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Vampires

I have noticed from 'The Tomb of Sarah' (above) that the dog rose is used against the malevolent impact of a vampire. Wondering if this is a common theme in vampire lore . Could be the rose generally is considered a Christian symbol and dog roses growing in the wild are the easiest rose to find . Any ideas? Thanks
 
Having just flicked through all 16 pages of this thread, I'm surprised to find that that there's no mention that for many of us, our very first exposure to vampires would have been the fellow below:

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A 2020 German TV documentary about Gerard van Swieten is currently available on the franco-german TV channel ARTE (until the end of November 2011) :

In German : https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/105580-000-A/der-vampirjaeger-der-kaiserin/

In French : https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/105580-000-A/le-chasseur-de-vampires-de-l-imperatrice/

Unfortunately, there is no English version.

The program mainly deals with doctor Gerard van Swieten's investigation of the "vampiric epidemic" of 1755 in Moravia. He had been sent by queen Maria Theresa to deal with the incident as the peasants were massively unearthing and burning corpses, profanating cemetaries which endangered Austria's reputation abroad (King Frederick of Prussia used this to show how much better was his regime). So something had to be done to "debunk" the case. Hence the mission of van Swieten.
 
They are geoblocked.
Cette vidéo n'est pas disponsible dans votre pays.
Dieses Video ist in Ihrem Land nicht verfügbar.
 
Erinaceus said:
They are geoblocked.
Cette vidéo n'est pas disponsible dans votre pays.
Dieses Video ist in Ihrem Land nicht verfügbar.
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Too bad. Sorry for that. Maybe they plan to sell the program to other countries.

So here is a summary :

In the beginning of the 18th century, vampiric outbreaks started to make the news on the margins of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian empire. First, there was the case Peter Blagojevic in Serbia (1718), and later on similar outbursts of peasant fears in Southern Silesia and Moravia. It is implied that at least part of the phenomenon was related to the backwardness and the localisation of these areas on the frontiers of the catholic world, especially in Serbia : the program assumes that while the Catholics had, since the times of Saint Augustine, an official position stating the impossibility for the dead to come back (if they appeared to come back, it was thought to be an illusion created by demons), the Orthodox faith more prevalent in Eastern Europe, had a less rigid approach to revenants. Therefore, the local peasants would have been able to entertain an enduring belief in vampires.

As a personal side note, we can indeed point out that the Peter Blagojevic incident happened in an area of the Habsburg empire which had only been recently annexed by Austro-Hungaria, in 1718.

Due to the wars between Frederick the Great and the Habsburg, these local legends were brought to the fore. Queen Maria Theresa of Austria did not want her empire to appear as a backward country where peasants go on a rampage, profanating holy burial grounds out of their fear of vampires. She therefore asked her personal doctor / physician, Gerard van Swieten to investigate the latest case, in Southern Silesia.

Van Swieten immediately set out for the northern border and started to develop the practice of autopsies in order to determine the characteristics of supposed "vampires". At that time, the Church was still hostile to autopsies, but it was considered a lesser evil as compared to impaling, decapitating and burning bodies who should have been peacefully awaiting for their resurrection at Judgment Day ! That's why Van Swieten got the full sponsoring of the Queen for carrying on his investigations.

He also recorded the peasant's testimonies and documented his whole enquiry in great details.

What nowadays transpires from his works is that : (1) there was no coherent description of the typical vampire, (2) most signs taken as an indication of vampirism were actually part of the normal yet still unkwown putrefaction process of the human body, especially the emission of sounds by dead bodies (gazeous emissions due to the decomposition of internal organs), (3) the description of vampire bodies in Southern Silesia (or Moravia - I don't remember) was coherent with the symptoms of Anthrax.

