I Wanna Be a Vampire

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Internet Vampire Tribune QuarterlyDe Natura Haeretica's Electronic Journal of Vampire Studies

___________________________________________________________http://www.generation.net/~valmont/ivtq/ Email: [email protected] (514)342-4262

Volume 1 Number 1- Autumn 1996

CONTENTS

Foreword by Benjamin H. Leblanc

FEATURE

The Anathematic vampireConcepts of Matter and Spirit in Orthodoxy,

Dualism and Pre-Christian Slavic Mythology

by Bruce McClelland

Also in thi s issue:

Changing Trends in Vampire Fiction by Beverley Richardson

Vampires: the Living Legends by John Beckett

NEWSCLIPPINGS

Vampire inmate scares away serial killer in Turkey by Kaya Ozkaracalar

Contributions Guidelines

FOREWORD

Dear reader,

The Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly is a new electronic zine, presented inDOS-ASCII format, and focusing on the vampire theme with a scholarly

perspective. Plenty of publications already propose a great amount of creativewritings - novels, poetry - related to the vampire; IVTQ wants to bring yousomething new: the undead and science.

http://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#forewordhttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#featurehttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#trendshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#legendshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#newshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#guidelnhttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#guidelnhttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#guidelnhttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#newshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#legendshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#trendshttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#featurehttp://www.stlazaire.com/NewFiles/ivtq11.html#foreword


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This project has only started; the present issue is a prototype.

But why a prototype ?

Such a strategy gives us the opportunity to test the viability and possible success

of the concept, and to adjust / modify some aspects of the zine to your bestconvenience. It is therefore very important to us that you send your questions,comments and suggestions. We are always in need of new ideas.

When the concept of a free scholarly electronic zine on vampires was firstdevelopped, the idea was to accept only very sober articles that could ulteriorly beused as tools by anyone studying the subject. It did't take long before we realizedthere wouldn't be much to be published. So we decided to keep a very scholarlyorientation for feature articles, but also to include texts of a lighter nature,

newsclippings from around the world, and a forum for the readers. Please takenote the IVTQ is in need of columnists who could regularly contribute to theezine, and international correspondants who would keep us aware of anyhappening related to the vampire theme in their country. We are also looking fordistributors, who could install the IVTQ on their FTP or/and WEB site(s). If you

believe you can help us in any way, you may contact the editor at the emailaddress below. IVTQ should have, within the next twenty days, a regular mailaddress, a voice phone number and a web site. Subscribers will be kept informedthrough a read-only mailing list of which they automatically become members;others may find the information on the alt.vampyres newsgroup, the VAMPYRES

mailing list, or some web sites already offering IVTQ to the internet community.

For this issue, I want to thank all contributors, namely Bruce McClelland,Beverley Richardson, John Beckett and Kaya Ozcaracalar. Special thank goes toour technical editor who worked in an impressive professional manner: CathyKrusberg.

We hope you'll enjoy IVTQ. Your reactions will be decisive in the continuity orcancellation of the project.

Best regards,

Ad Aeternam,

Benjamin Hugo Leblanc Editor-in-chief

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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THE ANATHEMATIC VAMPIRE

Concepts of Matter and Spirit in Orthodoxy,

Dualism and Pre-Christian Slavic Mythology

Bruce McClelland University of Virginia, USA

" A pagan civilization always presents a more harmonious unity than does aChristian civilization. Christian society is ever the arena of a struggle fordomination between Christian and pagan, or secular, forces." -- G. P. Fedotov, ATreasury of Russian Spirituality

There seems to be little disagreement that the folkloric character known as thevampire is of Slavic origin: the term itself is almost undoubtedly Slavic, despiteongoing speculation concerning its actual etymology [1], and the existence offolkloric creatures with attributes and behavior that qualify them as members of

the vampire family [2] can be traced back at least to the time in Slavic historywhen Christianity was attempting to supplant the existing local religions. [3]Beyond that, knowledge of the origins of this supernatural entity [4] is scant, duein large part to the scarcity of primary sources.

While we may not know a great deal about the infancy of vampire belief amongSlavic peoples, it may nevertheless be fruitful to examine more closely that periodand geographical region where there is the most reason to believe that thevampire's more basic ontological characteristics were finally stabilized andlabelled, namely around Bulgaria sometime between the ninth and eleventh

centuries CE. [5] In fact, following in the direction pointed by one recent theoryabout the origin and etymology of the vampire [6], it is precisely within thesyncretistic milieu of at least three distinct religious systems -- Orthodox (and, toa lesser extent, Roman) Christianity, Slavo-Bulgarian pre-Christian animism [7],and medieval versions of a form of Manichaeism or other Gnostic dualism [8] --that we might expect to discern the particular religious forces and tensions that ledultimately to the notion of the vampire, with all the attendant ideas and confusionsabout such matters as nature, man, death, and the soul. [9]

The assumption here is that the vampire's identity depends upon a certain set ofreligious, i.e., mythological, beliefs. Unlike other sorts of recurrent folkloriccharacters, such as those that occur, for example, in folktales, the vampire seems



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to exist primarily outside the domain of structured narrative [10], and indeed is posited as a real, albeit monstrous or supernatural, being. To the extent that thevampire is real, at least psychologically, and is therefore capable of having aneffect upon the fates and behavior of living individuals, it is the product of belief;and to the extent that the vampire is furthermore, as we shall see, linked withnotions about death, burial, mortality, and the world of shadows and darkness, it isan object of religious belief.

That said, it remains to discover from which portions of which beliefs withinthe prima materia of pre- and early Christian Bulgaria the earliest belief structureidentifiable with the term "vampire" took shape. If such a formula can beobtained, it is likely to yield the key to understanding not only the vampire'sstructural significance within the worldview of the Slavs (and perhaps WesternEuropean cultures as well), but also the relationship of the Slavic vampire, as an

end-point, to its mythological precursors.

THE HERETIC AND THE VAMPIRE

Because of those several obvious aspects of the vampire's nature that seem toembody a concern over the nature of life and death (and the boundary or lackthereof between the two), it may seem fairly simple to assert a relationship

between the vampire and some particular set or combination of religious beliefs.However, it is important to justify such an assertion with more concrete evidenceif possible. In his essay on heretics as vampires, Felix Oinas presents several

pieces of evidence that support such a link in Russia (and elsewhere), where theOrthodox Church's awareness of the vampire is fairly explicit:

In northern Russia and Siberia heretics appear after death as evil, bloodthirsty vampires. Efimenko defines the meaning of theword eretik current in the Senkursk district of Karelia as "a person whodoes not believe in God and who repudiates his laws, or who is not yet anOld Believer ." [11]

Oinas goes on to cite several more examples of the link between heretics and

vampires, and this relation is extended to include witches and sorcerers as well.Unfortunately, the use of such information to support the current argument is notwithout its problems. The equation heretic = vampire is not necessarily valid forthe period and location that have been hypothesized as the point of origin of thevampire. In addition, the reasons Oinas puts forth about why heretics andvampires might have been related in the minds of the folk are somewhatspeculative:

Since upir' was used as a personal name in the earliest period of Russian

history, it could be inferred that the term for "vampire" originally did notdenote an extremely bloodthirsty and detestable being. Later, because of itsidentification with heretics, in the Russian north this revenant acquired


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more pronounced negative traits (aggressiveness and cannibalism), and itsuse as a name was apparently discontinued. [12]

Since the "heresy theology" (Ketzertheologie) was discussed and disputed in theinner circles of the church, the common people were not aware of the theoretical

basis of the struggle of Orthodoxy against heresy. [13]

These speculations pertain more to ecclesiastical issues that arise significantlylater than the eleventh century and further north than the Bulgarian empire, andtherefore do not directly address the concept of the vampire (if any) held by theOrthodox Church of earlier centuries. Nevertheless, the cultural line from themedieval South Slavs to the later East Slavs is reasonably straight, and in fact interms of the translation of folkloric materials, in many cases the " Russiansretained beliefs identical to the Bulgarians." In addition, at least until the time of

the Schism of the Old Believers in the seventeenth century, the differences between the Russian and Bulgarian versions of Orthodoxy do not seem to besufficiently great to suggest that what was construed as heterodox in one churchwould not have been so in the other. [14]

