Related Papers
Sprawozdania Archeologiczne, vol. 70
A grain against a "vampire"? Some remarks on so-called anti-vampire practices in the light of archaeological and folkloristic-ethnographic data
2018 •
Tomasz Kurasiński, Kalina Skóra, Viktor Haiduchyk
This paper focuses on a ritual of covering the dead with seeds of plants: poppy and field mustard. This habit is recorded in Slavic folkloristic-ethnographic sources and is considered as a so-called anti-demonic practice. In archaeological literature, this habit is not usually mentioned among the criteria of “atypical” burials, perhaps because physical means of restraining the “dangerous” dead are more straightforward to demonstrate than psychic ones. The paper discusses burials from early medieval cemeteries that contain the aforementioned plant seeds. Due to their fecundity, such seeds are hardly considered countable and for this reason, among others, in folk imagination they were believed to possess apotropaic and magical traits.
Turkish sarımsak ~ sarmısak ‘garlic’ revisited
Marek Stachowski
Thus far, four – structurally very different – etymologies have been suggested for the Turkic word for ‘garlic’. This author adduces derivatives found in Altai, one of the Siberian Turkic languages, that provide crucial support for one of them.
Mnemosyne
On Mice and Vampires: Plautus Bacchides, 8849
2006 •
Dorota Dutsch
Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts "Blood Suckers Most Cruel:" The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula
Kevin Dodd
The relationship between the nineteenth century vampire monster and the vampire bat has not yet been seriously investigated in English. Three common assumptions made by experts are examined in this paper. Current vampire historiography has held that Stokerʼs use of a huge bat as the vampire was either mistaken or a creative innovation and therefore requires explanation in those terms. It supposes that people in the nineteenth century understood the word "vampire" the way we do today. It presumes Dracula to be the first story to have a vampire monster transform into a bat. To consider these positions, we must first analyze the use of the bat in Dracula and then set it in the context of 19th-century conceptions of the vampire bat to see how mistaken or creative Stoker actually was. Thereafter a survey of 19th-century works that are said to be leading the way to Dracula is initiated to see if "vampire" had the same meaning then as it does today. Finally we will examine if Draculaʼs metamorphosis from a monster into a vampire bat had any precursors and, if so, how distinctive Stoker was in developing it.
The Vampire, His Kith and Kin: A Critical Edition (Apocryphile Press, 2011) [uncorrected proof excerpt]
John Edgar Browning
"“Although published too late to help Professor Van Helsing defeat Dracula, every modern vampire-hunter needs Summers’s seminal compendium of folklore and mythology. Browning’s critical edition, with commentary by leading vampirologists and rich biographical material, is a treasure-trove for students and scholars alike!” —Leslie S. Klinger, editor, The New Annotated Dracula “Summers’s extensive albeit curious research on vampires has long been a classic in the field, and it’s exciting to see it being rescued from oblivion, as well as framed by such a renowned yet diverse group of scholars.” —Katherine Ramsland, The Science of Vampires “This new edition cannot be recommended too highly to anyone with the faintest interest in Montague Summers or the origin of vampires.” —Nigel Suckling, Book of the Vampire In all the dark pages of the supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk rid themselves of this hideous pest. The tradition is world-wide and of the greatest antiquity. How did it arise? How did it spread? Does it indeed contain some vestige of truth, some memory of savage practice, some trace of cannibalism or worse? These and similar problems inevitably suggested by a consideration of Vampirism in its various aspects are fully discussed in this work which may not unfairly claim to be the first serious and fully documented study of a subject that in its details is of absorbing interest, although the circ*mstances are of necessity macabre and ghastly in the highest degree. Included in this critical edition are the authoritative text, rare contextual and source materials, correspondence, illustrations, as well as Greek and Latin translations. A biographical note and chronology are also included."
Journal of Geek Studies
The biology of vampires
2022 •
João Pedro Ocanha Krizek
Vampires are mythological and folkloric creatures that have been catching people’s attention for centuries. They (fortunately or unfortunately) do not exist in the real world, but our intention in this article is to conduct a scientific interpretation of vampires as if they were real. Here, we examine some possible scientific explanations for vampirism, if it existed, particularly by looking at the biology of these fascinating creatures and proposing explanations based on real-world scientific knowledge. In the first section, we discuss what could be the cause and origin of vampirism in humans. In the second section, we analyze different aspects of the vampire phenotype, such as aversion to garlic, sensitivity to sunlight, anticoagulant and anesthetic production, aversion to religious symbols, and others. In the third section, we look at how the fear of vampires and other imaginary creatures might be related to the evolutionary history of our species. Finally, in the fourth section, we approach vampirism from the perspective of criminal psychology, briefly discussing the biography of three real-life murderers who have their atrocities related to vampirism: The Impaler, The Blood Countess, and The Vampire of Sacramento.
The Evil That Lives After Them: A Cultural and Linguistic Exhumation of the Vampire Myth
Michael Dilts
The Western mythic image of the vampire was codified in 1897 by Bram Stoker, but it was artistically exploited in a number of earlier literary works. In fact "vampire" had been in common use in the English language for over a century before the publication of "Dracula." The word first appears in its Slavic form in an Old Church Slavonic manuscript dating to the 11th to 13th Centuries, but is it a native Slavic word or was it borrowed from elsewhere? Several possible etymological hypotheses are examined.
Intellectual History Review
Magnets and Garlic: An Enduring Antipathy in Early-Modern Science
2020 •
Christoph Sander
Since antiquity, sources report that garlic deprives a magnet of its power of attraction. Although in later centuries some authors disproved or questioned this effect by experience or trial, several, if not the majority of, writers referred to garlic and magnets as “enemies” until well into the seventeenth century. It will be argued that the probable textual origin of the “garlic effect” is a corrupt or ambiguous passage in Pliny’s Natural History, reading “al(l)ium” (garlic) instead of “aliud” (another) in one passage. With a focus on the early-modern period, it will be elucidated why so many authors did not doubt this physical effect, and some even presented causal explanations for it. It shall be emphasized, moreover, that magnetic attraction, and thereby also the garlic effect, was used as an important example or analogy since antiquity. This illustrative or explanatory use of analogies drawn from the garlic–magnet antipathy certainly goes some way towards explaining the longevity of this odd relation between the two substances.
Ehquidad Revista Internacional de Políticas de Bienestar y Trabajo Social
The magical power of blood: the curse of the vampire from an anthropological point of wiev
Francisco Javier Sánchez-Verdejo Pérez
Vampires and vampirism: pathological roots of a myth
Moreno Tiziani
