First, I think it best to define the essence of the vampire (fictional) before attempting to define the Essence of the Vampyre (magical). In this way, I hope to invite discussion and/or debate on the topic, and to hear from other magicians' experience with this type of magic.

The word "essence," as defined by my Random House Dictionary, is "the basic intrinsic constituent or quality of a thing." It also means "the substance obtained from a plant or drug, by distillation or infusion, and containing its characteristic properties in concentrated form."

When examining the "essence of the vampire," or that which is distilled once we remove various authors' character nuances and personalities, we find certain things in common in most every vampire story: the fact that a living victim had been bitten and killed by a vampire and is now basically a walking corpse with supernatural powers. These powers included turning into mist and shapeshifting, invisibility, mesmerism, superhuman strength, immortality and, of course, a murderous bloodthirst.

In 1819, Dr. John Polidori distilled even further the literary vampire's essence by replacing the ghoulish appearance with an aristocratic one. He further fashioned the personality of his vampire character after the infamous English Romantic poet, Lord George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), for whom he had worked for a time and had grown to dislike by the time he wrote his story. Suddenly, the classic myth of the vampire had become something intriguing and sexually appealing to readers rather than horrific, and the beginnings of the Vampyric archetype was born.

Polidori was the first to utilize the new spelling of "Vampyre," and Polidori's main character, Lord Ruthven, also had the characteristic bloodthirst, as well as more elegant and appealing characteristics. Novelists from then on continued to utilize this breed of vampire in increasingly sexually oriented stories (including Bram Stoker's _Dracula_). Later, screen writers would develop this idea even further with the sensual movie version "Dracula," starring Frank Langella.

For magicians, this Vampyric Essence can be experimented with in many ways. Distilled even further by removing the two remaining negative traits of the vampire, bloodlust and the animated corpse theory, we have an extremely sensual, sexual, aristocratic, magically and physically powerful Being. If one learns to emulate the powers of the vampire while keeping strongly in mind the intrinsic elegance and "Aristocracy of the Blood" that has developed within the archetype over the years, we now have the ingredients for a magical personality/persona known as the Vampyre.

How can these legendary powers be emulated? With only a little magic, imagination and dedication, it is quite easy, actually. "Superhuman" strength can be developed via weight training, using various strengthening and flexibility exercises. "Invisibility" can be learned by studying certain martial arts, such as Ninjutsu. "Shapeshifting" can be accomplished via pathworkings, trance states, and lycanthropic magic, as well as astral projection. Mesmerism can be learned by studying mesmerism and hypnotism, and also through psychology. The "Command to Look" can be practiced by experimenting with styles of dress and cosmetics, and via a projected Will.

Regarding immortality -- well, there are about as many beliefs regarding this as there are individual magicians. Some believe that immortality is achieved by strengthening the Will prior to Death. Some believe "psychic" or "life force" vampirism is necessary. Some believe that all human spirits are already immortal. Some believe all human psyches survive death, but then must know how to survive the "second" or "astral death." The method of this most alluring of the Vampyre's powers must be defined and explored by the individual magician according to their own studies.

Any of these traits taken alone for study and eventual perfection give on an interesting little power to add to their magical "arsenal." However, if one is truly studying the "awakening" of the Vampyric Essence and spends time developing each and all of these various talents, we have the makings of a very powerful magicians. Study never ends, of course, and each new "power" gives the magician just one more tool for self-awareness and evolution. This in turn strengthens the Vampyric talents, which again in turn empower the magician's evolution. This is the evolutionary Path of the Vampyre. (Complexities, and even dangers, of the Path beyond this simple description exist, of course, but are beyond the scope of this post.) The study of the Vampyric Essence is not for everyone. It is merely another Path for personal evolution. The concepts seem to resonate well with some personalities, while the image and archetype are abhorrent to others. Those on this particular magical Path tend to recognize one another, sometimes even before the other magician knows they would find this method intriguing. This is what is known as being "of the Blood." Vampyres tend to recognize kindred spirits.

Your individual Vampyric Essence is what you make of it. Each Vampyre, like each magician, is unique. The Vampyre may be seen as the next stage of human evolution, as the practice of magical Vampyrism (as opposed to vampirism) forces one to transcend common lower human traits and cultivate an aristocratic bearing, eloquence, and pride in Being.

The Path of the Vampyre is based on personal evolution. It's methods and trappings are sometimes Gothic-Victorian, though without the restriction and repression of these times in history. Emphasis is placed on the love of life, and conversely, the Understanding that Death is not to an experience to long for, but is merely a moment of great change. Vampyres tend to believe in immortality of the psyche, and live their lives based on this knowledge. And with this realization of the reality of continual evolution, an ever higher and exhalted state of Being is continually sought.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

"Real Vampires"- how can this be anything but a contradiction in terms? We all know about vampires. Stock characters of fiction, guaranteed box-office draws, the media vampire has been familiar to us since childhood. Generally speaking, our blood-suckers appear with a tongue planted firmly in one toothy cheek-from Bela Lugosi hamming it up in the 1950's, to last summer's teenage "vamp" movies, to Count Chocula breakfast cereal, the media seldom treat the vampire as truly fearsome. The stereotyped vampire traits are familiar to any child: vampires have big fangs, sleep in coffins, are instantly incinerated by sunlight, and are best dispatched by a stake through the heart. But the most important "fact" that we all know of course is that there are no such things.

Of course, in terms of the mythical, literary and cinematic conventions, we are correct: there are no "legions of the undead" stalking the unwary. We have explained the folklore with politics, misunderstood diseases, and hysteria, the literary and cinematic images with psychology, history, and sociology. We of the 20th century are confident that vampires could not really exist. But then, most of us are never forced to think otherwise. For a number of people, the concept of vampires becomes a critical and often lifelong concern. To live with, love, or befriend a real vampire is to encounter a set of problems which may demand expanding the boundaries of one's accepted reality. To come to terms with being a real vampire oneself is to face a lifetime's karmic challenge.

Some people reading this article already know this. The rest are probably thinking, "Real Vampires, give me a break! Sure, there are some pretty weird people out there, but all they need is a good therapist." Yes, there are people who take on all the trappings of a gothic novel: dressing in black, claiming or pretending to be "vampires" in the supernatural sense, wearing capes, sleeping in boxes, even getting their teeth capped. There are more frightening people who seek to torture or kill animals or human beings in order to gain power, emotional release or sexual thrill, and who sometimes call themselves (or are called) "vampires". But most of these individuals are troubled people who have been attracted by the cultural myths about the vampire: supernatural powers (because they feel powerless), overwhelming sexuality (because most of them have sexual issues and no true relationships), immortality (because they fear aging and death). Individuals like these are the most recent "explanation" for humanity's persistent belief in vampires. But beyond and behind all the folklore, the psychological theories, the role playing, even the traditional spiritual assumptions, lies the real truth about vampires.

The field of vampirology is complex and mysterious. There are many aspects to the vampire phenomenon, and they would require several books to fully explore. One aspect of vampirism which frequently troubles magickal, spiritual and other small groups, the most common form of vampire, is found among living people who share with us the benefits and disadvantages of physical existence on this plane, yet are not quite human. These people appear on the surface to be somewhat eccentric members of society, yet their outward idiosyncrasies only hint at how different they are from those around them.

Each of us incarnates for a lifetime with a certain way of relating to the physical world through the vehicle of our physical body. A vampire is a person born with an extraordinary capacity to absorb, channel, transform, and manipulate "pranic energy" or life force. She also has a critical energy imbalance which reels wildly from deficit to overload and back again. This capacity for handling energy is a gift, but the constant imbalance of her own system is the cause of the negative behavior patterns and characteristics which may be notable about a vampiric person.

Real vampires do not necessarily drink blood-in fact, most of them do not. Blood-drinking and vampirism have been confused to the extent that for the average person, a vampire is defined as something that drinks blood (such as a "vampire bat"). But when we look beyond casual assumptions to the details of common beliefs, we find something quite different. Throughout both folklore and literature, there is an understanding that vampires require energy or life force. Many old folktales accept that vampires suck blood, yet never describe this actually happening. The victims slowly decline and waste away, and the survivors assume that some evil fiend is draining them of blood. They know that the Bible says, "the blood is the life", and anyone who was losing their life force must be losing blood. Yet, in many instances the vampire's "attack" does not even involve physical contact. In others, it is clearly sexual energy which is exchanged.1

Fresh blood is the highest known source of pranic energy (life force).2 Human beings have practiced blood-drinking for many reasons throughout history, but drinking blood alone does not indicate that a person is a vampire. Only real vampires can directly absorb the pranic energy in fresh blood, and for this reason some real vampires are attracted to blood and find different means of obtaining it.3 However, it is a rare vampire who cannot absorb energy in much more subtle ways. This is the mechanism that causes real vampires to inflict harm on others and themselves if they fail to recognize what is happening and do conscious work on transforming their inner natures. Vampires are no more likely to be either malicious or spiritually aware than the general population, but without awareness, they can spend their lives making themselves and others unhappy, and will continue to incarnate in this pattern until they take action to change it.

There are a number of external symptoms of vampirism, but it is important to realize that some of them are found in ordinary human behavior. Real vampires are identifiable partly because they have a majority of the symptoms, not just one or two. But more significantly, real vampires are distinguished by a certain quality to the energy. While anyone reading a description of the symptoms and behavior patterns might find a few that apply to people he knows, or even to himself, real vampires have a way of standing out vividly to everyone who interacts with them. There are few people who do not know at least one vampire.

Physically, vampires are usually "night people"" on a biochemical level. They have inverted circadian rhythms, with body cycles such as temperature peaks, menstrual onset, and the production of sleep hormones in the brain occurring at the opposite time of day from most people. They have difficulty adjusting to daytime schedules and frequently work nights. They tend to be photosensitive, avoiding sunlight, sunburning easily, and having excellent night vision. Their vitality ranges widely, and they can be vigorous and active one day, depressed and languorous the next.

They frequently have digestive trouble. Even those with cast-iron stomachs have many issues with food that are rooted in their constant hunger for energy. Contrary to the image of the vampire as thin, many real vampires are troubled by obesity because of a hunger that makes them food addicts, and a system that is sluggish in processing physical food. They are also sometimes troubled by other substance addictions for the same reasons, but since their systems are tuned to pranic energy more than to processing physical substance, they may not be as sensitive to drugs and alcohol as an ordinary person would be.

Emotionally and physically, vampires are unpredictable, moody, temperamental and overwhelming. The major distinguishing characteristic of real vampires as opposed to ordinary people who share those qualities is the vampire's intensity. Vampires are extremely intense people. They are frequently given nicknames such as "the black hole." When others talk about them (usually to complain about them), vampires are often described by such terms as "needy," "attention-seeking," "grandstanding," "manipulative," "exhausting," "draining," "monopolizes the conversation," "jealous," "huge ego," and so on. A vampire's emotions are deep, fervent, and powerful, and she usually displays great psychic ability and has uncontrolled magickal and psychic experiences. Vampires are also empaths, and while they remain unconscious of their natures, they are frequently "psychic sponges" who simply absorb vibrations from everywhere, with the expected emotional instability resulting.