In any case, what is important here is to be able to supply evidence for a religiousaspect of the vampire, and to support the hypothesis that the vampire is an entityof deep concern to organized Christianity, as this assumption is crucial to anyspeculation about the theological/philosophical views that engender the modernSlavic vampire. [15]

THE PROBLEM OF THE VAMPIRE

Apparently the early vampire represented some kind of threat to Orthodoxteaching. Such a view indicates that it in fact functioned as an object of religious

belief. The next task, before considering the tenets of the regional religions whoseinteraction perhaps generated the vampire, is to isolate those characteristics of thevampire that are relatively stable across (Slavic) history and geography, and can

provide folkloric evidence of earlier quasi-religious belief. Unfortunately, becauseof the enormous diversity in the manifestations and even names of the various

vampire-like creatures, even when confined to Slavic-speaking peoples, acomprehensive listing would lie beyond the scope of this paper. For the sake ofthe present argument, Perkowski's " serviceable definition" will suffice to delimitthe range of creatures being considered: the vampire is thus defined as "areanimated corpse which returns at night to prey on the living " and which,furthermore, at least in the case of the Slavic type of vampire, "derives sustenance

from a victim, who is weakened by the experience." [16]

The vampire's physical characteristics are especially variable, and depend upon,

among other things, region and historical period. In Bulgaria, according to bothPerkowski and Georgieva, the most common appearance of the vampire on the basis of contemporary evidence was an amorphous "bag of blood " without a


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skeleton that managed to roam about, and which was able to take on a humanshape if it went undetected (or undestroyed) for a period of 40 days. The 40 days,Perkowski points out, may be a " Biblical allusion to the 40 days Christ spent onearth after his crucifixion. There is a general belief among Eastern OrthodoxChristians that the soul does not leave its body until forty days after death." [17]According to Oinas, referring to East European vampires, they remain as"undecayed corpses," [18] which is their surest sign. This "refusal of the flesh torot was a certain sign of heresy," at least according to one source, but theopposing theological interpretation was also maintained, thus complicating the

picture. [19]

There are other variants of the physical vampire, but those cited above serve atleast to underscore the influence of Orthodoxy upon the popular notion of thevampire. Aside from the vampire's physical characteristics, such features as the

causes of vampirism, the approach of the vampire to his victims, the apotropaicsand amulets used to ward him off, and the methods and implements of destructionalso exhibit occasional traces of Christianity.

The vampire is, above all, a corpse. According to Burkhart, the vampire is a typeof revenant (Wiederganger);

seine entscheiden Eigenart ist, dass er dem Grab ensteigt, um Lebende imSchlaf zu ueberfallen, ihnen das warme Blut aus der Kehle oder Brustzusaugen und dadurch zu toeten. [20]

This and a great deal of similar observation confirms that the folkloric vampire isassociated with the grave (which of course assumes the existence of burial riteswithin the culture). Among the frequently cited causes of vampirism is improper

burial, usually due to a failure to consecrate the body either intentionally (becauseof the character or actions of the vampire-to-be before death) or unintentionally(because of the anomalous nature of the death itself). So we can claim that thevampire is a result, at least in certain cases, of some transgression of dogma ortaboo with respect to burial ritual. This suggests that the vampire emerges from aconflict of belief surrounding the proper disposition of a person following hisdeath. [21]

Among the implements and techniques available for reducing or eliminating thethreat posed by vampires, those that are noteworthy in the present context are theuse of icons to repel, and of a wooden stake or cremation to destroy, thesesupernatural beings. The icon as an amulet needs no comment; the wooden stake(or: the stake's woodenness) has been suggested to derive from the Cross (so

presumably immanence is transferred through the relic), while Perkowskiimagines (in discussing testimony regarding the Serbian vampire) that "cremation,

proscribed by Christian tradition, brings about the total separation of the spirit from the body in the Iranian dualist system." [22] Less-used methods fordisposing of or repelling a vampire that seem to utilize Christian symbols are


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crosses, holy water, incense, and mustard seed. A particularly interestingdestroyer of a Bulgarian vampire is the wolf, which is supposed to be thevampire's worst enemy. [23] The importance of the fact that the wolf was anemblem of neither Orthodoxy nor its organized opponents will become clearerlater in our discussion.

It should be pointed out at this juncture that the cures and protections against thevampire by the Slavs do not seem to be wielded in quite the same fashion seen inthe Western European (literary) vampire tradition; on the contrary, whereas theintent of Stoker's Dr. Van Helsing is clearly to destroy the forces of evil(personified as Count Dracula and his cohorts) by whatever means necessary,regardless of how violent or militant, in Slavic lore, although the means fordestroying the vampire can certainly be thorough (decapitation, cremation), thereyet seems to be somewhat less hatred and destructiveness. That is, the purpose of

the icon, the holy water, even the stake, is more to restore balance, to lay thevampire (as a member of a class of Slavic demons known as the "unquiet" or"unclean" dead) finally to rest, to eliminate a cause of some social disturbance,than it is to inflict violence upon the accursed being. Perhaps it is not legitimate tomake much more of this observation, but it highlights a fundamental difference inthe attitudes of the Eastern and Western Churches toward their enemies.

To sum up the foregoing and all-too-brief discussion of the nature of the Slavicvampire, we can state the following, hopefully without arousing too manyobjections: Vampires are human creatures which (who?) have died and returned.

They are animated by some force other than the human spirit, however. They thusevolve as contra naturam, but can be exterminated or avoided by readily availablemeans. Their primary existence occupies the regions between night and day, lightand dark, life and death.

ORTHODOX THEOLOGY

Sixteen or so centuries of exegetical and theoretical writings about theological andecclesiastical matters of concern to the Eastern Orthodox Church are hardlycapable of being even briefly summarized here. Nevertheless, Christianity in theformative period of the Slavic nations was without doubt a major force in shapingearly beliefs about vampires, not to mention other demons and gods. Tounderstand the dynamics of this force, at least those aspects of Orthodox Christian

philosophical speculation that might have been unsubtle enough or importantenough politically to have filtered down from the rarefied discussions andcontemplative observations of the fathers should be examined for their possibleinfluence upon commonly held beliefs about vampires. It will be necessary, in thediscussion of Orthodox theology, to recall Oinas's caution about not reading toomuch into the common people's access to matters reserved for the inner sanctum;

yet at the same time it is not totally implausible that the practical effects of someof the subtlest theological reasoning were manifested in one way or another at thelay level. [24]


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Recalling the working definition of the vampire as a reanimated corpse that comesin the night to prey on the living, and remembering that the vampire's well-beingcan be affected by gestures and objects that seem to be closely linked to theOrthodox Church, the areas of theology that appear to be most worthwhileinvestigating are: the Incarnation and the nature of the body or humanity ofChrist; the Last Things (the Last Judgment) and Redemption (apokatastasis); theveneration of icons and relics; free will and evil; and (for reasons that should

become clear later on) the nature of Mary Mother of God (Theotokos).

Most of the basic precepts of Orthodox thinking were codified by the last of theseven Ecumenical Councils, which took place in 787. [25] This means that so faras the Bulgarians were concerned, the general theological assumptions manifestedin the liturgy had been fixed for almost a century before Bulgaria was"converted." (It is generally accepted that Boris and his retinue converted to

Orthodoxy in 865. [26]) This is not to say that theological disputes no longerarose, but simply that the Church had in the Councils what amounted to anauthority for resolving all ecclesiastical arguments and for establishing whatconstituted heresy and heterodoxy. The two major attacks upon the stability of theChurch's teaching both involved, in one way or another, the nature of the body ofChrist, especially in relation to the concept of the Trinity.

