoker and has spent decades researching his life and original notes that Stoker wrote. 2) There is PLENTY of romance in the Vampire literature before Dracula- in fact, it may be argued that Dracula contains NO romance. (lust, yes… Romance??? hummmmm) 3) Vampires as a literary plot began (in English at least) in the late 1700’s- the most famous was the Penny Dreadful Varney the Vampire (1854) which Stoker was very familiar with. All of England knew about Varney- he was as well known to them as Bart Simpson is to us. Yes- Varney the Vampire IS along book- But it was written as a weekly soap opera- with tons of cliffhangers to keep readers coming back for the next week’s chapter, so dive into it- It is the FIRST Vampire novel ever written and Varney is a wonderfully sympathetic character- He is the model for Anne Rice’s approach AND Stephenie Meyer’s romantically tortured vampires as well (though he is terribly ugly- no Edward here!). He loathes his Vampiric condition, yet must feed as well. Also- Rymer, Varney’s primary writer, began a lot of Vampire myths which Hollywood changed. (It’s nice to see the Werewolf connection returning!) I wrote the new Critical Edition of varney the Vampire- I’m happy to answer any questions—!