A "hungry" vampire -- one whose energy level is imbalanced to the deficit side -- becomes an involuntary psychic vortex, drawing all pranic energy in the area towards her. When the energy does not flow in fast enough -- and it is typical of vampires that the energy never flows fast enough for them -- she will begin manifesting behavior patterns to increase the amount of conscious attention she gets from others. For this reason, some vampires develop a pattern of being aggressively confrontational, or of constantly antagonizing people with whom they have relationships. Nearly all vampires, whatever ploys they use, have a talent for attracting (or distracting) the attention of everyone present.

Once a vampire overloads on energy, she reverses her behavior patterns. She may become morose, silent, withdrawn and introverted. Some vampires become maniacally cheerful when they are satiated, but even their good moods seem to annoy others, and it is more typical for vampires to be infamous as wet blankets. "Hungry" and "overload" phases can occur within a few minutes or last for days at a time. Vampires are commonly loners, in part because they feel so different from those around them, but also because they have a need to control the degree of contact they have with sources of energy.

Real vampires are not the demonic fiends of Christianized folklore, but as long as they refuse to accept their inner nature, their bad reputation is not undeserved. Unconscious vampires have a tendency to reach adulthood with less than the average level of social skill and general finesse, and tend to be selfish and self-centered. The demands of their own energy systems are so distracting to them that it is difficult for them to pay attention to the needs of others. Their relationships tend to be disasters. Different vampires develop different patterns according to what works best for them in their life situation, but several patterns are common. The "femme fatale" or "lady-killer" vampire forms a continuous series of sexual connections with one partner at a time, dropping each unfortunate lover as they become too exhausted (or defensive) to support the vampire's energy needs. Other vampires form a long-term relationship with a single person: either another vampire whose energy cycle complements their own, or a person who derives satisfaction from being a psychic servant or martyr. A common pattern, especially in young adults, is to continuously join social, religious, political and magickal groups and either blow them apart or end up being thrown out. Vampires may go through roommates, housing situations, magickal groups, jobs and lovers like so much Kleenex.

Many people find that they feel "creepy" or "weird" around a vampire. This is usually due to the effects of one's own life force being drawn towards the vampire's vortex. Most people feel uncomfortable and distracted when their energy is pulled away from themselves. In addition to this, a common result of such an energy drain is for the aura to pull in tightly towards the body, and this causes a prickling sensation on the skin -- the "creepy-crawlies."

It is no more common for vampires to be psychopaths or killers than it is for any random person on the street. However, a prolonged, or very involved, relationship with a vampire can put a severe strain on the emotional and psychic energy systems of an ordinary person. Folklore suggests that victims of a vampire become vampires themselves. In reality, people who have been seriously "drained" -- that is, have had their own energy pulled off balance into a deficit -- also become psychic vortices which pull life force away from other living things. However, they are never as powerful as a true vampire, and unlike vampires, quickly recover and stabilize. True vampires are born the way they are -- no one can be "turned into a vampire." However, years of energy depletion can lead to health problems ranging from depression and malaise to a suppressed immune system and susceptibility to serious illnesses. Most people will break off the relationship before it gets that far.

Many vampires are attracted to magickal paths. In a magickal working group, their ability to wreak havoc is increased because of the psychic openness and trust that exist there. But there can be a benefit, as well. Some vampires become aware of their true natures and choose to undertake serious work to transform themselves. As soon as they begin doing so, they become more acceptable working partners and companions. Once in control of their capacity for handling energy, they become extraordinary magicians and healers. Their ability to hold the attention of others gives them the potential to be fine leaders and teachers. Ultimately, the purpose of vampires is not to plague the universe but to facilitate its healing. Vampirism is the dark, or unfocused, side of a certain kind of psychic talent, one which has been developing for many lifetimes. It is destructive only when a vampire either refuses to face the truth about herself and work with her abilities, or when she chooses to play out a sinister role because of the illusion of power it gives her.

Because of this, many of the vampire characteristics described above are far less evident in the most powerful vampires, the ones who have done considerable work on their inner selves. Many of these are poised, pleasant, competent individuals, with great personal power. They have come to terms with who and what they are, and no longer exhibit the negative qualities associated with "psychic vampirism." 4 Unfortunately, unconscious vampires are far more common than evolved ones, and it is these troubled souls who more usually appear in magickal groups.

There is no "generic advice" to give those who believe they may be dealing with a real vampire. Those who are so inclined might try to help a friend or fellow group member explore their inner nature and come to terms with their destructive behaviors. Those who feel victimized can choose to end the relationship. Each case is different, and can only be judged by the individuals concerned. But it is important for anyone involved in magickal or psychic work to understand that vampires are a real phenomenon, and that, like all perils, they should not be greeted with fear or anger. Nothing is evil by nature -- only by choice. Terror of discovery (followed by ridicule or rejection) inhibits the self-development of many real vampires. When they reach out for friendship, they are often reaching out for help.

A person who believes she may be a real vampire herself has a long and difficult process ahead of her. The most important step on her path is complete self-awareness: of her relationships, patterns, energy levels, and all other personal qualities. The most challenging work may often be summarized in the simplest of terms. Knowledge, awareness, and control are the lessons real vampires must learn in order to harness their abilities. If real vampires are not the immortals of fiction, they can at least be confident of one thing: for better or worse, they will keep the qualities they develop for many lives to come.

NOTE: The author welcomes inquiries from readers
with a personal interest in the subject of vampirism.
She is available at vyrdolak@net1plus.com.
Readers wishing for more information about vampire lore
in general are referred to the Bibliography.

NOTES

1. For a thorough examination of traditional vampire folklore, see the works of Montague Summers and Anthony Masters.
2. Other high sources of pranic energy include semen, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the breath of living animals. Meat -- filled with chemicals, long dead, refrigerated, frozen and "aged" (partially decomposed) as it is -- contains almost none. Many real vampires, aside from drinking blood, are vegetarians.
3. For a somewhat flawed but interesting look at blood-drinking and vampirism, see Stephen Kaplan. Leonard Wolf explores this subject from a more philosophical and personal viewpoint.
4. This is not to suggest that even evolved vampires are always comfortable to be around. They remain unpredictable, intense, emotional, and altogether overwhelming personalities. Most are remarkable sexually, and all still draw energy, although they can generally control this to some extent. Furthermore, this article is not intended to mislead -- real vampires, even evolved ones, do sometimes drink blood in order to obtain their energy. Those who understand the many ways that life "gives way" to nurture more life will see this as no more unnatural than eating live vegetables or animals for food.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Stephen Kaplan, Vampires Are (ETC Publications, 1984)
  Anthony Masters, The Natural History of the Vampire (Berkley Publishing Corp., 1972)
• Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula (New York Graphic Society, 1972)
  Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (University Books, 1960)
• Montague Summers, The Vampire in Europe (The Aquarian Press Limited, 1980)
• James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Duke University Press, 1981)
• Leonard Wolf, A Dream of Dracula (Popular Library, 1972)

Throughout history there have been many reports of criminal vampirism and cannibalism. Some as famous as the Hanover Vampire; others not as famous, but as equally intriguing. This essay selects legendary cases of vampirism/cannibalism throughout history. Most of the cases are early twentieth century with the odd classic or modern day case thrown in for contrast.

One of the most infamous vampire related mass murderers was Fritz Haarmann (1879 - 1925), who with his two accomplices was responsible for the deaths of at lest twenty and as many as fifty young men. He was known as a vampire because of his cannibalism and habit of biting his victims in the throat.

He was a child molester and a homosexual, and spent much time in a sanatorium after being discharged from the army. After being released he rejoined the army, this time serving with an elite group, distinguishing himself throughout World War I.

A civilian again during Germany's post war era, he opened a cook shop and worked as an informer. By this time he was already a murderer and then in 1919 he met Hans Grans, a fellow homosexual, who came do dominate Haarmann and lead him into the gaudy underworld of Hanover's homosexual community.

It was here that Haarmann found a seemingly endless supply of prey. He often brought young men home with him and murdered them in a grisly fashion; all under the watchful eye of Grans.

Another mysterious accomplice entered the scene and aided in body disposal. The victims' clothing was sold on by Haarmann, and the most horrid of all acts was that Haarmann actually sold flesh to unsuspecting people for human consumption.

Finally, the police captured him. They visited his lodgings on previous occasions when bodies were hidden just feet away. He confessed his crimes in minute detail, proclaiming insanity but declaring he was forced to commit the crimes whilst in a trance.

Fritz Haarmann was executed in April 1925; ironically he was beheaded, which is one of the most common and affective ways to dispose of a vampire. His brain was removed by officials and given to scientists at the Göttingen University to be studied. This in more ways than one granted him a kind of vampiric immortality in itself.

Another infamous murderer of vampiric connection is John Haigh. He was more commonly known as the Vampire of London and Acid Killer. The case shocked the British public when the details of his crimes came to light.

A onetime choirboy, John George Haigh was the son of a fanatically pious and puritanical family that forced him to lead a life utterly devoid of social activities and filled with threat of eternal punishment for sin. In this environment he grew up repressed, becoming fixated on religion and blood, with the increasingly uncontrollable urge to drink blood.

By the time he was finally caught in 1949, he had murdered nine people, in each case he drank the blood of his victims, including that of a young girl.

Assuming that he could not be prosecuted if there were no bodies, he routinely disposed of the corpses in drums of sulphuric acid, for which he earned the nickname 'Acid Killer'. What made Haigh so horrible in the public's mind was his absence of remorse, his seemingly normal physical appearance and the detailed often unbelievable accounts of his crimes, told in an inhuman matter-of-fact style.

Of gruesome interest was his own recitation of his early life, including his experiences as a junior organist for Wakefield Cathedral, where he spent hours gazing at the statue of the bleeding Christ, dying on the cross. Haigh was also distinguished by the apparent absence of motivational sexual content in his cravings, a characteristic commonly exhibited by other serial killers.

The Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory (1560 - 1614) portrayed one of the most historical accounts of vampirism. She was a member of the powerful Bathory family and later became known as the 'Bloody Countess' for her multiple murders and obsession with blood.

Married to the warrior count Ferenz Nadasdy, Bathory spent many nights alone while her husband was fighting the Turks. She developed interests that were beyond obsessive in the subjects of her beauty, pleasure, the occult, and in most depraved kinds of sadism, which were normally directed towards her serving girls, with whom she engaged in acts of lesbianism before murdering them with the help of her lieutenants.

