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Vampires Among Us
by Keith Adam Luethke
After dark on a Friday night a quiet series of taps strike your door. At first you
think it only the wind and go back to watching television, but the silent raps turn
into loud knocks, and you find yourself opening the door. An old friend greets
you at the doorstep and asks for a favor. Curious, you usher them inside and sit
them down on your most comfortable chair. What is the favor you ask? They
begin to cry and tell you that a vampire is sneaking into their room at night and
drinking their blood. You 'ye seen a few vampire movies and after a brief reality
check you decide the best way to help your friend is with a classic wooden mallet
and a hammer. This approach however is Hollywood in nature and not the only
means of disposing of the undead.
The word vampire came into the oxford English Dictionary in 1734, "at a time
when, in Germany especially, many books were being written on the subject."
(Vampires, Burial and Death 5). And when Europeans began "exhuming bodies
and killing them," (5). The weapons of choice were not a stake and mallet, but to
bury the dead with sharp objects or silver already driven into their coffin to
prevent them from rising. This in turn will (deflated) the vampire, according to
Nobert Reiter, "the vampire has no bones, but is a sack filled with blood and
comes into being when the devil pulls the skin of a particular corpse and blows it
up." (Vampires, Burial. and Death 158). The Hollywood vampire and the folkloric
one differ in appearance, eating patterns, ways to stop or prevent the undead,
and burial ceremonies.
If the before mentioned friend took you to the site of where the vampire sneaks
inside their house you may discover a strong rancid stench upon entering or a
mark upon the window so the vampire can return. Upon arrival, the Hollywood
vampire might come in the form of a bat, while the folkloric undead would not. In
appearance, the Hollywood counterpart would be both beautiful and elegant,
dressed in the finest silk garments and aim to feed from your neck. Wherein the
ancient folkloric vampire's appearance would be tattered cloths, hanging skin,
long claws, and a wish to bite you chest, as the heart provides more blood than
the neck. Even the Bible acknowledges the fact that blood is important. In the
Old Testament book of Leviticus [17: 14] "the life of all flesh; the blood of it is the
life thereof," speaks of how important blood is to us. And to lose such a vital part
of us to a vampire is to be dammed. The children of Israel are instructed that
they "shall not eat of the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the
blood thereof: whoever eateth it shall be cut off." In partaking the drinking of
blood the vampire becomes cursed and nearly unstoppable.
If one wanted to stop or prevent the Hollywood vampire, a stake through the
heart, garlic, or a cross seems to do the trick. It comes as no surprise that a
stake through the heart works on the folkloric vampire as well. Wooden objects
don't matter in the folkloric aspect of destroying the undead, the Europeans
simply had more access to wood than to sharpened metals. Garlic worn about
the neck is said to ward the undead away, as the vampire can't stand the smell of
some of the chemicals used at its funeral. I found the typical methods of
destroying a folkloric vampire are quite extensive. The list is as follows:
Burial with or without later exhumation
Depositing the body in a cave or crevice
Covering the body with rocks
Covering the body with brush
Disposal in water
Cremation
Excoriation (allowing scavengers - birds. wolves, dogs, crocodiles, and so forth -
to eat away the flesh of the body)
Exposing the body on a platform or in a tree
Mummification by Burial in hot sand or exposure to hot air
Embalming
Drying the body with fire (Vampires, Burial. and Death 164).
I think that these methods of destroying the vampire goes one or two ways: either
the body is held in place or the dead is render incapable of undergoing further
changes. Personally, before reading Vampires. Burial. and Death, I assumed a
simple stake through the heart would do the trick, but folklore tells us we have to
go further than that. The wooden stake or sharpened metal/silver object only
immobilizes the undead.. Measures must be made to tear apart, or rearrange the
living dead after reburial: if not the dead may come back.
This is the case with a local horror writer (local as in he writes about East
Tennessee. but lives in North Carolina) Ronald Kelly with his 1996 book, "Blood
Kin." Josiah Craven is a vampire, a stake was driven into his heart over a
century ago, but when his ancestors were putting down a foundation for their new
house, they found his coffin. Ronald Kelly reused an old folklore tale in East
Tennessee about a buried man found with a stake in his chest. In Blood Kin the
stake in Josiah Craven's body is removed and he is brought back from the dead
as a vampire.
