The Vampire Legend

When we in the Gothic community think of vampires we usually imagine quite a romantic, mysterious figure. He has that much sought after ghastly pallor and is resplendent in gorgeous old fashioned clothing. Aesthetically, our ideal. Bram Stroker's Count Dracula is described as tall and pale, with glorious black hair wearing the required sweeping black cloak. LaFanu's Carmilla,¹ one of the oldest fictional vampires, (not to mention the first female one) is described as waif like, pale and languid. Classically the fictional vampire is also descended from semi-royalty, or is of aristocratic birth (another secret wish of impoverished Goths.) Did you ever wonder how the vampire myths began, or what kind of people were first accused of being revenants?

To be sure, the dead who were accused of vampiric activities in the villages in the middle ages were not the romantic counts and barons living in the beautiful crumbling castles. They were most often the social outcasts of their time, vagabonds, suicides, and evil-doers, women accused of witchcraft and those with mental illness, in other words, the scapegoats of the communities. Not an ancestry I would like to connect myself to.

One of the first vampires to be well documented in historical records was a peasant by the name of Peter Plogojowitz, who lived in Serbia (or thereabouts) in 1725. He was the first in his village to die of some sort of epidemic. His fellow villagers, of course at that time knowing nothing of pathogens or viruses, deduced that poor Peter had come back from the grave and was killing his former friends and family. After getting the proper legal permission (which is why we have the records remaining) his body was exhumed, and since it exhibited the symptoms of vampirism, was promptly staked and returned to it's grave. I guess by the time all of this came to pass, the pathogen (the real stalker of the village) had run its natural course, and the mysterious deaths ceased, confirming that Peter Plogojowitz was indeed causing them.

Just what did Peter's body look like, after several weeks in a shroud in the frozen ground? It is described as having a fresh layer of skin, ruddy in complexion, he is accused of gaining weight, presumed from feasting on his victim blood, his nails and hair had grown, and the most accusing evidence of all, he had blood on his mouth, and spurted liquid blood when staked. From this account he meets the necessary visual requirements of an authentic vampire. Therefore, we can conclude, that vampires are portly, hairy characters with ruddy complexions. In fact, the most convincing evidence that some poor soul has turned vampiric is the "bloated, blood-red face" (Burkhart, Dagmar, Vampirglaube, 1966) Not very appealing, eh?

So what differentiates the vampire's corpse from your average European villagers? Well, not much, actually. Allow me describe to you the changes wrought by decomposition of a body (I'll keep it brief for the faint of heart and weak of stomach.) First off, the time it takes for the decay and deformation to occur can vary greatly, depending on the depth, wetness, temperature of the grave and also the cause of death. So, let's imagine our bodies after death: greenish color begins to develop over the right iliac fossa (a depression in the abdomen); extension of greenish color over the whole body; discoloration and swelling of the face, reaching the point where facial features become unrecognizable; swelling and discoloration of the scrotum or vulva; distension of the abdomen with gases (produced by the beginning of decay in the intestines); brownish discoloration of the veins; development of blisters of various sizes on the skin which burst and cause shedding of the epidermis (revealing the fresh looking ruddy dermis under it); escaping of blood colored liquids from the orafie (caused by the internal pressure of gases pushing the fluids out); liquefaction of the eyeballs; increasing discoloration of the body in general, with greater and progressive abdominal distension; infestation with maggots; shedding of nails and loosening of hair; conversion of tissues into a semi-fluid mass; bursting open of the abdominal and thorasic cavities, and finally the progressive dissolution of the body.

These normal phases of decay actually coincide with the common descriptions of the classic folklore revenants. Just about any body that was exhumed under suspicion of vampirism must have exhibited some of these signs, and was therefore declared to be a vampire. The innocent corpse, which was only doing was it was supposed to, was duly staked, beheaded, cremated or disposed of according to the current fashion of vampire-killing.

Do you still long to really be a vampire? Be careful of what you wish for, for here in the real world, real vampires are nothing more than bloated and half rotten corpses.

¹If you haven't read LaFanu's classic story (pub. 1871) you definitely should, not only is the vampire a young woman, but the protagonist is also. There are very definite lesbian overtures, truly risque for Victorian literature.

[Inspiration and factual information for this article from "Vampires, Burial and Death", by Paul Barber.]