Bathory became convinced that blood held the key to halting the process of her ever-increasing age. This idea came about when she hit out at a servant; the blood that splashed onto her hands seemingly, to her, made the skin smoother and younger looking. Henceforth she believed that drinking, bathing in and showering in the blood of young virgins cured the fact that she was ageing, resulting in the murder of hundreds of servant girls in her service.

The exact amount of virgins she murdered will never be known and various accounts have their ideas; some say as many as several hundred others as few as fifty. Inevitably the truth became known, and in 1610 the countess and her henchmen were arrested, tried and convicted. Her accomplices were executed or imprisoned, and Bathory was walled up in her bedchamber at Castle Csejthe.

Four years later the guards who attended to her peered through the slot used to give her food to discover that she was dead. The 'living vampire' was no more, although her memory was kept alive by legends and tales. Several films were made about here, including Countess Dracula (1971), Blood Castle (1972), and Ceremonia Sangrienta (1972).

Martin Dummolard was a late-nineteenth-century mass murderer in France, known as the 'Monster of Montluel', whose crimes were made more macabre because of the control exercised over him by his obese mistress, Justine Lafayette.

After meeting Justine while in her Lyon boarding house, the youthful, handsome Dummolard fell completely under her spell. They were both necrophiles, Dummolard drinking the blood of his victims and bringing the fleshier parts home, which he served up for Justine.

Despite the terror that broke out in Montluel, he was able to murder some eighty girls. The capture of these 'vampires' in 1888 was followed up by a sensational trail. Justine was guillotined (again the common destruction of vampires - beheading) and Dummolard was confined to an asylum. He died early in this century and is ranked as one of the most hideous of the so-called vampires of history.

Peter Kürten, the so-called 'Vampire of Düsseldorf (1883 - 1931) he was responsible for murdering or assaulting twenty-nine people during his reign of terror that lasted for years, ruining the city's reputation amongst Europeans.

The son of an alcoholic and a long-suffering mother, whom he revered, Kürten worked as a truck driver, appearing as a boring, bespectacled little man with a moustache and neat clothes. As was true with other mass murderers, beneath this quiet exterior lurked his true demeanour as a remorseless killer.

His victims were strangled and raped, then their throats were slit and their blood consumed by Kürten, who sought to find some release from his unstoppable cravings. Eventually marrying a woman who fulfilled his need for a mother figure, he was a devoted husband by day, setting out at night on his ghastly adventures. His murders probably would have continued had he not confessed his crimes to his astonished wife.

The police picked him up after his wife turned him in; he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, never appealing his conviction. Adding to the horror surrounding Kürten were his letters to the parents of the victims, in which he described how some humans were alcoholics, whereas he needed blood.

The inspiration for the Fritz Lang masterpiece M (1931), Kürten made the statement: "You cannot understand me. No one can understand me." His story was told in the 1964 French-Italian film Le Vampire de Düsseldorf, directed and starring Robert Hossein.

More modern day cases of vampirism/cannibalism, are those of Issei Sagawa known also as the Japanese Cannibal and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Sagawa was a student in Paris who developed an irresistible urge to taste human flesh. In the beginning of his murders a dismembered body was found in a Paris park. Things turned for the worse when police discovered parts of the body had been eaten and that they were dealing with a cannibal.

Sagawa was caught and placed in Henri Colin psychiatric hospital in Villejuif. During his stay at the Henri Colin Asylum, three psychiatrists examined Sagawa. One of them, Dr Bernard Defer, believed there was no cure for perverted sexual fantasies. He told the authorities Sagawa's 'psychosis' was permanent and he would probably have to be kept at Villejuif for the rest of his life, which would have cost the French taxpayer a small fortune. This practical consideration was probably part of the reason why the French authorities decided to get rid of the problem by deporting Sagawa to Japan.

In 1985, Sagawa was deported back to Japan. As he stepped of the plane he was overwhelmed by a mob of journalists and photographers. This was a man who had killed and eaten a woman and to all intense and purposes got away with it. From the airport he was taken to the Matsuzawa Hospital in Tokyo; this was a plan devised by his family to prevent a public outcry. But despite all this people still felt they needed justice.

No one at the hospital was pleased at having to deal with their new patient and the Japanese psychiatrists believed him to be an ordinary sex criminal who had deceived the French into believing he was psychotic and therefor not responsible for his actions. 'I think he is sane and guilty,' declared hospital superintendent Tsuguo Kanego. 'He should be in prison'.

The Japanese applied to Bruguières in Paris for Sagawa's file with a view of bringing him to justice in Japan. However, Bruguières refused to hand over a single document. In due course the Japanese came to the same decision as the French; they washed their hands of the whole incident.

On 12th August 1986, the Matsuzawa Hospital discharged its most notorious patient, as he was only a voluntary patient, into the community to begin his life over again as an ordinary, private citizen.

The Jeffrey Dahmer case is similar to Sagawa's and many others, yet so different in other aspects. Dahmer was the Milwaukee serial killer who killed 17 young men and kept part of their bodies in his home.

Pure chance led police to the home of Jeffery Dahmer in the summer of 1991. What they found inside had the seasoned officers reeling in horror, as they uncovered evidence of years of murder and mutilation. Tracey Edwards, a 32-year-old was nearly Dahmer's 18th victim, but he fortunately escaped and flagged a police car down, which began the investigation into the murders.

After killing each of his victims, Dahmer would decapitate them and he often kept parts of the bodies - torso, skull - in his home. Occasionally he would have oral sex with the corpse before dismembering it. Certain murders were excluded from his trail as he Dahmer was drunk and had no recollection of his actions.

When Dahmer was caught a televised trail began and although it was known by all, including Dahmer himself that he was guilty, it still lasted for three weeks. On the 14th of February 1992 the jury found Dahmer guilty on every charge and sentenced to over nine centuries in prison (quite a lengthy sentence which the folkloric vampire would have easily passed). Dahmer addressed the court with a speech and apologised for the pain he had caused. After spending five minutes with his father and stepmother, he was led away from public view forever.

On the morning of November 28th 1994, Dahmer went to carry out his work detail in the showers of the prison gym and was left for some 20 minutes during which he was not under direct supervision. Dahmer was later found by his guards lying in a blood-spattered shower room with severe head injuries. Despite being rushed to a nearby hospital he was pronounced dead around an hour later.

25-year-old Christopher Scarver, Dahmer's assailant and fellow inmate, claimed that he was the 'Son of God' and had been given divine orders to carry out the murder. He had received a life sentence in 1992 and would not be up for parole until 2042. Scarver was charged for both murders and referred for psychiatric tests.

· · · · ·

All of these cases seem to stem from psychological and obsessive problems. Fritz Haarmann and Martin Dummolard were cases that involved psychological displacement, but harboured the more gruesome fact of actually being talked and mentally pressured into committing the crimes for others as well as themselves.

Bathory is one of the many cases not noted here who's psychological and obsessive was increased more with her interest in sadism and the occult.

Dahmer is a case that is so similar yet so unique. I believe that he was fully aware of his actions and did not have any psychotic disease other than the fact he is seriously unstable.

Sagawa on the other hand is what could be considered as 'curious'. He only killed one person (and although killing is not to be justified it clearly set him apart from the likes of others that killed more than ten times). Despite this it is quite ignorant of the French and Japanese authorities to not at least investigate Sagawa's case further.

I suppose all people have a vampiric/cannibalistic curiosity in their mind, although not everyone will yield to it. All in all no one can be forgiven or forgotten for crimes that involve the consumption of human flesh and blood for means none other than to ease curiosity or the stomach.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

You're cover-shopping at the bookstore. If you're lucky there's a horror section: otherwise, you may be in sci-fi, fantasy, romance, or that wondrous catchall, "novels." You want to find vampire books, of course. Other than the word "vampire" in the title, what will tip you off? You look at the cover paintings. A masked woman gazes at you haughtily, fangs like an adder's at the corners of her mouth; disembodied red lips smile around the claw-like teeth protruding between them; a gilt-framed portrait could be period art ... except for the tusk-tips resting on the man's lower lip.

Fangs.

Other icons are identified with vampires: the silhouette of a bat; a red-lined full-length cape with a chokingly high collar; an exposed neck with two holes (bleeding optional); a single drop of blood depending from a pair of red lips; a widow's peak of black hair; a stake and hammer. But none tell us "vampire" so quickly, so surely, so alluringly as fangs.

Why do those pointy teeth say "vampire" to us? And why do we love them so?

Vampires haven't always had fangs. European vampire lore does not list fangs among the vampire's traits. Historical accounts of vampires include blood in the coffin and blood on the mouth, but no fangs for drawing of said blood. The earliest fictional vampires are similarly fangless. Polidori's description of Lord Ruthven in "The Vampyre" (1819) makes no mention of his teeth; one of the great missed opportunities to mention fangs occurs in John Stagg's 1810 poem "The Vampyre," in which the eponymous fiend is caught in the very act and

But no fangs.

Perhaps the earliest literary instance of a fanged vampire occurs in the first chapter of Varney the Vampyre (1840): "With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth...." (That this is indeed an early description is attested by use of the expression "fang-like" to refer to the teeth, as opposed to simply calling them fangs.) A few decades later the eponymous Carmilla (1871) had "the sharpest tooth -- long, thin, pointed like an awl"; "the tooth of a fish." All the vampires of Dracula (1897) had pointy teeth: the three vampire women of the castle, the transformed Lucy, and of course Dracula himself. One of the earliest cinematic vampires, Max Schreck's portrayal of Graf Orlock in Nosferatu (1922) sported prominent ratlike incisor-fangs.

Early vampires of the stage and screen, however, in general did not use dental prosthetics. In the case of the stage, vampire's fangs might not have been practical: anything big enough to see likely would have interfered with an actor's ability to deliver his lines. For movie vampires, however, this need not present a problem. Yet Bela Lugosi's classic portrayal of Dracula did not include fangs, nor indeed did Lugosi ever wear them as part of a vampire role. The first talkie vampire to sport fangs was Atif Kaptan's Drakula in the Turkish production Drakula Istanbulda (1953); the first widely-known portrayal of a fanged movie vampire was Christopher Lee's Dracula in Horror of Dracula (1958).

So even in fiction, even in movies, vampires haven't always had fangs.

And fangs certainly aren't unique to vampires. Many species of animals, from snakes to apes, have two long, pointed upper teeth near the front of the jaw. Even in normal humans the canines are a little longer and sharper than the neighboring teeth. Yet snakes, tigers, chimpanzees, and so forth have no connection to vampires. Vampire bats have canines like many carnivores yet, ironically, they use their incisors to draw blood. And some fictional vampires do not use their teeth for blood-draining: in the movie The Hunger, the "vampires" carried small knives for that purpose.

