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Vampires

Re: Vlad the Impaler

Detroit Bob said:
Doesn't most vampire lore trail back to Vlad the Impaler?
Only in as much as a lot of it can be traced back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, 'Dracula'.

Stoker apparently based his Dracula and Transylvanian locations on the information he had read in Baedeker travel guidebook about the region.

Vlad Tepes, son of Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil, or Dragon), Prince of Wallachia, was a local warlord in the region, back in the mid 15th century. He had a nasty reputation, but it was Stoker that added vampirism to the list.

Stoker was drawing on a gothic horror tradition of vampire tales that went back to 'The Vampyre', written by Lord Byron's physician, Dr Polidori, during the same summer holiday in which Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' (although her story was much, much better.

Where Polidori's Scottish Highlander, vampyre, 'Lord Ruthven,' was based on Lord Byron's character and reputation, Stoker's vampire seems to have been based on the personality of his boss, the actor-manager, Sir Henry Irving.

There was also an opera about the vampire Highland chieftain, Lord Ruthven 'The Vampire, or The Bride of The Isles' (1829), also based on Polidori's tale.

Then there was Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Carmilla' (1872), that was full of lesbian eroticism, possibly an important influence.

And, let's not forget, Thomas Preskett's, 'Varney the Vampire: Or, the Feast Of Blood' (1847), a hugely successful Gothic, sex 'n' gore, 'penny dreadful' series.

So Vlad The Impaler probably has to take second place to the "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron the Impaler.

;)
 
Wow.........!

Amazing information.

Thank you for posting it.
 
Hello,

I believe that 'Dracula' only popularized a very old superstition, amongst a very old group of people, spanning back thousands of years, regarding bloodsucking fiends. Look through any culture and you will see that the lore of the vampyre is very very old. And it spans continents, from Russia to china, Spain to Egypt. People have been talking about Vampires since before anyone popularized them in a book or two, nomatter who wrote about it first.
And...if remains exist, than they can be even older than mankind.


WW
 
The consumptive origins of vampires is discussed here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12494&highlight=vampires

A modern vampire:

Body of 'vampire' dug up

By CLODAGH HARTLEY

A FAMILY dug up the body of a dead relative then cut out and burnt his heart after claiming he was a VAMPIRE.

They also drove wooden stakes through Petre Toma’s body, saying he had drunk their blood at night and cursed them.

Toma’s brother-in-law Gheorghe Marinescu, who lives at Marotinul de Sus in Dracula’s homeland of Romania, said: “If we hadn’t done anything, my wife, son and daughter-in-law would have died.

“I decided to unbury him. I’ve seen these kinds of things before.

“When we took him out of the grave he had blood around his mouth.

“We took his heart and he sighed when we stabbed him. We burned it, then dissolved the ash in water. The people who had fallen sick drank it.

“They got better immediately. It was like someone took away all their pain and sickness.”

The family said the ritual — similar to those in Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee — was the only way to free them of the curse of Toma, who died last year aged 76.

Police were last night investigating after another relative complained Toma’s grave had been desecrated.

One cop said: “We will open the grave and see what we find.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004091714,00.html
 
Strigoi (The Undead Show)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3537085.stm
Death rite unnerves Romanian EU bid
Tom Mulligan
BBC Monitoring

Haunted by "strigoi" - the undead - villagers on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains exhume a corpse from the graveyard and drive a stake through its heart to banish the evil spirit.

They burn the remains of the heart, mix the ashes with water from the local well and drink it, to complete the macabre ritual.

Scenes from a shlock vampire B-movie? No; all this took place in February 2004 at a village in Dolj County, south-western Romania, according to Romanian Antena 1 TV news.

But the "Strigoi Show", as the TV dubbed it light-heartedly, has prompted such a stir about local customs and culture, the national press is questioning whether the ex-communist Balkan country will truly be ready to enter the European Union in 2007.

Under the headline "Ancestral habits at odds with modern European civilization," the independent national daily Evenimentul Zilei commented that such events were the "law of the land" in rural Romania.

Clash of cultures

The regions of Transylvania and Wallachia were "haunted by ancestral ghosts, evil spirits, and vampires"; medieval beliefs that were "at odds with sophisticated EU rules on measuring fruit and the size of bananas".

The paper has been a loud critic of the pace of Prime Minister Adrian Nastase's reforms needed for EU membership, and is quick to highlight criticism of Bucharest from Brussels.