I've learned this is also the case for many vampires returning after an improper
destruction. Unlike the Hollywood vampire who fades to a heap of ashes upon
contact with the stake or sun. My interpretation is that the folkloric vampire is
much harder to kill than its Hollywood predecessor. Not only does the folkloric
vampire have to be staked, but in torpor it is not uncommon for the head, heart,
or eyes to be removed and burned. I came upon three special cases of
vampirism that struck me peculiar. The tale of Vlad Dracul, the vampire of
Hangover, and Marcy Grey. All three cases deal with real people (not fictional
vampires) in the past 300 years. In my investigation I discovered that
the truth of vampirism is more frightening than anything Hollywood could ever
conceive.
Vlad "The impaler" Dracul is better know to us as Dracula from the Bram Stoker
novel. But Vlad was a real person. In life he ate and drank wine while his
enemies were quartered, or impaled before him. At night the young prince
roamed the country side, "in disguise, particularly at night. He wanted to know
how the peasants lived, how well and how much they worked, and what they were
thinking about." (Vampires, The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead
146).
Undoubtedly, Vlad Dracul was a sinister man who had gruesome habits for
disposing of those he saw in the wrong. “If any wife had an affair outside of
marriage, Dracul ordered her sexual organs cut. She was then skinned alive and
exposed in her flesh in the public square, her skin hanging separately from a
pole.” (Vampires, The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead ] 43).
In my view Prince Dracul was a psychopath man suffering from sexual
impotence. But it was Bram Stoker who made him famous and gave his cruelties
a face and name in his book Dracula. Vlad Dracul's body and coffin were never
found, but the legend of the fictional vampire lives on. Vlad was said to have
vampire characteristics in life. His skin was said to be pale, long nails adorned
his hands like claws, and a thirst for his enemies blood was dominate. There is
no document of him being staked after death. I believe Bram Stoker's novel is
important because it marks the beginning of a media trend. When Dracula came
into print vampirism become more wide spread and a common theme. The
vampire turned from a local phenomena into a legend that refuses to die.
Another interesting case I found deals with "Fritz HalTman, The Vampire Of
Hangover." This again is a case where the supposed vampire is a real person,
and performed acts of violence parallel to its undying counterpart. Fritz Hanman
was born in Germany, one of the first countries to exhume bodies of the dead
and "kill them." When growing up, Fritz's favorite pastime was to dress up like a
girl. He was also noted as feeble minded and nearly locked away in an asylum.
But Fritz ran away to the army instead. His real career began in 1918 when he
returned to Hangover and, "worked the black market selling meat, used clothing,
and other items." (The Big Book of Bad II).
Fritz was famous for his low costs in meat and clothing. He was brought up on
charges of harming young boys, but was never convicted. Young boys, mostly
runaways, began to disappear without a trace in Hangover Germany . "The
mysterious disappearances continued for years and the public grew ever more
fearful" (The Big Book of Bad 12). The public blamed the missing children on a
vampire. I find it interesting that the blame for mishap would be placed upon a
vampire before a more natural source. This type of hysteria has a strong
grounding in the fear of death. The fear of a loved one rising from the grave to
feed upon the living is a predominate role in the beginnings of Germanic culture.
Fritz, or the vampire of Hangover was caught attacking a young boy and was
thrown into jail. "He revealed his murder method in gruesome detail. After luring
a victim back to the apartment for a meal. He would rip the boy's throat out with
his teeth. He cut up the bodies and sold the meat. The bones were thrown in
the river." (Ih~ Big Book of Bad 13).
When the river was dredged, hundreds of human bones were found. The
authorities couldn't estimate how many people Fritz kill, "but police estimated the
number for the previous year alone at over 100." (The Big Book of Bad 13). I
interpreted Fritz's case as a modern vampire primary because he did as the
folkloric creature does: eat the living. His case is a sad one, but it sheds light on
the notion that even in the 1920's the vampire hadn't stepped out of the
darkness he was made in.
The next case a came across deals with what I believe is the truth of the
vampire. Not a shadow creeping through city streets sucking the life from the
living, but a corpse in the ground and the willingness to believe in an enduring
legend.
In the small town of Winapeg Rhode Island, Marcy Grey died at the age 13 from
tuberculous. The disease claimed her slowly and she was buried in the winter of
1836. She had three brothers and two sisters, and sure enough the disease
spread to them and only two remained alive. The locals said the deaths were not
caused by tuberculous, but a vampire. And that vampire was Marcy Grey.