Fangs are not unique to vampires, are not necessary for drawing blood, do not occur in the earliest Western vampire fiction, and are absent from traditional Western vampire lore. Yet these are foremost among the images (or at least among the foremost images) associated with vampires in popular culture, so essential that artists often violate basic mechanical principles in order to include them in their portrayals of vampires. Look at those book covers again (and stop drooling!). It is not physically possible for vertical fangs to protrude downward between closed human lips as many cover paintings show. But the advertising people want the fangs there. They make for good marketing, if not good mechanics.

None of which answers the question: Why?

Here are some thoughts.

As a visual indicator of the vampire condition, fangs have advantages over most other possible symbols. For one thing, they are, for lack of a better word, 'innate'. A vampire can have fangs without turning into a bat, being swathed in a cape, or wearing an ankh or medallion. And despite their lack of folkloric attestation, fangs for a vampire make intuitive sense. If you're going to drink blood, you've got to get it somehow; what more reasonable than to pierce the skin with something sharp ... like a tooth? Like, in point (ouch!) of fact, a fang?

Fangs give the vampire's appearance an unhuman touch more understated than almost any other animal-like trait could. The fanged vampire is visually a human-animal hybrid, his or her face a human facade that can, in a flash, reveal the gleaming weapons of a beast. And this animal connection may well add to the vampire's appeal, for fangs suggest the strength of the lion, the fierceness of the wolf, the speed of the striking snake. Yet for all their connotations, fangs -- elongated canines -- have an elegant simplicity, a grace that smooths over the raw animal power they represent. A few works of fiction (most notably The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas) and some lore give the vampire a tongue- prick, but its folkloric authenticity can't compete with the aesthetic appeal of the fang.

Fangs in a vampire's mouth necessarily have phallic overtones, but they lack the penis-like grotesqueness of a pointed or barb-bearing tongue. It's difficult to associate a thrusting tongue with any socially acceptable behavior. Fangs, however, suggest biting, an act that can be performed in public (at least while eating). Although not explicitly sexual, biting retains strong sexual and pre-sexual overtones related to both power and pleasure. Biting with fangs can be considered a sublimated form of sexual intercourse, even of rape. However, the mouth is not merely an erogenous zone: it is the part of the body that we consciously control literally from day one. In Freudian terms, it is associated with the earliest stage of development (oral): oral stimuli, and oral acts, can yield satisfaction at a level even more profound than the purely sexual. Thus biting, the most visceral form of oral aggression, appeals to us at the deepest instinctual level. The tot who wants a Halloween costume with vampire fangs recognizes this, even though he (or she) can't articulate the appeal of those pointy teeth. Phallic interpretations notwithstanding, it may be that their location -- the mouth -- accounts more for their charisma than do the fangs themselves. Whether we fear vampires or identify with them, their fangs intensify our focus on the mouth, whether as an erogenous zone or an instrument of aggression -- or both.

Framed by the snarling lips of a fiend or underlying the kiss of a demon lover, fangs are more than a marketing gimmick (though they certainly are that). They are the steel beneath the velvet, strength and speed, pain and delight, the promise of devouring or being devoured -- all rolled into a snippet of dental enamel. Rather than question why the vampire's fangs appeal to us, perhaps we should ask: how can they not?

How indeed?

About those covers:

I took a little artistic license with my bookstore scenario in the first paragraph: given the varying dates of publication, it's unlikely that all covers described would have been visible in a bookstore at the same time. Here, at any rate, are the "cover vamps" I had in mind:

The masked, fanged woman graces the cover of Domination by Michael Cecilione (Zebra, 1993). The design with disembodied red lips is that of Blood Rites by Elaine Bergstrom (Jove, 1991). Gilt-framed eighteenth century-style paintings appear on P. N. Elrod's Jonathan Barrett paperbacks, all published by Ace: Red Death (1993), Death and the Maiden (1994), Death Masque (1995), and Dance of Death (1996).

Other covers, however, may fit some of these descriptions. Fangs are everywhere!

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

WHY IT BEGAN ---

They swept across the Bosphorus and into Eastern Europe with a vengeance, conquering the squabbling Slavs with ease. With them, they brought their middle eastern civilization, and some of their beliefs, but mostly they brought suffering. Suffering in the form of syphilis, leprosy, smallpox, tuberculosis... and God Himself seemed to turn against them, sending flood, earthquakes, and plague.

Wallachia struggled under the heel of the Ottoman Turks for decades at the end of the 14th century, until Mircea the Great, allied with Sigismund of Luxembourg, led a crusade against the infidel in 1395. But the dynasty their saviour established was often more terrible than the Turk. The House named Bassarab whelped four generations of despots, beginning with Vlad.

VLAD I

Sent to the court of Sigismund at an early age, he was inducted into the secret society of the Order of the Dragon in February 1431. For this honor, he was addressed by the landed lords of his homeland as Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon, and for evidence carried around his neck, on his shield, and on his coin, the image of a dragon hanging on a double cross.

But, the common folk did not understand the importance of the honor given by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. They only understood that the icon entertained by the house of Bassarab was identical to the orthodox image of the devil. And, since the word "Dracul" could be translated either "dragon" or "devil", it was not difficult for them to believe that Vlad was in league with dark and terrible forces.

He returned from the Roman court with the staff of office of Prince of Wallachia and governor of Transylvania, establishing his headquarters in the fortress of Sighisoara. From there, in 1434, he began his campaign to affirm his right to the throne and to remove the Turk from his lands. In 1436, he entered the capital of Tirgoviste and became Vlad I of Wallachia. His rule was short, bloody, and troubled. Forced by the death of Sigismund, his most powerful ally, in 1437, he signed a treaty with the Sultan Murad II of Turkey, going so far as to aid him in his raids on Transylvania, spilling the blood of his own.

VLAD II, CALLED TEPES (THE IMPALER)

While still in the bosom of Sigismund's protection, Vlad Dracul sired three legitimate sons, the second of whom was also named Vlad, born in December 1431. He was groomed from childhood as a prince of the blood: proud, cold, and unfeeling. His political science was that a prince should be feared rather than loved, and he carried that philosophy into his adult life.

Fascinated as a boy by death, in the form of hangings of criminals at the Jewler's Donjon near the castle where he grew up, Vlad the Younger soon showed himself a cunning and devious child. He avoided the fate of one of his brothers, who was buried alive by the boyars, or landowners, of Wallachia, as Vlad I's popularity waned.

Held by the Turks after his father's death, he served in the Turkish army as an officer, learning the art of torture and impalement. Finally escaping from the Sultan's forces, he hid away in Moldavia until, with the aid of a force put together at great effort, he was able to reclaim the Wallachian throne in 1456, at the age of 25. His ascent to the throne was greeted by the arrival of a comet in the skies over Europe, an event of dread for most, but for Vlad an auspicious sign. He worked its image into his coin, the Wallachian eagle on the reverse to remind the carrier to whom the comet referred. He fortified Bucharest against the return of the Turk, solidifying the resistance begun by the boyars Janos Hunyadi and Michael the Brave.

To cement his power, he had to remove the boyars from their lands. In the spring of 1457, on Easter day, he took a force and surrounded the boyars at feast. He took their wives and children and impaled them around the feast tables, then chained the men and carried them away as slave labor on his new palace.

Vlad's rule was harsh and cruel, the threat of impalement a constant deterrent to crime and disloyalty. A typical story of the time recalls this in vivid detail:

"Having asked the old, the ill, the lame, the poor, the blind, and the vagabonds to a large dining hall in Tirgoviste, Dracula ordered that a feast be prepared for them. On the appointed day, Tirgoviste groaned under the heavy weight of the large number of beggars who had come. The prince's servants passed out a batch of clothes to each one, then they led the beggars to a large mansion where tables had been set... The beggars had a feast that became legendary... Most of them became dead drunk... and became incoherent, they were suddenly faced with fire and smoke on all sides. The prince had ordered his servants to set the house on fire... the doors were locked... When the fire naturally abated, there was no trace of any living soul."

The tales of Vlad Dracula's cruelty became legendary. Romanian folklore holds hundreds of horribly graphic descriptions of punishments he meted out on his subjects for crimes, real and imagined. He is accused of the deaths of 40,000 to 100,000 people, and not just by impalement. He employed strangling, hanging, burning, boiling, skinning, roasting, and burying them alive. He is known to have ordered cannibalism on prisoners.

At the end of his haunted life, Vlad Dracula is supposed to have been buried at Snagov, under the monastery he helped rebuild, on an island in the middle of a lake. The forest of Vlasia surrounds the lake, whose still waters were said to have been witness to atrocities committed by Dracula there in the ancient monastery.

HOW IT WAS CONTINUED ---

Although the last of the Bassarabs, Prince Constantine, died in 1658, the memory of the viciousness and pure evil of the family endured in legend. The simple folk of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, lived in constant terror of the vampyr, the ghosts of men like Vlad, whose bloodlust was what kept them alive even after their time on this world had expired. It was difficult for outsiders to understand the depth of this fear, ingrown to the region, without firsthand experience of its manifestation. As the region passed from one political regime to another, the people went about their lives steeped in the past, permanently stunted in their psychic growth by the trauma of the rule of Vlad the Impaler. After Dracula's death, books on his exploits were circulated widely in Europe, their sales and popularity for a while rivalling even that of the Bible.

COUNTESS ERZSEBET BATHORY OF HUNGARY

The year 1610 was a bloody one for the inhabitants of the Castle Csejthe. Authorities, led there by a young woman who claimed to have been abducted, attacked, and barely escaped with her life, found within its walls the remains of hundreds of girls and young women. The owner of the castle, the Countess Erzsebet Bathory, was accused of having drunk and bathed in the blood of nearly 650 virgins, in the hope it would rejuvenate her. Her accomplices were tried and beheaded, but the Countess was condemned to be walled into her own chambers, where she was kept, fed through a small hole in the wall, until her death in 1640.

PETER PLOGOJOWITZ

In 1725, in the village of Kisilova, a man named Peter Plogojowitz died. Ten weeks later, he was back, supposedly responsible for the deaths of others. In the next several years, the beginnings of the actual vampire legend as we know it today, would be formed.

ARNOD PAOLE

He claimed to have been bothered by a vampyr, and to have eaten earth from its grave and smear himself with its blood to escape it. Yet, when Arnod Paole died from an accident around 1730 in the village of Medvegia, he was shortly afterword supposed to have been responsible for at least 4 more deaths. At the behest of the authorities, his body was exhumed, and he was found, after 40 days in the grave, to be in a passable state.

In a fit of paranoia, the authorities exhumed all the bodies in the cemetery. Of the 20 or so bodies recently deceased (within the past 8 weeks), they discovered 11 were in a state of apparent vampirism. The bodies had apparently grown new skin, hair, and nails, and fresh blood was discovered in them when

dissected. Paole had apparently been very busy, and indiscriminate in his favors, victimizing a child of 8 days as easily as a woman of 60 years.