Europe's preoccupations and debates, the paper said, were "totally out of tune with Romanian realities, where local barons make the law, enjoy privileges and export children to get favours from important people" in a "medieval fashion".

It describes Romania as a land of "sold girls" and "Romany kings fighting over gold coins", where pre-Christian faiths endure in spite of "internet cafes opened in villages in the old communist culture houses".

Criticism from Brussels reached a peak last month when the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament threw a question mark over Bucharest's EU accession talks. MEPs have accused Mr Nastase's government of failing to halt adoptions of children by foreigners, or of putting a stop to bribery and corruption.

Shadows of the past

The national newspaper Ziua ran an editorial headlined "Communist Ghost Haunting Romania" saying Romania was "haunted by the shadows" of its past, particularly the Securitate secret police, which "Europe does not need".

Romanians are flabbergasted only because the EU criticizes such things
Ziua daily
Drawing comparisons between the Dolj County "strigoi" and more recent bloodsuckers, Ziua suggested "the ghost of the Securitate haunts every corner here" and that ghost was "showing its true nature to us: corruption, collectivism, state control, and bureaucracy".

The centrist national daily Adevarul argued the EU would "inevitably be weakened in the short term because it is bringing in the poor countries of the East".

In another column, Ziua commented that Romania was still a county that "sells" its children. It said such events were not even considered newsworthy, as "the monstrous has become an everyday occurrence". Romanians are "flabbergasted only because the EU criticises such things," it said.

But Mr Nastase is taking steps to show his government is heeding EU warnings to push on with radical reforms and not miss its target date of joining by 2007. According to news reports, he is sacking his justice minister after the EU complained of slow judicial reforms.

Smothering local customs?

The authorities took action last September amid an international outcry over the forced wedding of a 12-year old Gypsy bride in Sibiu, Transylvania, the daughter of a self-proclaimed Gypsy king. The media said the child protection agency separated the girl from her teenage groom, who may face charges, and returned her to school.

And Evenimentul Zilei says the government is "enhancing legislation in the field of child adoptions" based on recommendations of the National Authority for Child Protection and Adoptions, although belatedly.

"If we continue to work for our European accession, we will not even be able to beat our wives and children to death anymore," Ziua commented with irony.

Will efforts to ensure human rights, stamp out graft and enhance the legal system to EU standards result in the smothering of the "old Romania": its legends, folklore, its mix of religious and secular traditions?

Romania's metropolitan press may argue that its ancestral customs are out of line with "modern European civilization", but the new Europe may be all the poorer for it if they disappear completely.
 
What with stories like this and tales of African "witch-killings", it makes me wonder if all the talk about scientific advances and globalisation is only so much donkey-doo!

Bring back the scolds bridle and ducking stools in major UK towns!
 
A follow up:

Posted on Wed, Mar. 24, 2004

Romanian villagers decry police investigation into vampire slaying

By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD

Knight Ridder Newspapers



MAROTINU DE SUS, Romania - Before Toma Petre's relatives pulled his body from the grave, ripped out his heart, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it, he hadn't been in the news much.

That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.

Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead - they're pretty common - but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.

"What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"

Yes, according to the Romanian State Police. Its view, expressed by Constantin Ghindeano, the chief agent for the region, is that vampires aren't real, and dead bodies in graves aren't to be dug out and killed again, even by relatives.

He doesn't really have much more to say on this case, other than noting that Petre had been removed from his grave, his heart had been cut out and it was presumed to have been consumed by his relatives. Ghindeano added that police were expanding the investigation, which began in mid-January, to include the after-deaths of others in area.

"The investigation is ongoing, and we expect to file charges later," he said, referring to possible charges of disturbing the peace of the dead, which could carry a three-year jail term. "We are determining whether this was an isolated case or whether there is a pattern in the village."

Romania has been filled with news of the vampire-slaying investigation, and villagers admit there's a pattern, but they argue that that's the reason these matters shouldn't make it to court. There's too much of it going on, and too few complain about the practice.

Vampire slaying is a custom that's been passed down from mother to daughter, father to son, for generations beyond memory, not just in this tiny village of 300 huts astride a dirt cart path about 100 miles southwest of Bucharest, but in scores of villages throughout southern Romania.

Little has changed since the days that Turkish invaders rolled through 500 years ago, seeking the mineral riches of Transylvania just to the north. By day, the people are Roman Catholics. At night, they fear the strigoi, or vampires.