These two long-lasting and related controversies, referred to often as the filioqueand the Iconoclast controversies, were in large part responsible for the eventualschism between the Roman and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Briefly, the

discussions about the latter issue attempted to resolve the paradox of Jesus'divinity and relationship to God, on the one hand, and His incarnation in humanflesh on the other.

The Iconoclast controversy, which lasted about 120 years (726-843), originated asan attack upon the veneration of icons, the contention on the part of the so-calledIconoclasts being that such veneration constituted "idol worship," which had been

proscribed by both Moses and Christ. Byzantine icons, which are by and largedepictions of biblical mythological scenes, usually but not always from the NewTestament, often portray Christ interacting with his disciples, his parents, or otherfigures (e.g. Lazarus). The Iconoclasts held that since Christ was by nature divine,any portrayal of him by plastic means was by definition heretical, because man,

by his imperfect nature, was incapable of representing Christ's true nature. AsWare points out,

The struggle was not merely a conflict between two conceptions ofChristian art. Deeper issues were involved: the character of Christ's humannature, the Christian attitude towards matter, the true meaning of Christianredemption. [27]

The resolution of this issue, which had deep political implications (regarding theimperial authority of Byzantium) as well as philosophical ones [28], lay in the


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distinction between image and likeness: the Icononodules, as they were called, believed that since man was created in the image of God, representation ofChrist's human aspect was actually the representation of that image; icons werenot intended to in any fashion depict the true "face" of God. Ware claims that theflaw in the thinking of the Iconoclasts amounted to dualism:

The Iconoclasts, by repudiating all representations of God, failed to takefull account of the Incarnation. They fell, as so many puritans have done,into a kind of dualism. Regarding matter as defilement, they wanted areligion freed from all contact with what is material; for they thought thatwhat is spiritual must be non-material. But this is to betray the Incarnation,

by allowing no place to Christ's humanity, to His body; it is to forget thatman's body as well as his soul must be saved and transfigured. [29]

The actual heresy of the Iconoclasts may exist at a deeper level, however. Pelikan,who also relates the Iconoclasts to the "ancient Gnostics" (presumed forerunnersof the neo-Manichaeans we shall discuss presently) on the basis of theirspiritualistic claim that the body of Christ was not physical but heavenly, sees the

problem thus:

Because the iconoclasts did not distinguish between the sacred and the profane, they could not comprehend the difference between icon and idol.[30]

The debate over the filioque, which concerned the legitimacy of an insertion intothe Nicene Creed, again was a debate over the relationships obtaining among themembers of the Trinity, namely the Father, the Son, and the Spirit or Holy Ghost.Briefly, the Eastern Church adamantly rejected the insertion into the Creed by theRoman Church the phrase "and from the Son" (filioque) following "the Spirit

proceeds from the Father ." The rejection was based in part upon the belief thatsuch changes in the Creed could be legitimized only by an ecumenical council,

but the theological basis of the argument is that the physical nature of Christ must be preserved.

An emphasis upon the reality of Christ's physical nature of course implies thereality of man's body as well, and the unification in the person of Christ of bodyand spirit has even stronger implications regarding the nature of Redemption,insofar as the human body is destined, at the time of the Last Judgment, to bereunited with the soul. In fact, this reunification is a prerequisite for redemption,and serves to set Christianity apart from virtually all of its precursors andcompetitors, especially Hellenistic neo-Platonism, which like Gnosticismmaintained a belief in the superiority (divinity) of the soul over the body.

The problem of Christ's physical nature was extended to the status of Christ'smother, Mary. The question arose as to whether Mary also was divine, and if not,how an imperfect person could give birth to the divine. Whereas Mary was never


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accorded truly divine status, she was given the special appellation "Theotokos,"which means "mother of God ", and she was venerated in connection with Christ:

The appellation Theotokos is of particular importance, for it provides thekey to the Orthodox cult of the Virgin. We honour Mary because she is theMother of our God. We do not venerate her in isolation, but because of herrelation to Christ. Thus the reverence shown to Mary, so far from eclipsingthe worship of God, has exactly the opposite effect: the more we esteemMary, the more vivid is our awareness of the majesty of her son. . . . [31]

There actually seems to be something of a mild defensiveness concerning Mary'sstatus within Christianity, an apology for her incomplete divinity perhaps, and infact Fedotov's denial of any link between the worship of Mary's icon and

paganism sounds as if he doth protest too much:

Since Christ was the natural image of the mother who gave birth to Him,reverence paid to her and her image is paid to Him. . . . Therefore worshipof Mary's icon is not a revival of the pagan custom of adoring earthmothers and maternal deities. [32]

Further on, again mentioning the hegemony of Orthodoxy over paganism,Fedotov states:

The fathers of the church had torn down the temples of the demons and

replaced them with temples named for saints; so also they had thrust asidethe images of the demons and put in their place the icons of Christ, ofTheotokos, of the saints. [33]

At this point, it is necessary to briefly discuss the attitude of Orthodoxy towardthe nature of evil and the status of free will, inasmuch as they are related in a waythat is in direct opposition to a dualistic solution to the problem of evil in theworld. Basically, Orthodoxy holds that the universe in its entirety was created byGod, who is all-good, and without the capacity for evil. But the question arises: ifthat is true, how can there be evil in the world? The solution lies in man's capacity

for free will: as a gift from God, man possesses the ability to choose. At some point in the history of the universe, man chooses to go against God, to rejectgrace. It is this "turning away" and nothing else that defines evil; evil does notexist as a substance, but rather as a lack. This definition has consequences forredemption, as even those creatures who are evil, i. e., who have chosen to turnaway from God, are not in the final analysis exempt from his Grace, and at thetime of Last Things, will also be redeemed. (A paradox ensues: if man cannotultimately turn away from grace, then in what sense is he given free will?)

From the foregoing synopsis of Orthodox Christianity, we derive the impressionof a religion that is both charitable and at the same time quick to exterminate anytheological position that would undermine two integrally related ideas, namely


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that the body and the soul are inseparable, and that this inseparability mandatesthe redemption of matter along with the soul at the Last Judgment. Regardless ofthe degree of sophistry that might be invoked by theologians in some cases to

preserve the internal logic of the Orthodox position, the Church's attitude towardthe closeness of body (matter) and soul would have been visible, at least on itsmost basic level, to converts and those resisting conversion alike. We can nowturn to an equally brief synopsis of Bogomilism and late Manichaean dualism toelucidate why these religions of Iranian heritage were viewed with such hatred byOrthodoxy.

BOGOMILISM AND OTHER NEO-MANICHAEAN SECTS

Strictly speaking, dualism is a belief structure in which there is a clear-cutopposition between the forces of goodness and light, on the one hand, and evil

and darkness on the other. In true dualistic religions, this opposition is aconsequence of the dual Creation: the creation of this world, the one inhabited byman, by one godhead, and the creation of a more paradisal universe, by another;the two gods responsible for creation are held to be of equal power, neither beingsubordinated to the other. In Manichaeism and derivative religions, such asBogomilism (with which for present purposes we will conflate Paulicianism andMassalianism, bearing in mind that these were in many significant ways quitedifferent sects), the opposition that occurs in the creation myth involves forcesthat are unequally matched: man's world is created by the Devil, or Satan, who issometimes believed to be the first-born son of God, while the world of good is

created by God Himself, who is necessarily superior to Satan. Consequently, wehave what Couliano terms " pseudo-dualism," [34] but what is important is thesharp division between the material world and what amounts to the spiritualworld. Mankind, in this system, possesses a body that is fashioned by Satan(although the material from which it is fashioned, clay, is in fact manufactured byGod), while his soul, which has been imprisoned in the body through contact withmaterial desire, is eternally divine.