DR. JOHN POLIDORI'S "THE VAMPYRE"

In 1819, the "New Monthly Magazine of London" published a story entitled "The Vampyre" and attributed its authorship to Lord Byron. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the author had actually been Byron's doctor, John Polidori (1795-1821). The sexual nature of this tale was titilatting to the usually cold

British demeanor and set the stage for the seductive nature of the vampire tales to come. In appearance, the vampire, named Lord Ruthven, was gentlemanly and handsome, yet his temperament and deportment was most passionate and violent.

JAMES MALCOLM'S "VARNEY THE VAMPIRE"

In the middle of the 18th century Britain was inundated with what were called "Penny Dreadfuls." These mini-novels were like the comic books of today, though uncensored, and had an avid following. The character of "Varney the Vampire" (1846) starred in over 800 issues of these books, taking the readers through tales of horror, sex, and violence, and furthering the vision of the vampire as a blood-sucking monster who hypnotized his victims into submission.

"THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER"/ THE KNIGHT AZZO VON KLATKA

He was of the race that "turned night into day, and day into night," commanded wolves, and despised humankind. The author of his story is as unknown today as it was in 1860, when the story first appeared, but bits of his personality endure in today's vampires.

BRAM STOKER'S "DRACULA"

Drawing on the sources readily available in the last decade of the nineteenth century, including information provided by Arminius Vabery, a researcher for the British Museum, Abram Stoker (1847-1912) filled out the details of the nightmares that tortured his sleep and rendered the masterpiece Dracula in

1897. Written in the epistolary style peculiar to his time period, it has never been equalled for instilling horror in the reader.

WHERE IT STANDS ---

The appearance of Dracula at the turn of the century was taken as an announcement of the true nature of the vampire. Few changes have been wrought on its image since then, although recently attempts have been made to soften the vicious core of its image into a more palatable fare.

With the coming of motion pictures, the vampire found a new audience. From the genius of Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) and Browning's "Dracula" (1931) to the latest efforts by such diverse talents as Rice, Coppola, and King, the vampire leaps at us from the printed page, art, and motion picture. It has become a fixture in the imagination of modern civilization, the symbol of the darkness that resides within all of us.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

Are there vampires who dwell beneath the waters of the world?
What myth, legends, and folk tales surround them?
Are they normal vampires who just prefer water to the land?
Are they blood-drinking mermaids?
Are there any such vampires in fictional books or movies?

To fully answer such questions, a whole book would be required. But let me give some telling examples.

In myths, legends, and folk beliefs, I've found four categories vampiric or neo-vampiric beings who dwell in water or come out of the water.

(1) Revenants (i.e., undead humans) who dwell in or return from the sea, lakes, or streams.
(2) Mermaids or neo-mermaids who were not born human but can be classified as vampires or neo-vampires.
(3) Those who were born human but became vampiric, or neo-vampiric, mermaids or neo-mermaids after they died.
(4) Other vampiric or neo-vampiric, supernatural creatures who dwell under water.

For category (1), the best examples I've found are the "draugs" as described in Norwegian folk tales recorded in the 19'th and 20'th centuries. In these tales, the draug is most typically the undead, animated body of a person who had drowned at sea and come out of the water at night to attack the living. It isn't clear that they had a special appetite for blood. But the same can be said for many of the Eastern European revenants which are the basis of our fictional, literary vampires.

It seems worth mentioning that in a historic case where, on the Croatian Island of Lastova in the Adriatic Sea vampires were suspected to be the cause of an epidemic of disease. The vampire hunters' first suspect was a man who had drowned at sea. They were disappointed that they could not find the man's grave to unearth the corpse and impale it with stakes. When the vampire hunters were brought to trial by Church authorities for desecrating graves and corpses, one of them testified that it was a long held belief that those who drowned at sea became vampires. (A transcript of the trial testimony is contained in _The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism_ by Jan L. Perkowski. c. 1989)

For category (2), there are examples from myths and folklore.

Among my favorites is a legend which has lamias swimming the sea in like mermaids. They grasp the bow of a boat with their hands and ask the crew if Alexander the Great is dead. If the crew replies that he is still alive, the lamias, rejoicing at the tiding, gladly conduct the ship to its destination. If the crew replies that he is dead, they conjure up a storm which sinks the ship. The crew then drown. Since the lamia has a vampiric reputation going back to pagan Greek times, it doesn't seem to be a long stretch to suppose that the fate of the doomed crews involved more than merely drowning. And of course the most popular image of a lamia is the one in which she has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of serpent. I don't know if in this tale the lower body had the tail of a fish or not. Anyway, both fish and serpents have scales.

I find the malicious side of mermaid lore well expressed by Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh in their book, _Sea Enchantress_ (c. 1961), p. 13:

"....the mermaid is the femme fatale of the sea; she lures man to his destruction, and usually he goes unresisting to his doom."

In many Scottish tales, mermaids were gentle creatures. But this is not always the case. In the story of "The Laird of Lorntie", a lord was returning to his castle with a servant when he heard the cries for help from a beautiful woman in a nearby loch. She appeared to be drowning and the lord rushed off to save her. But the servant recognized the reality of the situation and rescued his master from his folly in the nick of time. After the servant explained his forceful rescue, the mermaid then admitted:

"Lorntie, Lorntie,
Were it na your man,
I had gart your heart's blood
Skirl in my pan."

There are also tales in which mermaids caused shipwreck by luring sailors into dangerous waters with their charm and beauty and devoured them as they drowned.

Good examples of this are among the folk tales of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, near the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Here the mermaids play the role of sirens - they would sing from rocks and their enchanting song would lure sailors to come dangerously close to these rocks. Then suddenly a terrible storm would arise and force the ships to crash into the rocks. The mermaids would then carry the sailors down into the depths of the sea and devour them.

The Channel Islanders called these mermaids 'seirenes'. But at least according to the testimony of one islander, a school teacher who saw six of them on a beach, they had the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish.

On the west coast of France there are also many places that have tales of siren-mermaids. It seems often the case here that the siren-mermaid led her victims to death for the sake of fiendish fun rather than to satisfy her appetite. But in one old song sung in Poitou, a diver searching for the golden keys of a princess is lured to his death by such a siren. The princess later tells the siren that she has reason enough to sing - she has the sea to drink and the princess's lover to eat.

There are also tales where a mermaid lures a man into the sea and then marries him, and they then live together beneath the sea and have children. In the legend of Matthew Trewella told in Cornwall, a beautiful mermaid came up a stream from the sea and heard Matthew singing as a church chorister. She lured him down into the sea. He was never heard again, but he could be heard singing in Pendour Cove to his mermaid bride. In another version, the mermaid took the complete form of a woman and attended the services of the church at Zennor for many generations before being enthralled with Matthew's singing. The congregation was already wondering about her since she had never aged through the years. And there is a sequel tale in which the skipper of a ship dropped anchor off Pendover Cove. The mermaid rose from the sea and complained to the skipper that his anchor was laying across the door to underwater home where she, Matthew, and their children lived. The skipper obligingly raises his anchor. When he returned to Zennor, he informed the people about the fate of Matthew Trewella.

For category (3), revenants who resemble mermaids, a good example of this is the 'rusalka'.

The rusalka is identified in Ukrainian and Russian lore as the ghostly soul of a young woman who died by drowning or that of an infant who was stillborn or who otherwise died unbaptized. The rusalka most typically appears to people as a beautiful young woman. But she might also appear in the form of a bird or a beast, a mermaid or a young boy. A rusalka's haunt was a river, a pond, a lake, or a bay. The rusalka had a reputation for appearing to a man as a beautiful young woman, leading him with her seductive appeal into the water, and then drowning him. In some tales where a rusalka is like a mermaid, she leads the man down to her beautiful castle beneath the water and marries him. But even in these tales the rusalka has a dark side - the soul of the seduced man is doomed to end in hell.

In Brittany, there is also a legend in which a wicked princess became a siren-mermaid after the great sea-gate of her city, Ys, was opened during a severe storm at high tide and the city was totally deluged. She had been seduced and tricked by the devil, in the form of a handsome young man, into providing him the keys to the sea gate. The princess drowned with most of the other people in the city. But then she returned from the dead as a siren-mermaid.

For category (4), other vampiric or neo-vampiric, supernatural creatures who dwell under water, there is, for one example, the water-horse.

The Celtic water-horse is most well known today as the kelpie. Variations of the kelpie can be found in the lore of Ireland, the Shetland Islands, the Isle of Man, the Scottish Lowlands and the Scottish Highlands.

Considering both shape-shifting ability and voraciousness, the kelpie of the Scottish Highland and the Island of Man in the Irish Sea was the most fearsome.

One of its tricks was to take the form of a beautiful horse and lure children onto its back. It then headed for the loch. After jumping into the loch with its victims, it devoured all of the flesh and blood within their bodies except for internal organs such as livers, hearts, and lungs, which then came floating to shore.

In human form, the Highlands kelpie sometimes behaved like a a true vampire. In one story, a kelpie took the form of an old woman and begged some girls tending cattle to share their shelter with her. The girls consented. One of the girls woke up in the middle of the night and saw the old lady sucking blood from one of the other girls. The girl managed to escape and tell the tale.

The Highlands kelpie also sometimes took the form of a handsome man to take advantage of women. Typically, he had trouble maintaining human form. In one tale of a woman being courted by a kelpie, the masquerade is foiled when the woman notices that the 'man' has horse-hoofs. In another, the man's hair begins to turn to sea weed.

The folk beliefs found on the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland include both the kelpie and the 'nucklelavee'. The nuckelavee somewhat resembles a centaur. The upper body is basically humanoid and the lower body is basically equine. But it had flippers instead of hooves, and it's head, like that of a cyclops, had only one eye. It had neither skin nor scales - the whole surface of its body displayed naked flesh with yellow veins through which blood pulsed like black tar. It would come to land to prey upon people and domestic animals. Also, its foul breath could blight the crops. It could not dwell in fresh water or cross over fresh water, and in the folk tales about it this often provided a way for a person to escape the creature's pursuit.

Also to be considered are the 'worms', the dragon-serpents of Anglo-Saxon, and Scottish lore. Some of these lived in the sea and can be considered to be sea serpents. But even the land versions often dwelled in wells and lochs. Both preyed upon humans and livestock, and their fowl breath could blight crops and cause epidemics of disease among humans.

So far I haven't found any clear-cut cases in myth, legend, or folktale where a mermaid or neo-mermaid was an outright blood-sucker. But it doesn't seem like too much of a leap to write a story about such a vamp. After all, if the 19'th century creators of the modern literary vampire such as Bram Stoker had got hung up in making their vampires exactly match those revenants in folklore which are their basis, they would not have succeeded in their efforts.

