When you hear the word vampire, what comes to mind? Dracula? The Twilight books? Ancient castles in Transylvania?
What if I told you that vampire stories are much older, and much stranger, than you think?
In today’s Halloween special episode of Thinking in English, we’re going to explore the history of vampires. We’ll start with ancient superstitions and medieval fears, move on to the vampires of literature, and finally look at how vampires appear in modern culture.
Along the way, we’ll ask an important question: Why do humans invent blood-drinking monsters?
By the end of this episode, you’ll understand where vampire myths came from, why they terrified people for centuries, and you’ll have learned some new English vocabulary along the way!
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Vocabulary
- Vampire (Noun): A mythical creature that drinks the blood of the living.
- In Dracula, the vampire sneaks into houses at night to feed.
- Folklore (Noun): Traditional beliefs, stories, and customs passed through generations.
- Eastern European folklore includes many tales of creatures that rise from the dead.
- Decomposition (Noun): The natural process of a body breaking down after death.
- Villagers feared decomposition because it sometimes made corpses appear alive.
- Immortality (Noun): The state of living forever; eternal life.
- Vampires are often associated with immortality and eternal youth.
- Aristocratic (Adjective): Belonging to the upper class; noble or elegant in manner.
- Polidori’s vampire was aristocratic, charming, and seductive.
- Predatory (Adjective): Seeking to harm, exploit, or consume others; like a hunter.
- Early vampire myths describe predatory creatures that attack humans at night.
- Symbolism (Noun): The use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities beyond their literal meaning.
- Vampires often serve as symbolism for human fears like death and disease.
Early Vampire Myths
Many ancient civilizations had myths about creatures that fed on blood or ate people to stay alive.
In Greece, there was the Lamia, a female demon who drank the blood of children. In Rome, people told stories of the Strix, a bird-like creature that attacked people at night. In China, there were legends of the Jinagshi or hopping vampire. A stiff corpse that fed on the life force of the living.
These early vampires were not like the elegant [00:04:00] or mysterious vampires in modern movies. Often they were corpses, dead bodies, or spirits blamed for disease and death.
People often created these stories to explain things that they did not understand. During the Middle Ages in Eastern Europe, for example, vampire myths became more widespread.
People were terrified of death and disease, and they often didn’t understand decomposition. Decomposition is the process by which a dead body breaks down naturally over time.
If a body in a grave looked unusually fresh, with hair or nails appearing longer, or blood maybe leaking from the mouth, villagers sometimes assumed it had risen from the dead. We now know that both of these things can happen to a dead body.
Times of plague or disease [00:05:00] made these fears even stronger. When disease spread quickly and people died in large numbers, communities often blamed vampires for spreading death from grave to grave.
To protect themselves villagers developed superstitions and rituals. They buried bodies face down. They placed stones in the mouth of the dead. Or they staked, or stabbed, the heart to prevent the dead from rising.
Historical Myths and Legends
Our modern vampire myths didn’t come from nowhere. They were often inspired by real people.
One of the most famous inspirations for modern vampires is Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad III of Wallachia. Vlad was a 15th century ruler in what is now Romania.
Vlad became notorious for impaling his enemies on stakes, a cruel and terrifying method of [00:06:00] punishment. Although he never drank blood, his reputation for extreme cruelty inspired writers, most famously Bram Stoker when he created Dracula.
Another legendary figure is Elizabeth Báthory often called the Blood Countess. She was a Hungarian noblewoman in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She was accused of murdering young girls and bathing in their blood to maintain her youth.
While historians debate how much of this is true, her story helped strengthen the connection between blood and beauty and immortality. These are ideas that appear again and again in vampire myths.
The Birth of the Modern Vampire
By the 18th and 19th centuries, vampire stories had spread from Eastern Europe into Western Europe, especially through countries like Austria and [00:07:00] Hungary. Newspapers reported supposed vampire attacks creating a kind of vampire panic.
Around the same time vampires began appearing in literature.
In 1819, John Polidori published the Vampyre, introducing a new kind of vampire. Polidori’s vampire was aristocratic, charming, and seductive. This was a major shift.
Vampires were no longer just frightening corpses coming back from the dead. They became mysterious, almost romantic figures.
The most famous modern vampire, of course, is Dracula, created by Bram Stoker in 1897. Stoker blended Transylvanian folklore and Victorian fears into a single character.
Dracula is not just a [00:08:00] monster. He is cunning, intelligent, and highly charismatic.
Dracula also reflects some of the anxieties, some of the worries, the concerns, that people had in Victorian England. Including worries about blood and disease, and the fear of foreign outsiders.
Dracula shaped almost everything we think of as a vampire today. The novel introduced or popularized ideas like vampires being aristocratic creatures. It introduced the idea that vampires need to drink blood to survive. And the ideas that vampires are weak to sunlight and stakes, and garlic and holy symbols became widely known through Dracula’s story.
The Vampire in Modern Culture
Vampires quickly began appearing in cinema, television, and popular culture.
In the 20th century, films [00:09:00] like Nosferatu brought vampires to the screen for the first time. Nosferatu’s vampire was terrifying and monstrous. It showed audiences the dark, predatory side of those creatures.
Later novels and films such as Interview With a Vampire and the Twilight Series made vampires more human.
They became tragic or romantic or heroic figures. They were creatures who, like humans, struggled with morality and love and desire.
The evolution of vampire stories actually reflects changes in our society.
For example, in the 19th century, vampires symbolized fear of disease and foreign invasion. Dracula was a mysterious foreigner who entered Victorian England and had a thirst for blood.
In the 20th century, [00:10:00] vampires often represented rebellion and taboos. They were mysterious outsiders who challenged social norms.
And in the 21st century, vampire stories seemed more about exploring identity or loneliness or morality. Modern stories seem to ask questions about what it means to live forever or be different from everyone else.
Vampires also appear in modern English language and symbolism. The word vampire is used metaphorically to describe someone who drains energy or resources.
An “energy vampire” is someone who exhausts others emotionally. A “corporate vampire” might be a boss or a company exploiting employees. And an “emotional vampire” is someone who takes without giving back in relationships.
Why We Invent Blood-Drinking Monsters
While writing this episode, I became [00:11:00] curious about why humans like to invent blood drinking monsters.
I think, from a psychological perspective, monsters like vampires let us explore taboos in a safe way. They confront us with things we normally avoid thinking about. Things like death and blood.
At the same time, they represent real human fears. The fear of disease. The fear of aging, becoming old. And the fear of outsiders.
Are we afraid of vampires because they are inhuman or because they represent something human?
Vampires show our desire to live forever, to gain power and escape mortality.
I think vampires also reveal how myths travel across cultures and languages. The word vampire probably entered English from either Hungarian or Serbian, passing through [00:12:00] French and German along the way.
In the end, I think vampires are monsters that represent our historical and changing fears.
Final Thought
Vampires have changed a lot from the original stories, but our fascination with them has not. They continue to reflect the things we fear most. Death, disease, the unknown. And also the things we desire. Immortality and power.
Perhaps that is why the vampire never really dies. It just changes form generation after generation.
What do you think? What is your favorite vampire from literature or film?
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