In the Bogomil view, redemption consists of separating or freeing that part of thedivine soul that is trapped within the individual's body, so that it can return to beunited in the kingdom of the true God. Dmitri Obolensky, in his book TheBogomils, cites N. Filipov:

The belief that the material world is the creation of the Devil . . . was . . .held by all Balkan dualists. [35]

As regards the symbols and precepts of Orthodoxy, the Bogomils consideredChrist's incarnation and subsequent crucifixion to be mere illusions (the doceticview), and claimed that the miracles mentioned in the New Testament were to be

taken as allegorical. Unfortunately, most of the extant documents pertaining to the beliefs of the Bogomils were produced by their adversaries, the Church Fathers,such as Cosmas, who states outright that these


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that dualism did. In fact, this naturalistic monism was "a perpetual temptation to Russian Christianity," [39] insofar as there was a natural sympathy between aview of the earth and matter as being inseparable from the soul (Christianity) anda view of nature as pure and holy. In fact, the concept of redemption of matter asarticulated by Eastern Orthodoxy is something of an ultimate communion withnature. Further evidence to support the syncretism between Christianity and

paganism in a period referred to as dvoeverie, or dual-faith, lies in the fusion ofthe cult of Rozhanitsa, a type of female "birth fairy" (to use Gimbutas'snomenclature) and symbol of divine Motherhood, with that of Mary Theotokos.This is not to suggest, by the by, that Orthodoxy had no interest in eliminating

paganism:

The Church, essentially a Greek church on Russian soil, mercilesslyassailed any kind of heathen survival, showing none of the pedagogical

condescension of the Western Church. [40]

The point here is that the struggle for domination among Orthodoxy, dualisticneo-Manichaeism, and paganism was not a simple three-way battle among groupswith mutually exclusive sets of beliefs. Bogomilism shared certain fundamental

beliefs with the Christians, while denying others. Pagan believers were swayed bythe persuasiveness and perhaps persistence of the Orthodox proselytizers, yet atthe same time may have felt a more pragmatic allegiance with the dualists forreasons that had less to do with theology and more to do with social structure.Dualists were considered anathema, while certain pagan beliefs and gods were in

fact assumed into the narratives of the Christian teachers, perhaps as a means ofincreasing the conversion rate among the indigenous Slavs. Both Orthodoxy anddualism must have been seen as invasive to the generally peaceful and sedentaryagrarian Slavs who composed the greater part of the population. If any beliefseems to have passed through this time of troeverie (to coin a phrase) to emergeunscathed, it is a belief in the earth as the source and mother. As Georgieva putsit,

The concept of the earth's purity and sanctity was inherent in the beliefs ofthe Bulgarians and the other Slavs. It would not put up with dead sinners. A

bitter curse was: "Trust the earth not to have you." [41]

Perhaps even more germane is the following abbreviated passage from Gimbutas'ssynopsis of ancient Slavic religion:

Life is conceived of as a cycle, with no definite beginning or end, withdeath simply a major event, a transition, and birth a revival, like the returnof spring. But death must come at the right time. . . . If it appears too earlyor unexpectedly, it is believed to have been caused by evil powers, and is

particularly dangerous to all living things. . . . The burial of bodies is a giftto Mother Earth, a sowing of the seed from which she can bring forth newlife. The dux ("shade") of the deceased goes on to the after-life; while his


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sila ("life force") enters once more into a living being. The forces of deathare counteracted by washing [italics mine] or burning of personal effectsafter death. . . . [42]

Summarizing the state of affairs out of which, perhaps, the concept of the vampireemerges as a manifestation of the tensions and similarities between the competingreligion, Georgieva writes:

In the process of the formation of Bulgarian culture, several systems ofworld outlook were merged: that of the country's ancient inhabitants, of the

proto-Bulgarians and the Slavs. This merger was a fertile soil for anti-clerical tendencies. Pagan rites continued to be practised and natural

phenomena worshipped, regardless of the heavy penalties imposed. The belief in the forces of good and evil undermined Christian monotheism and

encouraged the dualistic viewpoint. [43]

We are now in a position to take up the question of how the vampire, as afolkloric character that emerges from just the sort of cultural mix that Georgievadescribes, exemplifies the underlying religious attitudes and probable confusionsin the minds of the common folk.

CONCLUSION

Without any real, primary evidence with which to link the term vampir or one of

its cognates or euphemisms to a definite and stable set of classificatory featuresand then transfix the resulting structure to a particular point of origin, it remainsespecially difficult to prove any assertions about the vampire's more abstractmeanings, including those formed within the framework of religion or

psychology. What is more, both the term and the category are likely to shift acrosstime as cultural influences change, and when dealing with a milieu where literacyis both nascent and specialized, as it was in ninth century Bulgaria, isolating whatis constant or (hopefully) universal poses even greater difficulties.

Nevertheless, on the basis of the brief discussion above, we can at least claim that

if the vampire does indeed originate or at least take on its modern folkloric formduring the period of Christianization of the Slavs, it is not likely to be theoffspring simply of the quite visible antagonism between the Orthodox and theBogomils. Acknowledging that one of the ancestors of the vampire probably layin the pre-Christian belief structures of many centuries prior, we cannot ignore theessentially Slavic genetics of the vampire (as opposed to the Byzantine andIranian influences of Orthodoxy and dualism). We are thus left with an image of a

pagan deity or demon which was in the middle of a number of contests forreligious hegemony, but which somehow managed to resist being absorbed or

destroyed by the mighty forces of theological imperialism. It is this ability toresist destruction, I propose, that forms the basis of our fascination with thevampire: the subject itself seems incapable of death.


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The vampire is beyond doubt a creature which carries a message about the natureof death and the body that flies in the face of Christian notions about redemption;for if the body is to be redeemed along with the soul, how can that occur if the

body is occupied or animated by some other force? (It clearly cannot be the same"soul" as that which was involved with the body before death; otherwise, therewould be no basis for claiming that the person had in fact died.) And how can thewill that persists in turning away from the good ever submit to grace?

Yet the vampire is not merely a metaphor for dualistic thinking, which permitsand in fact insists upon the ultimate separation of the body from the soul. Nor is itan outgrowth of Christian theology, where the attitude toward matter is perhapssubtler than that of dualism, but nevertheless is still opposed to the pleasures ofmaterialism. Rather, the unrelenting vampire seems to be a statement, made on amythological level, about man's relationship to earth, and in fact (it seems to me)

represents (in a negative way) an antagonism to a view of the earth asdiscontinuous from human being. The vampire is, alas, anathema, precisely

because he symbolizes a disquiet, a failure to reconcile the apparent opposingtendencies of body and mind that seem to be an issue for most, if not all, religions.As P. F. M. Fontaine puts it in his extensive survey of dualism,

The origin of dualism is not to be found in history, or in mythology, inreligion or in philosophy, but in the human condition. . . . What people longfor is first and foremost harmony, togetherness, a perfectly smooth andunruffled existence . . . we try to comprehend the world not only by

combining phenomena but also by opposing them. [44]

The vampire's disturbed existence can be quieted, ultimately, not by any simpleact of faith in the Redemption promised by Christ, nor by the gesture ofsuppressing desire in the service of spirit urged by the dualists, but only bysymbolically acknowledging that the refusal to die constitutes a true failure to

participate in life -- life that mythologically emerges from the union of the sunand the earth.

If the vampire emerges as an autonomous creature with obligations to no(organized) religion, the question then arises: is it possible that the acrimonyarising between the Orthodox Christians and the heretical dualists was in fact thedisguised articulation of an even more fundamental argument between thedualists, whose hatred of matter (Mater) was not sublimated, and the so-called

pagans, whose naturalistic devotion to the earth had been overlaid by a Christiancult of Mary Theotokos?

NOTES


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1. For useful discussions of the etymology of the term "vampire," see especiallyPerkowski 1989, Oinas 1984, Georgieva 1985.

2. The typology and morphology of the vampire are necessarily complex, sincethe boundaries between various supernatural beings that resemble some commonset of features defining the vampire are vague. On the one hand, it is important to

be as precise as possible when assigning the term "vampire" to a particularfolkloric entity, yet on the other hand, one doesn't want to lose generality bymaking the requirements for vampirality too strict. For a comprehensivediscussion of the wide array of vampire types and the methodologies forcategorizing them, see Perkowski 1989, especially chap. 5.