Bram Stoker indeed did write a story which involves both Medieval legends about the "worm" and the image of the lamia as a vampish snake-woman: _The Lair of the White Worm_. In this story, a gigantic, blood thirsty "Worm" dwells in a deep well on an estate in England whose history goes back to at least the time of the Roman occupation.

One of the story's protagonists, the uncle of the story's central hero, gives a neo-Darwinian explanation for the existence of such a creature and its presence in old legends and in their neighbor's well. In prehistoric times such enormous serpent-like creatures lived in the great swamps and marshes that surrounded the mouths of European rivers. As the climate changed, they adopted to dwelling in natural caverns and tunnels that extended from the bed of these wetlands, and as part of this they also developed the ability to tunnel through clay and other soils. At the same time, their mental powers evolved greatly.

The snake-woman in the story, Lady Arabella, is the widow who now owns the estate and its well. She was once a nice young girl but one day while out in the country side alone, she received a venomous bite. After she was found and brought home, she was at first severely ill. Then, suddenly, she suddenly had a remarkable recovery. But she was no longer a nice girl. The central hero's uncle deduces that she actually did die from the bite, and the White Worm took possession of her as soon as her own soul departed from her body.

The creature is still dependent on dwelling in the well in worm-form part of the time, but, in the form of Lady Arabella, it has taken full control of the estate.

There is one passage near the end of the story that is quite erotic in a vampish way:

"She [Lady Arabella] tore off her clothes with feverish fingers, and in full enjoyment of her natural freedom stretched her slim figure in animal delight. Then she lay down on the sofa - to await her victim! Edward Caswall's life blood would more than satisfy her for some time to come."

There is a movie spin-off of Stoker's story available as a VCR tape at video stores which is well worth watching: "The Lair of the White Worm", produced in Great Britain in 1988, starring Ken Russell and Amanda Donahoe. There are many differences between this movie and the original story. It's really a whole new story. But it preserves and enhances the best elements of the original story. It's actually better than the original.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

Early Mom and Dad gazed lovingly upon their teenage sons and daughters only to wonder in amazement, what happened? Prepubescense, these wonderful offspring leapt with joy from their beds at dawns? early light and wolfed down a hearty breakfast. Sometime after the puberty monster hits, they howl with indignity as the blinds are drawn and they shrink back from the glare as the sun touches upon their skin. They try to quickly cover themselves with blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, dogs, what have you, lest the UV rays forever mar the epidermis.

Breakfast consists of fruitloops in a cup in the evening and conversation consists of "pass the milk". Around 10 p.m. is when the "day" officially begins. Out the door to prowl the streets at night, many an unsuspecting coffee shop owner has felt the shivers run down her spine as the vampires have hovered around the cappuccino machine. Undaunted by the black clothing and ghostly skin pallor, the coffee shop mistress knows she is protected from the vampires by her silver spoons that only she can provide. As long as the vampires have their double lattes and biscotti the coffee wench is safe.

Of course when the sun rises, the entire city is safe. It is a well-established fact that vampires only gallivant around in the dead of night; which really means they sleep all day. Often travelling in gangs sometimes a solitary vampire disengages itself from the group to skateboard himself to work. This is when you will see the dramatic event known as shapeshifting. At work the vampire is warm, friendly, smiling, willing to clean, always ensuring your comfort level asking if you would like fries with that.

But at home the shapeshifting reoccurs at a break neck pace and that same smiling soul is either sullen, sleeping or showering.

Another well-known fact is that vampires always leave the dead bodies lying around for somebody else to clean up. At home it is no different. You can always find towels left in a pile on the bedroom floor and a fine collection of cutlery and dishes in an amazing state of animation. Upon closer examination, the empty glass of milk left under the bed for weeks on end will create life. Scrutinize the furry base of the glass and you can almost see the entire subway system laid out and the tiny creatures travelling back and forth to work.

The most frightening character trait of the vampire, the one that brings instant fear to the hearts of young and old alike is the ability to suck the life out of poor unsuspecting souls while roaming the vast outdoors. Indoors this uncanny ability manifests itself by sucking the money out of poor unsuspecting parents.

As a general rule, Vampires have an uncanny ability to remember entire conversations word for word, especially those concerning the pay out of money. But alas, this ability is not quite as refined as other traits. Unfortunately there are other times when entire weeks of endless repeating of phrases and sentences have absolutely no ability to retain any meaning. The most common phrases soon forgotten are ?Close the door, the air conditioning is on?, ?Put the milk back in the fridge when your done?, ?Please clean your room before you go out, I would like to remember the color of your carpet.; To which the most common reply that is returned is "What carpet?

Vampires have a sense of style all their own. Each will dress according to his or her own group code. For example; the Sporty Vampire will wear only Adidas, Nike, or Fila shoes and clothing. They can be distinguished from the other vampires by the secret symbol of the check mark.

The Trendy Vampires will only wear Calvin Klein?s, Tommy, or Versace clothing. These are also the only class of vampires that will change clothing a minimum of three times a day depending upon the activity, group dress code for the day or who might potentially see them.

Their oversized pants, KORN T-shirts, backward hats, and of course the ever present skateboard can distinguish the last group of vampires. These are also the only group of vampires that are completely dependant upon what is blasting from their stereos and it must be heard above 300 decibels, be it in the kitchen, bathroom, shower or bedroom. This leads me to believe that this poor unfortunate group must have a hearing problem. None of the three groups ever seem to inter mix, preferring to stick closely to their own kind. If by chance they do happen to cross paths there is much snarling and gnashing of teeth.

Life with a vampire is never dull and there are many high points as well. Vampires are naturally charming and witty creatures. They are also extremely intelligent, creative and fun to be with. Conversing with vampires on a regular basis, you can discover the scope of their keen perception and the intellect of their imagination. They tend to have opinions on life and viewpoints that are often most insightful, and most often missed by their parents. Maybe the real paradox of living with the vampire is the inability of parents to understand them.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

As the 20th century evolved, rational man turned to science to explain mythology that had pervaded for thousands of years. How could a man be mistaken for a vampire? How could someone appear to have been the victim of a vampire attack? Science, in time, came back with answers that may surprise you.

Anemia

Derived from the Greek word for "bloodlessness", anemia is a blood disease in which the red-cell count is unusually low. Red cells are the carriers of oxygen throughout the body. When a person suffers from anemia, their symptoms are caused by inadequate oxygen. These symptoms may include:

• A pale complexion
• Fatigue
• Fainting spells
• Shortness of breath
• Digestive disorders

There are three main causes of anemia: disease, heredity, and severe blood loss. Over the ages, a person suffering from these symptoms may have been under suspicion of a vampire attack. Once again, myth warps to suit the needs of the believer. Although the victim may have contracted a disease or simply have inherited the blood disorder, society would have found it easy to believe that the symptoms resulted from a vampire attack. Indeed, these symptoms may even have suggested to our ancestors that the victim was beginning his own transition to a vampire, marked with a pale complexion and trouble eating food.

Catalepsy

Catalepsy is a disorder of the nervous system that causes a form of suspended animation. It causes a loss of voluntary motion, a rigidity to the muscles, as well as decreased sensitivity to pain and heat. A person suffering from catalepsy can see and hear but cannot move. Their breathing, pulse, and other regulatory functions are slowed to the extent that to an untrained eye, it would seem as though they were deceased. This condidtion can last from minutes to days. Before 20th century medicine came along, there were few diagnostic tests that could be done on a body to ensure it was in fact dead, and so it is possible and even likely that persons suffering from catalepsy could have been declared dead prematurely. Embalming a corpse before burial is also a 20th century idea, so it's very possible that these bodies were declared dead and buried while the person still lived. Upon recovering from their catalyptic state, the person would try to dig their way to the surface. Many myths may have arisen from this single condition alone.

Porphyria

Of all the disorders and diseases even loosely linked to vampirism, the most bizarre must be porphyria. It is a rare hereditary blood disease; its symptoms so closely match the myths associated with our modern conception of vampirism it's eerie. A victim of porphyria cannot produce heme, a major and vital component of red blood. Today, this disease is treatable with regular injections of heme into the body. However, as little as fifty years ago, this treatment was unavailable and the disease unknown. In the past, a porphyria sufferer would show symptoms that include:

• Extreme sensitivity to sunlight
• Sores and scars that break open and will not heal properly
• Excessive hair growth
• Tightening of skin around lips and gums (which would make the incisors more prominent)

This disease would likely cause the victim to only go out at night, in order to avoid the painful rays of the sun. In addition, while garlic stimulates the production of heme in a healthy person, it would only cause the symptoms of porphyria to become more painfully severe. Porphyria was eventually discarded by scientists as a reasonable explanation of the vampire myth that has pervaded our history. Although vampire accounts of the past bear little resemblance to the dashing figure we romanticize today, these qualities may have contributed to our look at the vampire in film and fiction: pale skin, extended incisors, even the fear of the sun!

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

All around the world, the vampire goes by different names. Each culture in history has their own distinct name and meaning of vampire. Here are just a few.

Africa
asabonsam, obayifo

Australia
yara-ma-yha-who

Bulgaria
obur

China
chiang-shih

Czech Republic and Slovakia
upir

Germany
Nachtzehrer

Greece
vrykolakas

Gypsy
mulo

India
Kali

Mexico
tlahuelpuchi

Phillipines
aswang

Romania
strigoi

Russia
uppyr

Blood

Blood has been a symbol of life since very ancient times. The blood in our veins has always been iconic of our continuing life. To lose too much blood is to lose consciousness, breath, and eventually, our very lives. If a person or animal is already dead and is cut open, blood does not flow. Only the living have blood that flows. Blood has been used throughout the ages as a ceremonial sacrifice. In pagan times our forefathers worshipped their gods with blood sacrifice. And today, indeed, we are not so different. Even in modern times, in our churches, there are those taking communion or the Eucharist, and drinking of the wine that symbolizes Christ's blood.

It seems appropriate, then, that this creature who is an antithesis of both death and life should gain his strength from feeding from the life's blood of humans. For the vampire, the drinking of blood is its life, its sustenance, and the single thing that makes it identifiable all around the world, regardless of the culture in which you were raised or the language you speak.

As the ages progressed and new modern technology and medicine became available to the masses, the exact nature of the vampire's need for blood changed. In many literary instances it was linked to anemia, and blood loss. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing prescribed a blood transfusion for Lucy, in an attempt to divest her of the vampire blood in her body.

Blood is what animates the vampire, what gives him his life. Without it he can dry up into a husk, much like a starved human. Many theories have been tested in fiction as to why it is so. In Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, the entire vampire race is infested with a demon/spirit that makes them what they are, and the demon needs blood in order to retain his hold on their collective bodies. Thus, the need to feed on blood, particularly when the vampire is a fledgling.