On a recent afternoon, the village's single store, which also serves as its lone bar, was filled with men drinking hard, as they explained the vampire facts to a stranger. Most had at least one vampire in their family histories, and many were related to vampire victims. Most had learned to kill a vampire while still children.

Theirs is not a Hollywood tale, and they laugh at Hollywood conventions: that vampires can be warded off by crosses or cloves of garlic, or that they can't be seen in mirrors. Utter nonsense. Vampires were once Catholics, were they not? And if a vampire can be seen, the mirror can see him. And why would you wear garlic around your neck? Are you adding taste?

No, vampires are humans who have died, commonly babies before baptism or people unfortunate enough to have black cats jump over their coffins. Vampires occur everywhere, but in busy cities no one notices, the men said.

Vampires are obvious when dug up because while they will have been laid to rest on their backs, arms folded neatly across their chests, they will be found on their sides or even their stomachs. They will not have decomposed. Beards will have continued to grow. Their arms will be at their sides, as if they are clawing out of their coffins. And they will have blood - sometimes dried, sometimes fresh - around their mouths.

But the biggest tip-off that a vampire is near is his or her family, for vampires always prey on their families. If family members fall ill after a death, odds are a vampire is draining their blood at night, looking for company.

"That's the problem with vampires," said Doru Morinescu, a 30-year-old shepherd who, like many in the village, has a family connection to the current case. "They'd be all right if you could set them after your enemies. But they only kill loved ones. I can understand why, but they have to be stopped."

Ion Balasa, 64, explained that there are two ways to stop a vampire, but only one after he or she has risen to feed.

"Before the burial, you can insert a long sewing needle, just into the bellybutton," he said. "That will stop them from becoming a vampire."

But once they've become vampires, all that's left is to dig them up, use a curved haying sickle to remove the heart, burn the heart to ashes on an iron plate, then have the ill relatives drink the ashes mixed with water.

"The heart of a vampire, while you burn it, will squeak like a mouse and try to escape," Balasa said. "It's best to take a wooden stake and pin it to the pan, so it won't get away."

Which is exactly what happened with Petre, according to Gheorghe Marinescu, a cheery, aging vampire slayer who was Petre's brother-in-law.

Marinescu's story goes like this: After Petre died, Marinescu's son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter fell ill. Marinescu knew the cause was his dead brother-in-law. So he had to go out to the cemetery.

The first time, he was frightened, so he had a little graveside drink, for courage. He ended up with a little too much courage and couldn't use the shovel. So the next night he returned, and with a proper amount of courage, was successful.

Marinescu said he found Petre on his side, his mouth bloody. His heart squeaked and jumped as it was burned. When it was mixed with water and taken to those who were sick, it worked.

His wife, Petre's sister, interrupted his story with a broom, swinging it at him and a stranger. She was worried that he would incur the wrath of the police, who would jail him.

But then his son Costel called what happened next a miracle. After weeks in bed, Costel got up to walk. His head wasn't pounding. His chest wasn't aching. His stomach felt fine.

"We were all saved," he said. "We had been saved from a vampire."

But how could he be sure his illness came from a vampire?

"What other explanation is possible?" he asked.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/8267146.htm
 
If you believe someone has become a vampire, the logical thing is to dig them up and kill them again...whats the fuss?

(as long as they are not making a nasty mess in the cemetry, or putting plastic windmills shaped like flowers on graves....)
 
Hello,

I just don't get it! I really don't. Are people becoming hysterically inferior these days? I am not trying to disrespect any particular culture, but c'mon...corpses on their sides. If you are buried in a box in some country that still believes in vampires, chances are A) they probably level you into your grave on ropes, in which case B) your body would probably be tousled around, so in effect C) I doubt whether any of the corpses are on their backs.
I am not saying I DON'T believe in Vampyres...but I am saying this is not enough evidence. Sounds to me like some people are holding on to whatever is left of a very old tradition.
And just to validate the existence of vampyres, I have heard accounts in which vampyres are rarely buried. They arise from the dead, sometimes right at the morgue, prior to burial AND they supposedly hop around like SPRING HEELED JACK! This is the type of vampyre I believe in, not some misbegotten family member whose corpse has been abused by poor burial practices!!!

WW
 
Superstitious Twaddle

A vampire as a supernatural being is superstitious twaddle. A vampire or vampyre as someone embracing, however superficially or extremely, a lifestyle choice of draining energy or blood from "donors" -- or even a psychotic going around slashing people to "feed", is all that's left. No one does that from a grave.