This last point may explain why vampires came to be seen as "blood drinkers", something that the interrogated peasants never said. The program indeed claims that Anthrax caused its victims to develop inflated and blueish lymph nodes on the neck, somewhat reminiscent of the results of a sucking kiss, which may have induced the doctors (not the peasants) to develop the theory of vampires being blood suckers. So this belief may have been a "rationalization" attempt by "learned" people. For the peasant / commoner, all that mattered was that a whole family was being obliterated by an unkwown and evil force, finally attributed to the first deceased person in the group.

Whatever ! The works of Van Swieten first fuelled and then contributed to put a swift end to the "great debate" of the 18th century about "vampires". The topic suddenly fell out of favour. Thereafter, it became more of a theme to be developed by writers and artists , especially in the Anglo Saxon (or even Irish) world (it isn't explained why however), starting with "Carmilla" by Le Fanu. At this point, the program orients itself towards a summary of the evolution of the vampire in litterature and the arts, underlining that it could remain a "modern" theme as the vampire is often a kind of "migrant" in the arts (Bram Stocker's Dracula being a prime example of that : a Romanian expatriate set to invade Britain).

Van Swieten may have been taken by Bram Stocker as his inspiration for Van Helsing. According to Bram Stocker's manuscripts, Dracula was originally set in "Styria", e.g Austria, before the Irish author decided to change the settings to Romania.
 
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Polish archaeologists find remains of 17th-century woman and child padlocked in their graves​

Archaeologists in Poland have uncovered the remains of a 17th-century child padlocked to his grave to stop him rising from the dead, a discovery that turns the spotlight on beliefs in vampires as Halloween approaches.

A woman’s body was also found in the cemetery with a padlock on her leg and a sickle around the neck, suggesting she was believed to be a vampire.

“This is a cemetery for rejected people, who were certainly feared after death, and perhaps also during life … who were suspected of having contacts with unclean forces, people who also behaved differently in some way,” said Dariusz Polinski, a researcher on medieval burials at Nicolaus Copernicus University in the city of Toruń.

The child was buried facedown with a triangular iron padlock under its foot, in a probable effort to keep it from sitting up and leaving the grave to feast on the living, he added.

The child’s grave was desecrated at some point after burial and all bones removed apart from those in the legs.

“There were also a large number of graves with stones … which were also supposed to protect against the deceased, placed in various places, for example on the elbow, on the larynx or on the neck.”
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Mr Bleak said:
Thank you ! I will write a review of the tale, it is well worth reading or listening via audio . Not sure if it was ever filmed or adapted for stage.
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Looking again at Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 'The Good Lady Ducayne' , , found quite a thorough blog post which gives the case against this short story being counted as part of the vampire genre, but suggests that leans more toward science fiction. Possibly. It could even be counted as crime fiction. However, still see elements of vampire behaviour in the story.
https://asthecrowsfeast.wordpress.com/corvus-book-ranking/corvus-anemic/good-lady-ducayne/
 
Every weekend, I have occasion to pass through the village of Chapelizod, where stands a house by a churchyard that was once the home of Sheridan le Fanu who not only brought us vampires before Dracula, but did so with lesbian undertones.

Carmilla remains a masterpiece.
 
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This May Be The Face Of A "Vampire" From 16th-Century Italy​


A 16th-century “vampire” who was buried with a stone brick in her mouth has been resurrected thanks to the work of a facial reconstruction expert. Discovered in a mass grave for plague victims, the long-dead woman may have been suspected of spreading the disease through her bloodthirst, hence the need to bung up her evil gob.

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The body was first uncovered in 2006 during excavations of a burial site on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon. Once used as a sanatorium for plague sufferers, the island became the final resting place for large numbers of people who died during an outbreak in 1576.

Analyzing the female cadaver back in 2010, researchers concluded that the brick was intentionally placed in the woman’s mouth by gravediggers who noticed that she had “eaten” her face shroud. The insertion of the hard stone may therefore have been intended to prevent her from magically spreading the plague by biting other victims.

Further analysis of the bones indicated that the woman was in her 60s when she died and mainly ate vegetables and grains.

https://www.iflscience.com/this-is-the-face-of-a-vampire-from-16th-century-italy-73481

maximus otter
 
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