3. Ivanichka Georgieva, Bulgarian Mythology (Sofia: Svyat, 1985), 95 ff.

4. It is not clear whether such a complex figure as the vampire can be said to havean "origin" that is more than some fuzzy point in time at which one set of definingattributes has at last metamorphosed into another, in the same way that one wantsto claim that there is a point at which the adult butterfly is ontologically distinctfrom its pupa.

5. Jan Perkowski, The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (Columbus,OH: Slavica, 1989), 25 ff.

6. Ibid., 32-34.

7. " Pre-Christian animism" is an unsuitable term for discussing the religion of theSlavs before the ninth century. " Paganism" is the historically more common term,

but unfortunately possesses overtones which are undesirable. Perhaps if we recallthat pagan originally meant someone from a rural district or village, we can usethe term legitimately to refer to the religious beliefs held by a largely agrarian

population. Such religions are frequently animistic and rarely monotheistic priorto the incursion of the Judaeo-Christian religion.

8. Technically speaking, Bogomilism is more of a pseudo-dualism, considering

the inequality between Satan and God in the cosmogony. See Couliano 1990, esp.chap. 8.

9. Yet another terminological clarification. The word "soul" is used as a default, inits commonly understood meaning. Obviously, such eschatological conceptsrequire delimitation and definition, especially in a context where the validity offurther argument may hinge upon the reasonableness of the definition. No

presumption is made here about the nature of soul v. spirit, etc.

10. Vampires of course exist in folktales as well; several are collected by

Afanas'ev, for example. The point being made is that commonly recognizedfolktale characters such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, or in Slavic tales,


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Ivan the Simpleton or Baba Yaga, function at a different level of understanding,and are never imagined to exist in the current world.

11. Felix J. Oinas, "Heretics as Vampires and Demons in Russia," in Essays onRussian Folklore and Mythology (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1984), 121.

12. Ibid., 125.

13. Ibid., 126.

14. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1991), 88 passim.

15. Were we to stop here, we might simply have to state that the vampire was probably originally some sort of pre-Christian Slavic animistic daemon thateventually managed to earn a negative label under the auspices of Orthodoxtheology. And we probably wouldn't be totally wrong; after all, this kind ofinversion of local deities and spirits happens often enough. But this conclusionwould be erroneous for at least two reasons: first, during the period of so-calledlate antiquity, in the Byzantine Empire, there were more religions, formal orinformal, than just Christianity and "paganism;" secondly, just to state thatChristianity has a tendency to invert or reduce the stature of the gods and demonsof the religion over which it is attempting to establish hegemony is not enough; itis also necessary to understand the dynamics between Christian theology and local

belief systems.

16. Jan Perkowski, op. cit., 54.

17. Ibid., 83. See also Georgieva, op. cit., 97.

18. Oinas, "East European Vampires" in Essays on Russian Folklore andMythology (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1984), 112.

19. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 165.Quoted in Oinas, " Heretics as Vampires and Demons in Russia."

20. Dagmar Burkhart, "Vampirglaube und Vampirsage auf demBalkan," Beitraege zur Suedosteuropa-Forschung (Muenchen: Rudolf Trofenik,1966), 250.

21. At this point we can infer nothing more about the eschatology surrounding thevampire as a belief structure. It is simply necessary to point out that the vampire'svery nature raises a number of questions about the nature of the afterlife, and hisstatus relative to Orthodox belief suggests that the vampire is per se theembodiment of a conflict about this matter.

22. Perkowski, op. cit., 85. As we shall see, the separability of the soul and the body is one of the problems that Orthodoxy has with neo-Manichaeism, as


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Perkowski implies. However, we must not forget at this point that there is a thirdfactor in the equation shaping the beliefs about body and soul, namely pre-Christian animism.

23. Perkowski, op. cit., 83; Georgieva, op. cit., 97. The relationship between thewolf, perhaps as totemic animal, and the vampire is quite interesting, butunfortunately beyond the scope of this paper. Note, however, that while the wolfwas in some cases the bitter enemy of the vampire, in other cases there is whatPerkowski terms "daemon contamination" between the (were)wolf and thevampire.

24. This assertion is difficult to demonstrate, but it is not outside the bounds ofimagination to conceive of a situation in which fine-tuned theological arguments,such as those that surrounded the nature of icons or the spiritual line of procession

within the Holy Trinity, produced very visible consequences at the liturgical level.In fact, it is plausible that those in the congregation who were called upon to perform the rituals that were based on such reasoning might not have understoodthe subtlety of the theology, and reached their own conclusions. We might termthis behavior " folk theology."

25. Timothy Ware, op. cit., 43.

26. Ibid., 63

27. Ibid., 38

28. Jaroslav Pelikan (1971) points out that "the conflict over icons can beinterpreted as a 'social movement in disguise' and as a power struggle that useddoctrinal vocabulary to rationalize an essentially political conflict ." The questionarises whether the reemergence of images as objects of veneration (and attributedto the devil by the Iconoclasts) in Orthodoxy represents a breakthrough intoChristian consciousness of a substratum of an earlier Slavic mythological system,which as we know, was replete with idols.

29. Ibid., 41

30. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, vol. 3 of The ChristianTradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University ofChicago, 1971), 122.

31. Ware, op. cit., 262

32. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1966),126.

33. Ibid., 127.


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34. Ioan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992),198 ff.

35. Dmitri Obolensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1948), 124.

36. Ibid., 126

37. Ibid., 95.

38. Ibid., 85.

39. Fedotov, op. cit., 357

40. Ibid.

41. Georgieva, op. cit., 30.

42. Marija Gimbutas, "Ancient Slavic Religion: A Synopsis" in To Honor RomanJakobson (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), 757.

43. Georgieva, op. cit., 16.

44. P. F. M. Fontaine, The Light and the Dark: A Cultural History ofDualism (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1989), 4:2729.

JOURNAL OF THE DARK is a high-quality amateurmagazine devoted to vampires in all their many forms. Eachissue is packed with book and movie reviews, legends,music, our "Forever Knight" episode summaries, originalfiction and poetry, artwork and photography, and much muchmore. Issue #8 features interviews with authors RoxanneConrad and Lois Tilton. Single issues are $5 each, and ayear's subscription (4 issues) is $18.Outside the US andCanada, add $2 per issue for air mail; please send US fundsonly. Make checks payable to John Beckett, and mail toJournal of the Dark, PO Box 168, Osceola, IN 46561, USA.For more information, send e-mail to [email protected], orvisit our web pageathttp://members.aol.com/johnfranc/vampires.html

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CHANGING TRENDS IN VAMPIRE FICTION

Beverley Richardson (http://www.ccn.cs.dal.ca/~aa680/Profile.html) is on the executive board of theTransylvanian Society of Dracula. She has been lecturing on various aspects of

vampires -- fiction, film, myth, and Vlad the Impaler -- for a number of years at science fiction conventions in Canada, including Worldcon.

Monsters in numberless quantities haunt the pages of horror novels, but none ismore popular than the vampire. Why? Probably the versatility of the vampire.Most other monsters have severe limitations in how they can be portrayed. Athing from a swamp is destined to lurch around isolated farmhouses or in thesewers of some big city. By its very nature, it will be difficult to portray inmeaningful relationships with people. In the majority of cases the monster's role

will be that of the one dimensional evil character menacing the protagonists, butvanquished in the end. Other fictional creatures of horror suffer from similar problems.

The vampire, on the other hand, has almost endless potential for variety in itsinteractions with people and can vary from the evil one-dimensional monster tothe psychic vampire working as a Nazi concentration camp guard, to theotherwise average person struggling to retain what little humanity is left to him asa vampire, to the delightfully charming and romantic Saint-Germain type ofvampire. It is this endless variety and, above all, the ability to be human with all

the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that humanity, which makes the vampireof fiction so popular.

This fascination with the vampire has been with us for centuries, fictional storieshaving appeared since classical times. But it wasn't until Europeans began writingabout vampires that vampire fiction began to have an impact on the current formof our legends.