They exhumed her body and found that after being dead for three months her
body remained intact. Her fingernails had grown long like claws. Her face was
pale, and little droplets of blood were on her cheeks. The locals took these into
account to label her among the undead and cut out her heart then burned it.
They returned Marcy Grey to her grave upside down and forced the oldest
surviving member of the family to drink the ashes of her heart. The disease
ended and all was well.
From my research I know that Marcy Grey's body was still intact because she was
buried in the winter months, pale skin because her blood had seeped out, and
had the illusion of long claws because fingernails recede after death. The
droplets of blood are not those of her siblings, but of her own. ''It is not
uncommon for spots of blood to leave the body through pores after death." (Out
of the Dark 65). This is where the vampire legend falls apart. Science can
readily explain the mishap of misidentifying a vampire, and mass hysteria and the
willingness that people can have control of a spreading disease is my personal
view of how the vampire was formed. When people lack control they tend to
grasp out at anything within reach in order to have some semblance of their own
lives.
In conclusion, I believe that the vampire is more alive now than dead in today's
culture. Books, movies, and television shows dealing with the undead have clung
to our way of life until the vampire became a house hold name. My interpretation
of the vampire is one of skepticism. A vampire can be classified as a living
person or as the dead returned to feast on the living. In the books I've read all
forms of the vampire are a means of coping with the struggles of ones own
death. To die and return only to drink the blood of a loved one is a horrible
image to endure.
In my humble opinion I think that when you are dead there is no return. But
perhaps in exhumingthe corpse of a loved one and driving a stake through the
heart, whether because of fear from spreading disease, or the unwillingness to
let the dead rest, is a way of accepting death into our homes when it knocks. I
learned that the dead are blamed for death and sickness, and to prevent this the
living attempts to kill or appease the corpse. The vampire may take on different
names or forms of the living such as Fritz Hanman, or the dead, like in such
cases of Marcy Grey, but undoubtedly the vampire is here to stay. My personal
reaction to the subject has been altered considerably by my research and I was
shocked by the strange acts that have largely gone unnoticed by the public
where the dead are concerned.
The vampire will continue to feast upon our imaginations more than our blood. I
hope the past accounts won't be forgotten, as we have much to learn about
human nature and why it fears it own clerk shadow.
by Keith Adam Luethke
After dark on a Friday night a quiet series of taps strike your door. At first you
think it only the wind and go back to watching television, but the silent raps turn
into loud knocks, and you find yourself opening the door. An old friend greets
you at the doorstep and asks for a favor. Curious, you usher them inside and sit
them down on your most comfortable chair. What is the favor you ask? They
begin to cry and tell you that a vampire is sneaking into their room at night and
drinking their blood. You 'ye seen a few vampire movies and after a brief reality
check you decide the best way to help your friend is with a classic wooden mallet
and a hammer. This approach however is Hollywood in nature and not the only
means of disposing of the undead.
The word vampire came into the oxford English Dictionary in 1734, "at a time
when, in Germany especially, many books were being written on the subject."
(Vampires, Burial and Death 5). And when Europeans began "exhuming bodies
and killing them," (5). The weapons of choice were not a stake and mallet, but to
bury the dead with sharp objects or silver already driven into their coffin to
prevent them from rising. This in turn will (deflated) the vampire, according to
Nobert Reiter, "the vampire has no bones, but is a sack filled with blood and
comes into being when the devil pulls the skin of a particular corpse and blows it
up." (Vampires, Burial. and Death 158). The Hollywood vampire and the folkloric
one differ in appearance, eating patterns, ways to stop or prevent the undead,
and burial ceremonies.
If the before mentioned friend took you to the site of where the vampire sneaks
inside their house you may discover a strong rancid stench upon entering or a
mark upon the window so the vampire can return. Upon arrival, the Hollywood
vampire might come in the form of a bat, while the folkloric undead would not. In
appearance, the Hollywood counterpart would be both beautiful and elegant,
dressed in the finest silk garments and aim to feed from your neck. Wherein the
ancient folkloric vampire's appearance would be tattered cloths, hanging skin,
long claws, and a wish to bite you chest, as the heart provides more blood than
the neck. Even the Bible acknowledges the fact that blood is important. In the
Old Testament book of Leviticus [17: 14] "the life of all flesh; the blood of it is the
life thereof," speaks of how important blood is to us. And to lose such a vital part
of us to a vampire is to be dammed. The children of Israel are instructed that
they "shall not eat of the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the
blood thereof: whoever eateth it shall be cut off." In partaking the drinking of
blood the vampire becomes cursed and nearly unstoppable.