Further, if these peasants believe the thing magically comes out of the grave to feed on them, why would they think digging it up and "killing" the dead body would help?

Sorry, but this is just sad, sick stuff here. And yes, people do seem generally to be regressing to peasant superstitions -- look at the rise in fundamentalism of every kind.

Maybe Earth sweeps through a Stupidity Zone every few hundred years.
 
Or perhaps the way we live our lives somehow leaves us unfullfilled and looking for something to believe in??
 
How do they get out of their graves? And more to the point, why do they go back?

I'd rather be dead proper than spend all eternity in a grave, growing my hair.
 
Existential Angst

Lulumanwoman said:
Or perhaps the way we live our lives somehow leaves us unfullfilled and looking for something to believe in??

That's a rather trite and old argument these days, with much truth to it, depending on each individual's response to modern times. I don't want to have to believe, I want to KNOW.
 
the trouble with vampires

The trouble with the vampire thing is, if vampires actually lived in their coffins during the day and got up at night to bite people someone would soon notice the graveyard looking a bit untidy. If the vampire then went roaming round to look for someone to bite, and that person then became a vampire--someone would surely notice

a) an unexpected decline or death

b) so a post mortem wold be needed and then

c) someone would notice the bite marks of the person's neck like the doctor or the coroner.



The vampire victim, if it was buried would then turn into a vampire so instead of having one vampire roaming round you now have two which soon turns into four. The entire community would soon be decimated, except those who were cremated would presumably excape the vampire curse( would they go to heaven--or hell?)

Also, how can a victim of a vampire be classified as an evil being when they might have been perfectly nice before they got bitten. I heard a story about a vicar who got bitten by a vampire and died

Have you read the Vampire Watchers handbook?

Encouraging people to go lurking and s kulking in graveyards with a sharply pointed stake is very dangerous, it could lead to some innocent person like a drunken tramp getting murdered by accident.

So I don't think the idea of undead coffin dwelling vampires really makes sense.


I only know of three vampire stories anyway--Highgate,Kirklees and Croglin. Does anyone know of any more ?

barbara
 
More Sucking Stories

Yes, there are thousands of such anecdotes and spook stories across the Balkans especially, but in every culture to a degree. Most vampire stories are meant as instructive myths, though, and not to be taken literally.

As for actions such extreme beliefs can lead to, well, murder isn't out of the question at all, as the Highgate Loon proved. Covering things up with claims of vampirism is a bit whacked, too, though, so who knows?

Croglin's a spooky one, great story, got all the elements, too bad Doyle never wrote that one up as a novel as he did with the Hound of the Baskervilles.
 
I find the folklore and traditions of the Vampire (that is, other people's folklore etc, not the vampire's own! ;) ) fascinating. Vampires have been lots of different things over the centuries, and an actual creature called Vampire is only one of them.

For instance -

Vampires rising don't mess up the cemetary. They rise through a small hole in the gravestone, like smoke, before materialising. That is, if it's the kind of vampire you can see.

Being bitten by a vampire doesn't necessarily make you one. Nor does it kill you necessarily. It does cause excessive lethargy.

Lots of things can make you a vampire. A cat's shadow falling on the corpse; a cawl at birth; even having blue eyes!

There's lots of way to kill a vampire. My personal favourite is the practice of stuffing a lemon in the alleged vampire's mouth!

As for digging up corpses and preventing them 'coming back' :rolleyes: I rather suspect that this was a slow news day for the media, so they picked up on it. It probably happens fairly regularly. The slightest hint of an illness sweeping through a community would have them reaching for the garlic (and I do believe it's only the garlic flowers that work - not the garlic bulbs - but I can't remember where I got that idea from).

Still, you wouldn't catch me inviting strangers over the threshold, or having a 'Welcome' mat. ;) I'm not pushing my luck! Traditions like these have been around a hell of a lot longer than me!! :D
 
Never Fear

I only bite with permission, and then only lightly.
 
Vignette

In my capacity as editor I'd reject that as not a story but a vignette. Needs a second and third act.

As a writer, I'd confess I've written many such tales. They're fun, as is the urban legend tone. A couple can be found on my website, one's called "Nawlin's Shout".

As a person I'd say that we've all felt at least a qualm, if not intimidation, from small groups of kids who seem somehow menacing or threatening or even vaguely uncanny. I'd suggest that's the part of the story that hooks us and may be what's scary about it to you.