One of the more important early stories to appear in Europe was "The Vampyre" by John Polidori, published in 1819 and based on an idea by Lord Byron. A

mysterious nobleman, Ruthven, tours Europe with a wealthy young man namedAubrey. Aubrey eventually realizes that Ruthven is a very unpleasant man, butthinks he has seen the last of him when he is killed by bandits in a mountain passin Europe. When Aubrey returns to England, he finds that Ruthven is alive and isengaged to Aubrey's sister. The agonizing part of Aubrey's dilemma is that, eventhough he now realizes what Ruthven is, he cannot stop the wedding plans

because Ruthven made Aubrey swear not to reveal "knowledge of my crimes ordeath" for a year and a day. Now, because of this oath, Aubrey cannot even warnhis sister of her imminent doom, with the result that Ruthven kills the sister on the

wedding night and then disappears.

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Being held to an oath like this even at the expense of a person's life was a conceptfrequently found in older stories. And while it may seem silly today, the modernequivalent is still with us in the form of the priest or lawyer who is unable to tellthe police of the confession of a murderer. The resulting suspense when the heroknows and has proof but cannot tell anyone, can have the reader on the edge of hisor her seat.

In 1836 Theophile Gauthier wrote " La Morte Amoureuse," which has beentranslated into English under various titles, including "Clarimonde." A priest

becomes obsessed with a beautiful vampire. The story has a rather dreamlikequality in which it becomes difficult for both the priest and the reader todifferentiate between reality and the priest's fantasies.

Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest or James Malcom Rymer appeared

in 1840. This penny dreadful, consisting of romance, mystery, and blood, wasalmost the nineteenth century equivalent of a soap opera and was as popular asmany soaps are today.

Then in 1872, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wrote the landmark story "Carmilla."This was one of the first stories to feature a three- dimensional vampire withhuman emotions and feelings. The plot concerns a young woman named Laurawho lives in an isolated castle in Austria. Nearby is a deserted village and a ruinedcastle whose last owner had died a century before. One day a beautiful strangercalled Carmilla comes to stay after a carriage accident. She and Laura become fast

friends, with undertones of lesbianism. One can see that even as Laura becomesweaker, Carmilla has a real affection for Laura. Finally the truth comes out: agrave in the chapel near the ruined castle is opened, and it is proven that Carmillaand the long-dead owner of the ruined castle are one and the same. The vampire isdestroyed in the traditional manner.

However popular some of the these other vampire stories were, the most famousand influential one is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Since its appearance in 1897,countless other books and films have been based on it. Even though many filmshave diverged considerably from the book, most people are familiar with the plot.

To summarize drastically, Dracula hires a solicitor to purchase some property inEngland prior to his relocating there. Leaving the young solicitor, JonathanHarker, trapped in his Transylvanian castle, Dracula takes his 50 boxes of earthand moves to England. Shortly after his arrival he attacks Lucy, the best friend ofHarker's fiancee, Mina. Dr. Seward, who owns the insane asylum next door toDracula's new London home, is called in to look after Lucy. He is baffled by hersymptoms and calls in Dutch scientist Van Helsing.

Van Helsing soon recognizes that a vampire is at work, but he is still unable tosave Lucy, and she soon begins her own nightly wanderings as an undeadvampire. After dispatching the unfortunate Lucy, the group of young men, led by


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Van Helsing, begins to hunt down the Transylvanian count. Meanwhile, Draculanext turns his attention to Mina and exchanges blood with her. The others houndDracula until they have destroyed all but one box of Transylvanian soil. Pursued

by the protagonists, he flees back to his homeland and is killed almost at his castlegates.

Why has Stoker's story endured while others have been forgotten? Part of theanswer lies in the vivid imagery and suspense. While many nineteenth centurystories are wordy and tedious, this book catches the attention of the modern readerwith spine-tingling suspense and description. One of the most memorable parts inthe book is Harker's description of Dracula's descent headfirst down the outsidecastle wall. But an even more important part of the answer lies in the fact thatStoker managed to do what no one else had previously done. He created anincredibly evil character who was at the same time proud, noble, and self-

confident in his powers. And yet the reader sees a hint that Dracula may stillremember how it felt to be human.

There are many loose ends and unanswered questions in Dracula as well. Becauseit is written in diary form, the characters can only tell what they know, whichleaves intriguing questions about the identities of Dracula's three womenunanswered because Harker, who wrote the diary entries concerning them, knewnothing about the three vampires. These and other unanswered questions have

provided fertile territory for other writers to fill in the gaps as they saw fit.

The novel is charged with sexual undercurrents and tension, particularly in suchscenes as the one with Harker and the three women, or Mina drinking Dracula's

blood. This too holds the reader's interest.

Since then, most vampire novels have been strongly influenced by Dracula to agreater or lesser degree, but certain interesting trends have developed in recentyears. It would be impossible to describe every book which has appeared -- thereare far too many of them. But some representatives of the new trends in vampirefiction stand out above the rest, and it is some of these which are discussed in theremainder of this article.

Until a few years ago, the general trend has been to cast the vampire in the role ofthe evil one-dimensional monster whom one or more protagonists must overcomein order to save themselves and their loved ones. A lot of truly forgettable bookshave been written in this vein, but some real chillers have appeared as well.

One of the best-known of these was 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. A vampiremoves to a small town in the U.S. and begins attacking the townspeople. Despitethe efforts of a group of people, the vampirism spreads until almost the entire

town is undead. King's vampires never really acquire personalities, remainingone- or two-dimensional characters at best. But the protagonists, who include awriter, teacher, priest, schoolboy, and doctor, are beautifully developed. Their


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interactions with each other and with the events happening around them make thisa difficult book to put down.

A similar plot appears in Robert McCammon's They Thirst, which appeared in1981. Vampires move into Los Angeles and gradually take over the city.McCammon goes one step further than King in a number of ways. First, not onlyare the protagonists well developed, but even the vampires have personalities tosome extent. The vampire girl killing her boyfriend and then tenderly wrappinghis body in bedsheets to protect him from the sun until he returns from the deadthe next night comes to mind. The backdrop of a large city besieged by vampiresalong with vivid descriptions of bloodsucking street gangs and radio announcerstelling their vampire listeners to go and feed on the humans holed up in theshopping malls all add to the suspense and atmosphere.

The 1970s brought a new and fascinating trend in which vampires were portrayedin a much more human and sympathetic way. The first author to really break outof the old mould was Anne Rice with Interview with the Vampire (1976). Toldfrom the viewpoint of Louis, it details how he became a vampire and his "life"with others of his kind. For the first time, the reader sees the hopes, fears, and

personality conflicts between vampires portrayed as people rather than as objectsof horror. Unlike previous books, Interview with the Vampire almost entirelyomits normal humans from the story.

The sequel, The Vampire Lestat, is even more interesting. Lestat's personality is

more complex and the plot more involved. The second book, narrated by Lestat, paints a very different picture of this charismatic character than the one painted bythe resentful Louis in Interview. The series continues with several more books,each of which expands on the lives, hopes, dreams, and fears of Rice'sandrogynous creatures of the night.

While Anne Rice's books marked the beginning of a fresh trend in vampirefiction, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro moved off in her own unique direction, beginningwith Hotel Transylvania in 1978. Many of her books chronicle the experiences ofher charming and dapper vampire protagonist, Saint-Germain, with a few booksfeaturing vampires Atta Olivia Clemens or Madelaine de Montalia. Each booktakes place in richly described cultures ranging from ancient Rome and China tothe modern day U.S. The personalities of the vampires combined with the vividlydetailed historical background makes these stories unique.

In George R. R. Martin's Fever Dream (1982) we see the interaction of vampireand human on equal terms, as a human and vampire team up against a rival groupof vampires. The action takes place on the Mississippi River at the height of theriverboat trade. A haunting quality and vibrant characters make this book

memorable.