If one wanted to stop or prevent the Hollywood vampire, a stake through the
heart, garlic, or a cross seems to do the trick. It comes as no surprise that a
stake through the heart works on the folkloric vampire as well. Wooden objects
don't matter in the folkloric aspect of destroying the undead, the Europeans
simply had more access to wood than to sharpened metals. Garlic worn about
the neck is said to ward the undead away, as the vampire can't stand the smell of
some of the chemicals used at its funeral. I found the typical methods of
destroying a folkloric vampire are quite extensive. The list is as follows:
Burial with or without later exhumation
Depositing the body in a cave or crevice
Covering the body with rocks
Covering the body with brush
Disposal in water
Cremation
Excoriation (allowing scavengers - birds. wolves, dogs, crocodiles, and so forth -
to eat away the flesh of the body)
Exposing the body on a platform or in a tree
Mummification by Burial in hot sand or exposure to hot air
Embalming
Drying the body with fire (Vampires, Burial. and Death 164).
I think that these methods of destroying the vampire goes one or two ways: either
the body is held in place or the dead is render incapable of undergoing further
changes. Personally, before reading Vampires. Burial. and Death, I assumed a
simple stake through the heart would do the trick, but folklore tells us we have to
go further than that. The wooden stake or sharpened metal/silver object only
immobilizes the undead.. Measures must be made to tear apart, or rearrange the
living dead after reburial: if not the dead may come back.
This is the case with a local horror writer (local as in he writes about East
Tennessee. but lives in North Carolina) Ronald Kelly with his 1996 book, "Blood
Kin." Josiah Craven is a vampire, a stake was driven into his heart over a
century ago, but when his ancestors were putting down a foundation for their new
house, they found his coffin. Ronald Kelly reused an old folklore tale in East
Tennessee about a buried man found with a stake in his chest. In Blood Kin the
stake in Josiah Craven's body is removed and he is brought back from the dead
as a vampire.
I've learned this is also the case for many vampires returning after an improper
destruction. Unlike the Hollywood vampire who fades to a heap of ashes upon
contact with the stake or sun. My interpretation is that the folkloric vampire is
much harder to kill than its Hollywood predecessor. Not only does the folkloric
vampire have to be staked, but in torpor it is not uncommon for the head, heart,
or eyes to be removed and burned. I came upon three special cases of
vampirism that struck me peculiar. The tale of Vlad Dracul, the vampire of
Hangover, and Marcy Grey. All three cases deal with real people (not fictional
vampires) in the past 300 years. In my investigation I discovered that
the truth of vampirism is more frightening than anything Hollywood could ever
conceive.
Vlad "The impaler" Dracul is better know to us as Dracula from the Bram Stoker
novel. But Vlad was a real person. In life he ate and drank wine while his
enemies were quartered, or impaled before him. At night the young prince
roamed the country side, "in disguise, particularly at night. He wanted to know
how the peasants lived, how well and how much they worked, and what they were
thinking about." (Vampires, The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead
146).
Undoubtedly, Vlad Dracul was a sinister man who had gruesome habits for
disposing of those he saw in the wrong. “If any wife had an affair outside of
marriage, Dracul ordered her sexual organs cut. She was then skinned alive and
exposed in her flesh in the public square, her skin hanging separately from a
pole.” (Vampires, The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead ] 43).
In my view Prince Dracul was a psychopath man suffering from sexual
impotence. But it was Bram Stoker who made him famous and gave his cruelties
a face and name in his book Dracula. Vlad Dracul's body and coffin were never
found, but the legend of the fictional vampire lives on. Vlad was said to have
vampire characteristics in life. His skin was said to be pale, long nails adorned
his hands like claws, and a thirst for his enemies blood was dominate. There is
no document of him being staked after death. I believe Bram Stoker's novel is
important because it marks the beginning of a media trend. When Dracula came
into print vampirism become more wide spread and a common theme. The
vampire turned from a local phenomena into a legend that refuses to die.
Another interesting case I found deals with "Fritz HalTman, The Vampire Of
Hangover." This again is a case where the supposed vampire is a real person,
and performed acts of violence parallel to its undying counterpart. Fritz Hanman
was born in Germany, one of the first countries to exhume bodies of the dead
and "kill them." When growing up, Fritz's favorite pastime was to dress up like a
girl. He was also noted as feeble minded and nearly locked away in an asylum.