Other than touching those atavistic nerves we've discussed I'd say it's a lame opening to a hint-wink-nudge update of vampires.
 
Hello,

I think the lore of the vampyre is simple. One day, a reptilian got hungry, got dressed in peasants clothing and went out about town looking for a quick bite to eat. Reptilians are people eaters and bloodsuckers, so after witnessing this feast, the people came up with the outlandish tales of the dead rising and sucking blood. Maybe a horde of men chased one such reptilian into a graveyard and thus was born the vampyre in the coffin tale.

...things that make ya go...'Holy SHITE!'

WW
 
Literality

Yes, literalism and believing what you read go hand-in-hand, as any good bible-thumper can demonstrate.
 
I smell........ cash in

I mean really just the title!! He has bust his back to produce 700 pages (unless they have just rewritten Montague Summers again) and then they give it that title:

The myths and folklore of vampires

By:Jason Stacchini, Editor 11/03/2004


Elkins Park author visits The Writers Room for their Halloween party on October 29.


According to Elkins Park author Jonathan Maberry, we should take everything we know about modern day vampire culture and throw it away. The stories about holy water, garlic, crosses and stakes through the heart are simply manufactured by movie studios to fill their plot lines.

What Maberry says we should be looking, especially during Halloween, is the extensive history of vampire folklore that spreads throughout just about every culture dating back to Ancient Greece and Babylon. To prove the point, Maberry has written close to 700 pages of reference material that chronicles the history of vampires and other supernatural predators titled The Vampire Slayers' Field Guide to The Undead. On October 29 at 7 p.m., Maberry will be reading from his book as part of a Halloween celebration at The Writers Room of Bucks County in Doylestown.

"Every culture had to develop vampire beliefs from the beginning," Maberry said. "They had to explain why certain things happened, and since they couldn't blame it on God, they couldn't believe that God would do certain things, they figured there had to be something else out there. So they created the vampire to explain the inexplicably cruel."

Most of Maberry's writing portfolio deals with martial arts and self-defense. He holds an 8th degree black belt in jujutsu, which he's studied and taught for 35 years. As an established authority on self-defense books, he decided to branch out in a different creative direction.

"My grandmother, she was a spooky old lady," he said. "She remembered the years of the end of the 19th century where people in Europe more commonly believed things than they do now. She told me a lot of the stories of the folklore of Scotland and Germany where she lived as a little girl. As a kid, I kind of had this knowledge of these supernatural beliefs that were pretty scary beliefs."

"Over the years as I've watched horror movies and read horror books, I thought that even though some of them are very good, they would do themselves better if they went back and looked at the folklore because it's a little scarier."

His interest in the horror genre and his extensive knowledge of vampire folklore led him to The Vampire Slayers' Field Guide, but so as to avoid any confusion with the non-fictional self-defense writer, he writes under the pseudonym Shane MacDougall.

"I'm trying to expand as a writer and avoid getting stale," Maberry said. "I've been writing martial arts stuff for years and over those years, occasionally I've gone into other areas and written stuff in blues, the restaurant business, various aspects of business. Most of us have a little bit of adolescence in us and I always liked spooky stories, but I've always been more interested in the folklore behind the scary stories so I figured I'd take a stab at it."

Although there are references to what we perceive as modern day vampires in the book, Maberry says that the word "vampire" can take on many different connotations which allowed him to take a broad approach with what to use for the book.

"Most of the creatures in the book are predators of one kind and really vampires or the word 'vampire' in our culture is used to describe somebody who takes or takes by force and preys upon," he said.

"In a lot of ways, 'vampire' has become interchangeable with the word 'predator.' We talk about someone who preys upon you mentally as a 'psychic vampire.' The actually definition of what constitutes a vampire is kind of hazy so I just expanded it to include all types of supernatural predators. I'm working on another book about supernatural predators that should expand it even further. Vampires form the biggest part of that group and the others sort of join the group with similar unpleasant traits."

According to Maberry, the oldest recorded stories date back to the ancient times of Babylonians and Greeks. Vampire legends have been recorded since man began written recording of historical events. "The oldest of them is probably the Lil or Lilitu which are desert demons that took various things from humans whether it be life essence, sexual energy, blood and so on. As those ancient cultures declined they sort of combined into the legend of Lilith, which is a Hebrew legend. In some Hebraic writings, she's Adam's first wife before Eve and was cast out for various reasons. In a lot of our popular cultures, she's at one point a feminist character and at another point she's the mother of all vampires."