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Some books which, for want of a better term, could be called suspense-horror,have also made their mark. Garfield Reeves-Stevens's Bloodshift is an excellentone concerning a power struggle between two factions of vampires. The bookdeals nicely with the interaction between a retired hit man and the female vampirehe is hired to kill, but instead teams up with against his vampire employers. The

plot is further complicated by the CIA and a group of Jesuit priests, each of whichhave their own reasons for going after the vampires.

Lee Killough's Blood Hunt (1987) and the sequel Bloodlinks (1988) concern a policeman who tracks a trail of dead bodies to a woman vampire. She attacks andkills him in the first book, and he revives as a vampire in the morgue. His struggleto adapt to his new "life" while hunting down first the woman, and then someonewho is killing both humans and vampires, makes for two fast-paced books.

Humour has been sadly lacking in most vampire fiction. Fortunately, P. N. Elrod's"Vampire Files" series helps fill the gap with six very entertaining books.Beginning with Bloodlist, the series takes place in the 1930s and features a hard-

boiled newspaper reporter who is murdered by gangsters and comes back as avampire in the first book. A well-balanced blend of suspense and humourcombined with a Mickey Spillane atmosphere all make these books delightful.The humour is evident even in the blurb on the back of the first book, in which the

protagonist waxes enthusiastic on the advantages of being a vampire, summing itup with ". . . and best of all . . . You can hunt down your own murderer ". For well-written enjoyable fun, this series is hard to beat.

In the late '80s and early '90s a new trend of gritty vampire stories began toappear. These vampires are not at all romantic; many are streetwise, earthy, orcorrupt, and in some cases just plain evil. One of the best-known was DanSimmons's Carrion Comfort, whose psychic vampires are truly hideous, rangingfrom an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard to murderous corrupt FBI employees.Some of the vampires don't just prey on the humans -- they torture them too.

Nancy Collins has also produced down-to-earth vampires in Sunglasses AfterDark (1990) (and the sequels, published most recently in the volume MidnightBlue). The book opens with the vampire protagonist heavily sedated in astraitjacket. Reviving from the drugs to some extent, she escapes the insaneasylum determined to find out who had her captured. Meanwhile, throughflashbacks we learn her past. The daughter of an incredibly rich family, shedisappeared without a trace several years before while on a holiday in England.Attacked by a vampire, she revived as a vampire with amnesia and became ahooker. In many ways this vampire is a fairly decent person, but streetwise andtough as nails too, giving a much more realistic picture of what might reallyhappen to someone in her situation. Combined with a good plot and

characterization, this and the sequels are excellent.


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Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls is aptly named, as it describes in rich gothic detail thelives of a group of people in the small town of Missing Mile. As they drift without

purpose through the days and nights, their lives parallel those of a group ofequally purposeless nomadic vampires. The reader follows the dark meanderingsof the plot as the two groups, human and vampire, come together.

A book with a most unusual premise is Lois Tilton's Vampire Winter. The sceneis the post nuclear war U.S. Blaine, the vampire protagonist, emerges from hisvault in Chicago within hours of the city's destruction in a nuclear attack. As hemoves to the countryside, Blaine finds that twilight now lasts 24 hours a day, sohe can hunt and move around unhindered. Society has been reduced to a brutalstruggle for existence in which bands of radiation-contaminated marauderswander around attacking farmhouses and small towns occupied by people hopingto keep their dwindling supplies of food while avoiding contamination. The

comparison of this ruthless vampire with the equally ruthless people around himmakes one think. Eventually, realizing that the uncontaminated people must be

preserved if he is to survive, Blaine gathers some people together, providing foodfor them in exchange for blood and protection from the marauders. He eventuallyends up in a similar mutually beneficial relationship with some of the nearbytowns. The townsdwellers are his food source, and he with his immunity toradiation is able to roam freely and help protect them against marauders. A mostunusual book showing a fascinating symbiotic relationship of human and vampire.

Kim Newman's Anno-Dracula creates an alternative history in which Van Helsing

and his cohorts failed to kill Dracula. Instead Dracula is the official PrinceConsort of Queen Victoria, and vampires make up a sizable portion of London's

population. The book is filled with historical and fictional characters who becomeembroiled in the various plotlines.

Nancy Kilpatrick's characters in _Near Death_ are streetwise and hard as nails, yetcuriously fragile in some ways. Filled with sensuality and violence, the storygrabs the reader and won't let go.

Over time authors have added new dimensions to the increasingly versatilevampire. What will the future bring? We can only wait and see, but so far thereappears to be no lack of innovative takes on this most popular of monsters.

VAMPIRES: THE LIVING LEGENDS

John Beckett (http://members.aol.com/johnfranc/vampires.html) is editor of Journal of the

Dark, a quarterly publication devoted to vampires in all their many forms. Known

as Vlad, Librarian of the Dark, on bulletin boards and the Internet, John has publishedJournal of the Dark since 1994.

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This piece was originally presented at the Undead Poet's Society Gala in

Cleveland, Ohio, on October 19, 1996.

We are here tonight in celebration of vampires. If our mostly-European ancestorscould see us, they'd have us burned at the stake. That one thought illustrates justhow dramatically vampires have changed over the last 200 years or so. What wasonce a hideous, evil monster to be feared and hated is now a beautiful hero to beadmired. Tonight we're going to look at how the vampire has changed over theyears, and where our favorite living legends may be headed in the future.

STEP ONE -- VAMPIRES OF LEGEND

The nosferatu of legend were little more than reanimated corpses: hideousmonsters with foul breath who returned from the dead to drink the blood of the

living. Reverend Montague Summers is perhaps the best-known chronicler ofsupernatural legends; here's a quote from his book The Vampire in Europe: "awicked man cannot rest after death . . . the spirit of the deceased wanders about,and 'feeds on his own,' as the expression goes, that is to say, he sucks the blood ofhis relatives, and thereby derives force for his ghostly wanderings."

Also from Summers: "Their countenances are fresh and ruddy; and their nails, aswell as hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer deadthan many other bodies, which are perfectly putrefied, not the least mark ofcorruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their

death, become vampyres; so that, to prevent so spreading an evil, it is foundrequisite to drive a stake through the dead body, from whence, on this occasion,the blood flows as if the person was alive."

This isn't exactly a condition that most of us would want to be in. There was noromance in the vampires of legend. People were afraid of vampires, and they wereafraid of becoming one. The possibility of becoming a vampire after death, andthus by definition being damned and not going to heaven, was a significantdeterrent to anyone who was considering straying from behaviors accepted by thechurch. The vampire represented the deep-seated fear of the dead coming back . . .

perhaps coming to take you back with them.

STEP TWO -- THE EVIL ARISTOCRAT

I think most people here know the story of the summer of 1816, when poets PercyShelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron, spent the summer in Switzerland. In achallenge to see who could come up with the best ghost story, MaryShelley's Frankenstein was born. Byron wrote a short story about a vampire,which he never finished. Later, Byron's traveling companion Dr. John Polidori

picked up the story fragment and finished it. The result was "The Vampyre," first published in 1819. The title character was Lord Ruthven, who was patterned afternone other than Byron himself. Polidori and Byron had had a falling-out, and this


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was his revenge. That started a hundred year trend of the vampire as an evilaristocrat. This was a rather popular view for the lower and middle classes, whoviewed nobility in general and Byron in particular as decadent bloodsuckers.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, horror stories were finding their way tothe masses through serialized fiction called "penny dreadfuls." In 1840, JamesMalcolm Rymer began Varney the Vampyre, or The Feast of Blood. The titlecharacter, Sir Francis Varney, became a vampire after he killed his son. He wasable to pass as human, but still had much of the cadaverous appearance of thevampires of legend.

Varney the Vampyre was hardly great literature. There were many inconsistenciesin the stories, and Varney was killed and brought back more times thanChristopher Lee in the Hammer films of the '60s and '70s. But Varney brought

fictional vampires to the masses for the first time, helping to promote theirevolutionary steps forward.