Fangs

A vampire must drink blood in order to survive. And so, with our advancing understanding of how animal and human evolution works, vampire novels and stories in the late nineteenth century began to describe the vampire as having protruding or elongated canine teeth. This made it easier for the vampire to puncture the skin of the neck and the jugular vein while feeding. Up until that time, however, vampires were not thought to have fangs at all. But it is a fact that races of animals (we humans as mammals are included in this) evolve physically to make their tasks easier to perform. And so it is with the vampire.

As cinematic prowess increased and the movie industry was able to do more with special effects, a new vampiric ability evolved. In movies today it is common to see the vampire with retractable canine fangs. This allows him to circulate with humans more easily; with the fangs retracted, he is more easily perceived as human. In Forever Knight, the character Nick's fangs only protrude when his dark, vampiric nature is unleashed.

Fingernails

In European and Slavic history, fingernails were thought to be one of the tell-tale signs that a corpse was a vampire. Vampires were thought to lose their old nails and grow new ones upon their entry to the vampiric world. An exhumed body that lacked nails or had grown new ones was summarily staked, and very often burned or reburied with garlic to seal the corpse within the ground.

In modern literature, two major vampire novels have mentioned fingernails specifically. In Dracula, Jonathan Harker notices that Dracula's "nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point." When Dracula later opened a wound on his chest for Mina Murray to drink his blood, he did so with these sharp, pointed nails. In Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Louis and Lestat both mention the glassy appearance of their fingernails, so different from that of humans. Many times it is something that they take care to hide.

Hair

The histories of both European and Slavic vampire hunts also show hair growth as a sign of vampirism, although this sign was generally not found unless the corpse also displayed many other traits thought to be associated with a vampire.

Anne Rice does discuss hair in her Vampire Chronicles, although she is one of the few. Her vampires are cursed with the same length of hair that they had when they died and were made into vampires. Regardless of how often they cut it, it will always grow back.

Reproduction

The term Dhampir refers to the offspring of a vampire and a human mate, traditionally a male vampire mating with a human female. This offspring was normally male. The dhampir was thought to have special qualities. He could sense where vampires hid themselves from the world, and therefore he had the ability to be a superb vampire hunter. These qualities would be passed down genetically to his offspring, and it was thought to last many generations.

As well, the terms incubus and succubus refer to vampires who perform a sexual attack upon their intended victims, and it was likely these types of vampires who produced offspring. However, references to exactly how (!) this was accomplished is very scarce.

Senses

A vampire's sense of vision is thought to be very acute. This is largely due to the fact that they are a nocturnal creature, and therefore must be able to adapt to their environment. It also explains why sunlight is thought to be so painful to their eye. Their eyesight has often been attributed to a residue from their ability to change into bats (see Shape Changing).

Hearing is also heightened in a vampire body. This allows them to hear mortals from a great distance (far greater than human ears could pick up) and also to discern when another vampire draws near. This is evident in Forever Knight; Nick can hear over great distances, and this allows him to capture the criminals he chases. Their acute sense of hearing may also be attributed to their nocturnal nature; as night hunters, the ability to hunt quietly and hear well would be invaluable.

Shape-Changing

Although there was a small link between shape-changing and vampires for hundreds of years, it was not until Dracula that the true connection was made. In the novel, Stoker described Dracula as able to change into a rat, a bat, or the very mist itself.

Vampire bats became by far the most common of these shapes a vampire could command at will. This could be because vampire bats, by their nature, are closely related to the vampire itself. They are nocturnal, and feed exclusively off the blood of various mammals and other vertebrates. They have very sharp teeth which they use to pierce the victim's skin, and then they lap up the blood as it flows. It has also been known as an emerging problem; it is a proficient carrier of rabies (not unlike the definition of Nosferatu, which itself mean plague-carrier).

The ability to transform at will into mist has brought many advantages to the vampire, allowing him to escape vampire hunters and other dangers quickly. In addition, mist (in some cases) has allowed the vampire to move great distances at one time.

Skin

Historically, vampire skin was dark instead of the alabaster skin we see today in film. Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial and Death, suggests that this is becuase suspected "vampires" were actually corpses decomposing in their graves. Skin naturally turns darker and sloughs off the bone as the body decomposes. This may account for many reports in medieval Europe of vampires "growing new skin".

Today, vampire skin is by nature very white and smooth. This is likely due to the fact that these creatures are nocturnal, and never get to see the sun. Their skin therefore gets bleached over time. Also, the vampire is an undead creature, and unless he has recently fed, there is a lack of colour-giving blood in his body.

In The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice describes the vampire skin as nearly transparent when the vampire is starved for blood. After feeding, they attain a healthier, more human skin tone, but this is a temporary change. Lestat mentions on several occasions having to powder his skin to pass for human.

Strength

The vampire came by its supernatural strength through modern film and literature. Vampires, historically, were not know for their great strength; they normally attacked only "weaker" victims, such as children or the elderly. They never attacked a group of people for fear of being overcome. However, the modern view of vampires have allowed them a certain arrogance, knowing that no mere mortal could overpower them. Many of the personality traits that we have come to so adore in the vampire today are a result of this arrogance, knowing that they are truly immortal but for a few weaknesses (see the Vampire Hunter's Guide).

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

First, I think it best to define the essence of the vampire (fictional) before attempting to define the Essence of the Vampyre (magical). In this way, I hope to invite discussion and/or debate on the topic, and to hear from other magicians' experience with this type of magic.

The word "essence," as defined by my Random House Dictionary, is "the basic intrinsic constituent or quality of a thing." It also means "the substance obtained from a plant or drug, by distillation or infusion, and containing its characteristic properties in concentrated form."

When examining the "essence of the vampire," or that which is distilled once we remove various authors' character nuances and personalities, we find certain things in common in most every vampire story: the fact that a living victim had been bitten and killed by a vampire and is now basically a walking corpse with supernatural powers. These powers included turning into mist and shapeshifting, invisibility, mesmerism, superhuman strength, immortality and, of course, a murderous bloodthirst.

In 1819, Dr. John Polidori distilled even further the literary vampire's essence by replacing the ghoulish appearance with an aristocratic one. He further fashioned the personality of his vampire character after the infamous English Romantic poet, Lord George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), for whom he had worked for a time and had grown to dislike by the time he wrote his story. Suddenly, the classic myth of the vampire had become something intriguing and sexually appealing to readers rather than horrific, and the beginnings of the Vampyric archetype was born.

Polidori was the first to utilize the new spelling of "Vampyre," and Polidori's main character, Lord Ruthven, also had the characteristic bloodthirst, as well as more elegant and appealing characteristics. Novelists from then on continued to utilize this breed of vampire in increasingly sexually oriented stories (including Bram Stoker's _Dracula_). Later, screen writers would develop this idea even further with the sensual movie version "Dracula," starring Frank Langella.

For magicians, this Vampyric Essence can be experimented with in many ways. Distilled even further by removing the two remaining negative traits of the vampire, bloodlust and the animated corpse theory, we have an extremely sensual, sexual, aristocratic, magically and physically powerful Being. If one learns to emulate the powers of the vampire while keeping strongly in mind the intrinsic elegance and "Aristocracy of the Blood" that has developed within the archetype over the years, we now have the ingredients for a magical personality/persona known as the Vampyre.

How can these legendary powers be emulated? With only a little magic, imagination and dedication, it is quite easy, actually. "Superhuman" strength can be developed via weight training, using various strengthening and flexibility exercises. "Invisibility" can be learned by studying certain martial arts, such as Ninjutsu. "Shapeshifting" can be accomplished via pathworkings, trance states, and lycanthropic magic, as well as astral projection. Mesmerism can be learned by studying mesmerism and hypnotism, and also through psychology. The "Command to Look" can be practiced by experimenting with styles of dress and cosmetics, and via a projected Will.

Regarding immortality -- well, there are about as many beliefs regarding this as there are individual magicians. Some believe that immortality is achieved by strengthening the Will prior to Death. Some believe "psychic" or "life force" vampirism is necessary. Some believe that all human spirits are already immortal. Some believe all human psyches survive death, but then must know how to survive the "second" or "astral death." The method of this most alluring of the Vampyre's powers must be defined and explored by the individual magician according to their own studies.

Any of these traits taken alone for study and eventual perfection give on an interesting little power to add to their magical "arsenal." However, if one is truly studying the "awakening" of the Vampyric Essence and spends time developing each and all of these various talents, we have the makings of a very powerful magicians. Study never ends, of course, and each new "power" gives the magician just one more tool for self-awareness and evolution. This in turn strengthens the Vampyric talents, which again in turn empower the magician's evolution. This is the evolutionary Path of the Vampyre. (Complexities, and even dangers, of the Path beyond this simple description exist, of course, but are beyond the scope of this post.) The study of the Vampyric Essence is not for everyone. It is merely another Path for personal evolution. The concepts seem to resonate well with some personalities, while the image and archetype are abhorrent to others. Those on this particular magical Path tend to recognize one another, sometimes even before the other magician knows they would find this method intriguing. This is what is known as being "of the Blood." Vampyres tend to recognize kindred spirits.

Your individual Vampyric Essence is what you make of it. Each Vampyre, like each magician, is unique. The Vampyre may be seen as the next stage of human evolution, as the practice of magical Vampyrism (as opposed to vampirism) forces one to transcend common lower human traits and cultivate an aristocratic bearing, eloquence, and pride in Being.

The Path of the Vampyre is based on personal evolution. It's methods and trappings are sometimes Gothic-Victorian, though without the restriction and repression of these times in history. Emphasis is placed on the love of life, and conversely, the Understanding that Death is not to an experience to long for, but is merely a moment of great change. Vampyres tend to believe in immortality of the psyche, and live their lives based on this knowledge. And with this realization of the reality of continual evolution, an ever higher and exhalted state of Being is continually sought.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

"Real Vampires"- how can this be anything but a contradiction in terms? We all know about vampires. Stock characters of fiction, guaranteed box-office draws, the media vampire has been familiar to us since childhood. Generally speaking, our blood-suckers appear with a tongue planted firmly in one toothy cheek-from Bela Lugosi hamming it up in the 1950's, to last summer's teenage "vamp" movies, to Count Chocula breakfast cereal, the media seldom treat the vampire as truly fearsome. The stereotyped vampire traits are familiar to any child: vampires have big fangs, sleep in coffins, are instantly incinerated by sunlight, and are best dispatched by a stake through the heart. But the most important "fact" that we all know of course is that there are no such things.

Of course, in terms of the mythical, literary and cinematic conventions, we are correct: there are no "legions of the undead" stalking the unwary. We have explained the folklore with politics, misunderstood diseases, and hysteria, the literary and cinematic images with psychology, history, and sociology. We of the 20th century are confident that vampires could not really exist. But then, most of us are never forced to think otherwise. For a number of people, the concept of vampires becomes a critical and often lifelong concern. To live with, love, or befriend a real vampire is to encounter a set of problems which may demand expanding the boundaries of one's accepted reality. To come to terms with being a real vampire oneself is to face a lifetime's karmic challenge.