Maberry blames motion pictures and modern books for the general misconceptions of vampire culture that's become prevalent in today's horror genre.

"Most of the motivation of the book was to explain the difference between what people believe about vampires and what really occurred in folklore," he said. "Most of what people believe about vampires comes from books and movies. For example, the whole thing about crosses or holy objects being proof against vampires was added by Bram Stoker who wrote Dracula. He was an Irish Catholic and put a lot of Catholic and Christian imagery into his book because that was his take on it."

"The whole thing about sunlight effecting vampires was not in folklore and it wasn't in the book Dracula either. It was invented by a movie director named F.W. Murnau for the movie Nosferatu. They needed a way to kill the vampire at the end of the film so they figured it was a creature of darkness, why not kill it with sunlight. But that wasn't part of the folklore either."

"What I wanted to do was not so much clear up misconceptions but offer up an older point of view that the vampires in folklore are so different, in fact that if a vampire really existed and the only thing you knew about fighting vampires came from books and movies, you would be unable to fight them."

The idea inspired a fictional novel that Maberry recently completed involving a group of people fighting vampires unfortunately armed with only the pop culture ideas of vampires. "They're in pretty deep trouble," Maberry said.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1686&dept_id=41301&newsid=13282529&PAG=461&rfi=9

I suppose I'm sulking as it does sound worth a read but the librarians already think I'm a collosal weirdo and my lending record must already have some kind of 'flag' against it - ordering that via interlibrary loan would be enough to get me a call from someone official :(

Book (although the author's name is different):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932045139/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932045139/
 
Never

Never ever fear to borrow a book from a library, especially due to some imaginary list they may keep to peg weirdness. No, no, and no again. Do not hesitate -- be as outré in your reading as you wish to be.

If you become intimidated to show your real interests in libraries, how will Homeland Insecurity EVER track you?

Oh. Wait.

Talk about real life vampires.
 
FL: LOL - I'm afraid its far too late to start getting worried about such things the damage was done a long time ago :)

I suppose I'm more concerned about wasting my time. Lets be honest Barber has written the best book on vampires so where do you go from there? Tell everyone that crosses and garlic are just recent additions to the mythos (no sh*t sherlock) and then rehash a vast range of myths (that have been done to death by now surely - if you'll excuse the pun) that are only linked by blood drinking - the differences far outweighing the similarities? You'd be better off getting a book with a wider spectrum (e.g. Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend?) and examine the interlinkings between a broader range of legends.

Then again these vampire studies/encyclopedias have always mystified me - how one would get a better understanding of e.g. the Aswang by also studying European vampires (and vice versa) rather than studying other Philipino folklore to see the variety and interconnections between local myths is a mystery.

That said (and now I have said my piece ;) ) I'll probably sneak a peek at some point (if only to annoy myself). :)
 
The vampire in Ontario

*deleted because there's no fucking point* :rolleyes:
 
Perusal's Okay

Emperor -- I agree that reading the entire book verbatim may be a waste of time for many of us but a perrusal of such works sometimes offers a new tidbit or research nugget. Sometimes entirely new lines of enquiry are opened.

This is also why one peruses Ripper books, say, or the latest study of ghosts, or ley lines, or genius loci, or what have you.

Save the verbatim reading for Dickens and other worthies and skim the new Vampire tomes.
 
try again

I forgot to log out last time ! Have you noticed how noisy libraries are these days, with library staff holding loud conversations. Sorry it drives me mad and have complained several times,to no effect, so what with ordering weird books also, I definitely have a flag by my name. The new book may be worth a look through, as the vampire myth has really taken off what with films like Buffy--which I have never seen and believe it or not, Barbara, the vampire slayer. But not wanting to change the subject, it will be worth the funny looks to see what the new book says!
barbara
 
ALA Triumphant

The American Librarian Association is the ONLY organization I know of that not only stood up to but defied the Homeland Insecurity demand that the open up all records. The Ashcroftian menace wanted to track who is reading what but the ALA refused to cooperate and in fact ended up destroying all records and not keeping any records anymore about who borrowed what. The most they track now is how much the book you borrow would cost to replace. Most don't even do that.

So this odd fear that librarians are making marks beside our names is largely unfounded. IF you can prove they're tracking your reading or otherwise keeping track of you for any reason whatsoever, please report them to the ALA.
 
Why would they want to know that?

There are books out there which in all probability are subversive, but I severely doubt that a library would stock them.
 
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