Then there's the ultimate Evil Aristocrat -- Count Dracula. Bram Stoker's 1897novel built on the works of Polidori, Rymer, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, who wrote"Carmilla" in 1872. Stoker's novel led to a stage play by Hamilton Deane, and the

play led to Tod Browning's 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi. Just as the pennydreadfuls brought vampires to the masses of the nineteenth century, Hollywood

brought vampires to the masses of the twentieth century. Perhaps moreimportantly, Bela Lugosi's performance gave Dracula a soul and started the

vampire on his next evolutionary step.

STEP THREE -- A MONSTER WITH A CONSCIENCE

Five years after the movie with Lugosi, Universal Pictures decided to do a sequel.The result was Dracula's Daughter, which some people believe to be the best ofthe classic horror films of the '30s and '40s. Anne Rice has listed this movie ashaving a tremendous effect on her early interest in vampires. This was the firsttime in popular fiction that a vampire wanted to be "cured." Dracula's daughterattempted to free herself of vampirism by burning the body of Count Dracula, and

then attempted to get a psychiatrist to help her with her "addiction." It didn't work,of course, and she was properly killed in the end.

As with many people in their 30s, my first introduction to vampires was throughtelevision. Dark Shadows had us rushing home from school each day to see whatwould happen with Victoria, Angelique, and, of course, Barnabas Collins. Theshow was a weak gothic soap opera on the verge of cancellation when producerDan Curtis decided to introduce a vampire. Almost overnight, DarkShadows became a hit, and Barnabas Collins became a cult icon and a sex

symbol. He was far from a monster, telling Dr. Julia Hoffman he was "compelled by desires I cannot control to perform acts which sadden and repulse me." Duringthe run of the show, Barnabas was "cured" on several occasions, only to revert to


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vampirism when his treatments wore off, or when the show needed a new plotline.Barnabas Collins killed a few people from hunger, but for the most part he was avery sympathetic, very popular character -- very far advanced from CountDracula, much less the nosferatu of legends.

STEP FOUR -- "I WANNA BE A VAMPIRE"

And now we find ourselves in an era where vampires are no longer monsters, nolonger evil, no longer bad guys. Vampires are our heroes, and we want to be likethem.

Perhaps no other work has had more of an impact on the current image ofvampires than Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. Lestat was beautiful, powerful,rich, a rock star -- how could you not want to be like him? People read The

Vampire Lestat who had never heard of Varney or Carmilla or Christopher Lee,and all of a sudden the popular definition of a vampire changed again.

Despite his rather sinister portrayal in Interview with the Vampire, and despite hisown protests to the contrary, Lestat was definitely not evil. He didn't kill innocent

people, and he had no sinister schemes to take over the world. Lestat's only vicewas a performer's need for attention.

Anne Rice is far from the only writer to create heroic vampires. Chelsea QuinnYarbro's Saint-Germain, P. N. Elrod's Jack Fleming, Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy,

and Elaine Bergstrom's Austra family are all examples of vampires we love andadmire and imitate rather than fear and hate and avoid.

The latest step in the evolution of the undead is the roleplaying game Vampire:The Masquerade. Here, as though any of you didn't already know, the whole

purpose is to be a vampire. Vampires used to be evil killers, and who would wantto roleplay a real serial killer like, say, Jeffrey Dahmer (except for maybe PoppyBrite)? But that's how far vampires have come.

Not everyone is happy with this. When asked about it in an interview for Journal

of the Dark 8 (Winter 1996/97), author Lois Tilton responded, "What everhappened to good old-fashioned Evil? What happened to Damnation? I know thisview isn't popular these days, but I think the vampire has been ruined by its own

popularity: watered down, diluted with sugar until you can't even taste the bloodany more."

But here we are, all dressed in black, and we buy the books and see the moviesand play the games, and we wonder "wouldn't it be great to be a vampire?" AsArmand told Louis, we want to be "beautiful and powerful and without regret" --not to mention immortal, in a world that has serious doubts about the hereafter.Through our own desires, we have reworked the image of the vampire until he iswhat we want him to be.


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The TRANSYLVANIAN JOURNAL is published bytheTransylvanian Society of Dracula (American andCanadian chapters). Although only available in printedversion, it contains articles of very high quality, including

papers previously delivered in various congresses andsymposiums. For more information, please write to TSDAmerican Chapter, Box 91611, Santa Barbara, CA 93190-1611; TSD Canadian Chapter, P.O. Box 23240, ChurchillSquare P.O., St. John's, NF Canada A1B 4J9.

NEWSCLIPPINGS

Vampire Inmate Scares Away Serial Killer in Turkey

Kaya Ozkaracalar was born in 1968 in Istanbul andis currently a Ph.D. student and research assistant at the Political Science

Department of Bilkent University in Ankara. Contributed an article (in Turkish)on "the vampire theme from folklore to literature to cinema" to Patika magazine(no. 19, summer 1996). Working on a booklet on the same topic.

A serial killer confined to a mental asylum rejected sharing the same cell with a"vampire" inmate in Turkey. Turkish private television stations played footage

showing the killer standing at the door of the cell with a terrifying look on his facestaring at the "vampire" Omer Soganci, who was inside. The vampire looked verycalm by contrast.

Soganci was dubbed a vampire by the Turkish media for biting and drinking the blood of several people, including his relatives. His would-be companion hasconfessed to killing five people and nailing large pins to their heads.

When Soganci was initially released from custody in August, people of Denizli,his hometown, had reportedly panicked. Soganci was later confined to the asylumin neighboring Manisa.

Several months ago two "vampires" were almost lynched in another part ofTurkey for allegedly cutting the heads off livestock and drinking their blood.

CONTRIBUTION GUIDELINES

Anyone can submit a text for the IVTQ newsletter.

HOWEVER



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Submissions are examined by an advisory board before publication. This meanssome texts - articles, reviews or advertisement - can be edited, or refused. No

paper will be modified without the approbation of its author. It is preferable tosubmit your paper through EMail, but you can also use regular mail service,including in your envelope an IBM-formatted disk 1.44 with your file inWordPerfect, Microsoft Word or ASCII format, plus a printed copy of the text.You will be informed whether your contribution has been selected or not beforeits publication.

EMail submissions:

Postal submissions:

Internet Vampire Tribune

Comptoir postal du Musee5122 Cote des NeigesC.P. 49515 Montreal PQH3T 2A5 CANADA

For more information, please look for our Calls for Papers. They are mailed tosubscribers, to the mailing list VAMPYRES and on alt.vampyres (newsgroup). Itis also available on some web sites.

Articles and reviews

The IVTQ is interested in non-fiction articles about the vampire theme. Wedefinitely prefer scholarly papers, but lighter texts can also be accepted.Contributions must be informative and innovative. Previously published materialis accepted, but new and recent texts are given more attention. Our main criteriasare :

(1) pertinence of the topic; (2) reliability and accuracy of information; (3)originality.

Advertisements

The maintenance of IVTQ is made possible with the efforts of those who givetheir free time without remuneration. We accept to include a restricted amount ofadvertisements without any charge. This service is, nevertheless, only availableto non-profit organizations, publications and projects of all sort - as long as theyare directly related to the vampire theme.

Technical support

We are in need of IVTQ providers, that is FTP sites interested to make the ezineavailable to the Internet community. The same proposition is directed at web sites



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centering on the vampire theme. All distributors will have their address linked onthe IVTQ web site.

Benjamin H. Leblanc, editor-in-chiefM.Sc. student in Sociology of Religion University of Montreal

Cathy Krusberg, technical editorM.A. English 1992 University of Georgia

For this issue, texts from: Bruce McClelland, Beverley Richardson, John Beckett,Kaya Ozkaracalar.

Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly Advisory Board, November 2,1996: ELIZABETH MILLER , Department of English, Memorial University, St.John's, Canada; ROB BRAUTIGAM, The International Vampire, Amsterdam,Holland; CATHY KRUSBERG, M.A. English, 1992, University ofGeorgia; CAROL DAVIDSON, English Literature, Concordia University,Montreal, Canada.

International correspondants (in alphabetical order): RobBrautigam (HOLLAND); Kaya Ozkaracalar (TURKEY).

Nov 2 96

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I Wanna Be a Vampire

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