But Fritz ran away to the army instead. His real career began in 1918 when he
returned to Hangover and, "worked the black market selling meat, used clothing,
and other items." (The Big Book of Bad II).
Fritz was famous for his low costs in meat and clothing. He was brought up on
charges of harming young boys, but was never convicted. Young boys, mostly
runaways, began to disappear without a trace in Hangover Germany . "The
mysterious disappearances continued for years and the public grew ever more
fearful" (The Big Book of Bad 12). The public blamed the missing children on a
vampire. I find it interesting that the blame for mishap would be placed upon a
vampire before a more natural source. This type of hysteria has a strong
grounding in the fear of death. The fear of a loved one rising from the grave to
feed upon the living is a predominate role in the beginnings of Germanic culture.
Fritz, or the vampire of Hangover was caught attacking a young boy and was
thrown into jail. "He revealed his murder method in gruesome detail. After luring
a victim back to the apartment for a meal. He would rip the boy's throat out with
his teeth. He cut up the bodies and sold the meat. The bones were thrown in
the river." (Ih~ Big Book of Bad 13).
When the river was dredged, hundreds of human bones were found. The
authorities couldn't estimate how many people Fritz kill, "but police estimated the
number for the previous year alone at over 100." (The Big Book of Bad 13). I
interpreted Fritz's case as a modern vampire primary because he did as the
folkloric creature does: eat the living. His case is a sad one, but it sheds light on
the notion that even in the 1920's the vampire hadn't stepped out of the
darkness he was made in.
The next case a came across deals with what I believe is the truth of the
vampire. Not a shadow creeping through city streets sucking the life from the
living, but a corpse in the ground and the willingness to believe in an enduring
legend.
In the small town of Winapeg Rhode Island, Marcy Grey died at the age 13 from
tuberculous. The disease claimed her slowly and she was buried in the winter of
1836. She had three brothers and two sisters, and sure enough the disease
spread to them and only two remained alive. The locals said the deaths were not
caused by tuberculous, but a vampire. And that vampire was Marcy Grey.
They exhumed her body and found that after being dead for three months her
body remained intact. Her fingernails had grown long like claws. Her face was
pale, and little droplets of blood were on her cheeks. The locals took these into
account to label her among the undead and cut out her heart then burned it.
They returned Marcy Grey to her grave upside down and forced the oldest
surviving member of the family to drink the ashes of her heart. The disease
ended and all was well.
From my research I know that Marcy Grey's body was still intact because she was
buried in the winter months, pale skin because her blood had seeped out, and
had the illusion of long claws because fingernails recede after death. The
droplets of blood are not those of her siblings, but of her own. ''It is not
uncommon for spots of blood to leave the body through pores after death." (Out
of the Dark 65). This is where the vampire legend falls apart. Science can
readily explain the mishap of misidentifying a vampire, and mass hysteria and the
willingness that people can have control of a spreading disease is my personal
view of how the vampire was formed. When people lack control they tend to
grasp out at anything within reach in order to have some semblance of their own
lives.
In conclusion, I believe that the vampire is more alive now than dead in today's
culture. Books, movies, and television shows dealing with the undead have clung
to our way of life until the vampire became a house hold name. My interpretation
of the vampire is one of skepticism. A vampire can be classified as a living
person or as the dead returned to feast on the living. In the books I've read all
forms of the vampire are a means of coping with the struggles of ones own
death. To die and return only to drink the blood of a loved one is a horrible
image to endure.
In my humble opinion I think that when you are dead there is no return. But
perhaps in exhumingthe corpse of a loved one and driving a stake through the
heart, whether because of fear from spreading disease, or the unwillingness to
let the dead rest, is a way of accepting death into our homes when it knocks. I
learned that the dead are blamed for death and sickness, and to prevent this the
living attempts to kill or appease the corpse. The vampire may take on different
names or forms of the living such as Fritz Hanman, or the dead, like in such
cases of Marcy Grey, but undoubtedly the vampire is here to stay. My personal
reaction to the subject has been altered considerably by my research and I was
shocked by the strange acts that have largely gone unnoticed by the public
where the dead are concerned.
The vampire will continue to feast upon our imaginations more than our blood. I
hope the past accounts won't be forgotten, as we have much to learn about
human nature and why it fears it own clerk shadow.
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