Some people reading this article already know this. The rest are probably thinking, "Real Vampires, give me a break! Sure, there are some pretty weird people out there, but all they need is a good therapist." Yes, there are people who take on all the trappings of a gothic novel: dressing in black, claiming or pretending to be "vampires" in the supernatural sense, wearing capes, sleeping in boxes, even getting their teeth capped. There are more frightening people who seek to torture or kill animals or human beings in order to gain power, emotional release or sexual thrill, and who sometimes call themselves (or are called) "vampires". But most of these individuals are troubled people who have been attracted by the cultural myths about the vampire: supernatural powers (because they feel powerless), overwhelming sexuality (because most of them have sexual issues and no true relationships), immortality (because they fear aging and death). Individuals like these are the most recent "explanation" for humanity's persistent belief in vampires. But beyond and behind all the folklore, the psychological theories, the role playing, even the traditional spiritual assumptions, lies the real truth about vampires.

The field of vampirology is complex and mysterious. There are many aspects to the vampire phenomenon, and they would require several books to fully explore. One aspect of vampirism which frequently troubles magickal, spiritual and other small groups, the most common form of vampire, is found among living people who share with us the benefits and disadvantages of physical existence on this plane, yet are not quite human. These people appear on the surface to be somewhat eccentric members of society, yet their outward idiosyncrasies only hint at how different they are from those around them.

Each of us incarnates for a lifetime with a certain way of relating to the physical world through the vehicle of our physical body. A vampire is a person born with an extraordinary capacity to absorb, channel, transform, and manipulate "pranic energy" or life force. She also has a critical energy imbalance which reels wildly from deficit to overload and back again. This capacity for handling energy is a gift, but the constant imbalance of her own system is the cause of the negative behavior patterns and characteristics which may be notable about a vampiric person.

Real vampires do not necessarily drink blood-in fact, most of them do not. Blood-drinking and vampirism have been confused to the extent that for the average person, a vampire is defined as something that drinks blood (such as a "vampire bat"). But when we look beyond casual assumptions to the details of common beliefs, we find something quite different. Throughout both folklore and literature, there is an understanding that vampires require energy or life force. Many old folktales accept that vampires suck blood, yet never describe this actually happening. The victims slowly decline and waste away, and the survivors assume that some evil fiend is draining them of blood. They know that the Bible says, "the blood is the life", and anyone who was losing their life force must be losing blood. Yet, in many instances the vampire's "attack" does not even involve physical contact. In others, it is clearly sexual energy which is exchanged.1

Fresh blood is the highest known source of pranic energy (life force).2 Human beings have practiced blood-drinking for many reasons throughout history, but drinking blood alone does not indicate that a person is a vampire. Only real vampires can directly absorb the pranic energy in fresh blood, and for this reason some real vampires are attracted to blood and find different means of obtaining it.3 However, it is a rare vampire who cannot absorb energy in much more subtle ways. This is the mechanism that causes real vampires to inflict harm on others and themselves if they fail to recognize what is happening and do conscious work on transforming their inner natures. Vampires are no more likely to be either malicious or spiritually aware than the general population, but without awareness, they can spend their lives making themselves and others unhappy, and will continue to incarnate in this pattern until they take action to change it.

There are a number of external symptoms of vampirism, but it is important to realize that some of them are found in ordinary human behavior. Real vampires are identifiable partly because they have a majority of the symptoms, not just one or two. But more significantly, real vampires are distinguished by a certain quality to the energy. While anyone reading a description of the symptoms and behavior patterns might find a few that apply to people he knows, or even to himself, real vampires have a way of standing out vividly to everyone who interacts with them. There are few people who do not know at least one vampire.

Physically, vampires are usually "night people"" on a biochemical level. They have inverted circadian rhythms, with body cycles such as temperature peaks, menstrual onset, and the production of sleep hormones in the brain occurring at the opposite time of day from most people. They have difficulty adjusting to daytime schedules and frequently work nights. They tend to be photosensitive, avoiding sunlight, sunburning easily, and having excellent night vision. Their vitality ranges widely, and they can be vigorous and active one day, depressed and languorous the next.

They frequently have digestive trouble. Even those with cast-iron stomachs have many issues with food that are rooted in their constant hunger for energy. Contrary to the image of the vampire as thin, many real vampires are troubled by obesity because of a hunger that makes them food addicts, and a system that is sluggish in processing physical food. They are also sometimes troubled by other substance addictions for the same reasons, but since their systems are tuned to pranic energy more than to processing physical substance, they may not be as sensitive to drugs and alcohol as an ordinary person would be.

Emotionally and physically, vampires are unpredictable, moody, temperamental and overwhelming. The major distinguishing characteristic of real vampires as opposed to ordinary people who share those qualities is the vampire's intensity. Vampires are extremely intense people. They are frequently given nicknames such as "the black hole." When others talk about them (usually to complain about them), vampires are often described by such terms as "needy," "attention-seeking," "grandstanding," "manipulative," "exhausting," "draining," "monopolizes the conversation," "jealous," "huge ego," and so on. A vampire's emotions are deep, fervent, and powerful, and she usually displays great psychic ability and has uncontrolled magickal and psychic experiences. Vampires are also empaths, and while they remain unconscious of their natures, they are frequently "psychic sponges" who simply absorb vibrations from everywhere, with the expected emotional instability resulting.

A "hungry" vampire -- one whose energy level is imbalanced to the deficit side -- becomes an involuntary psychic vortex, drawing all pranic energy in the area towards her. When the energy does not flow in fast enough -- and it is typical of vampires that the energy never flows fast enough for them -- she will begin manifesting behavior patterns to increase the amount of conscious attention she gets from others. For this reason, some vampires develop a pattern of being aggressively confrontational, or of constantly antagonizing people with whom they have relationships. Nearly all vampires, whatever ploys they use, have a talent for attracting (or distracting) the attention of everyone present.

Once a vampire overloads on energy, she reverses her behavior patterns. She may become morose, silent, withdrawn and introverted. Some vampires become maniacally cheerful when they are satiated, but even their good moods seem to annoy others, and it is more typical for vampires to be infamous as wet blankets. "Hungry" and "overload" phases can occur within a few minutes or last for days at a time. Vampires are commonly loners, in part because they feel so different from those around them, but also because they have a need to control the degree of contact they have with sources of energy.

Real vampires are not the demonic fiends of Christianized folklore, but as long as they refuse to accept their inner nature, their bad reputation is not undeserved. Unconscious vampires have a tendency to reach adulthood with less than the average level of social skill and general finesse, and tend to be selfish and self-centered. The demands of their own energy systems are so distracting to them that it is difficult for them to pay attention to the needs of others. Their relationships tend to be disasters. Different vampires develop different patterns according to what works best for them in their life situation, but several patterns are common. The "femme fatale" or "lady-killer" vampire forms a continuous series of sexual connections with one partner at a time, dropping each unfortunate lover as they become too exhausted (or defensive) to support the vampire's energy needs. Other vampires form a long-term relationship with a single person: either another vampire whose energy cycle complements their own, or a person who derives satisfaction from being a psychic servant or martyr. A common pattern, especially in young adults, is to continuously join social, religious, political and magickal groups and either blow them apart or end up being thrown out. Vampires may go through roommates, housing situations, magickal groups, jobs and lovers like so much Kleenex.

Many people find that they feel "creepy" or "weird" around a vampire. This is usually due to the effects of one's own life force being drawn towards the vampire's vortex. Most people feel uncomfortable and distracted when their energy is pulled away from themselves. In addition to this, a common result of such an energy drain is for the aura to pull in tightly towards the body, and this causes a prickling sensation on the skin -- the "creepy-crawlies."

It is no more common for vampires to be psychopaths or killers than it is for any random person on the street. However, a prolonged, or very involved, relationship with a vampire can put a severe strain on the emotional and psychic energy systems of an ordinary person. Folklore suggests that victims of a vampire become vampires themselves. In reality, people who have been seriously "drained" -- that is, have had their own energy pulled off balance into a deficit -- also become psychic vortices which pull life force away from other living things. However, they are never as powerful as a true vampire, and unlike vampires, quickly recover and stabilize. True vampires are born the way they are -- no one can be "turned into a vampire." However, years of energy depletion can lead to health problems ranging from depression and malaise to a suppressed immune system and susceptibility to serious illnesses. Most people will break off the relationship before it gets that far.

Many vampires are attracted to magickal paths. In a magickal working group, their ability to wreak havoc is increased because of the psychic openness and trust that exist there. But there can be a benefit, as well. Some vampires become aware of their true natures and choose to undertake serious work to transform themselves. As soon as they begin doing so, they become more acceptable working partners and companions. Once in control of their capacity for handling energy, they become extraordinary magicians and healers. Their ability to hold the attention of others gives them the potential to be fine leaders and teachers. Ultimately, the purpose of vampires is not to plague the universe but to facilitate its healing. Vampirism is the dark, or unfocused, side of a certain kind of psychic talent, one which has been developing for many lifetimes. It is destructive only when a vampire either refuses to face the truth about herself and work with her abilities, or when she chooses to play out a sinister role because of the illusion of power it gives her.

Because of this, many of the vampire characteristics described above are far less evident in the most powerful vampires, the ones who have done considerable work on their inner selves. Many of these are poised, pleasant, competent individuals, with great personal power. They have come to terms with who and what they are, and no longer exhibit the negative qualities associated with "psychic vampirism." 4 Unfortunately, unconscious vampires are far more common than evolved ones, and it is these troubled souls who more usually appear in magickal groups.

There is no "generic advice" to give those who believe they may be dealing with a real vampire. Those who are so inclined might try to help a friend or fellow group member explore their inner nature and come to terms with their destructive behaviors. Those who feel victimized can choose to end the relationship. Each case is different, and can only be judged by the individuals concerned. But it is important for anyone involved in magickal or psychic work to understand that vampires are a real phenomenon, and that, like all perils, they should not be greeted with fear or anger. Nothing is evil by nature -- only by choice. Terror of discovery (followed by ridicule or rejection) inhibits the self-development of many real vampires. When they reach out for friendship, they are often reaching out for help.

A person who believes she may be a real vampire herself has a long and difficult process ahead of her. The most important step on her path is complete self-awareness: of her relationships, patterns, energy levels, and all other personal qualities. The most challenging work may often be summarized in the simplest of terms. Knowledge, awareness, and control are the lessons real vampires must learn in order to harness their abilities. If real vampires are not the immortals of fiction, they can at least be confident of one thing: for better or worse, they will keep the qualities they develop for many lives to come.

NOTE: The author welcomes inquiries from readers
with a personal interest in the subject of vampirism.
She is available at vyrdolak@net1plus.com.
Readers wishing for more information about vampire lore
in general are referred to the Bibliography.

NOTES

1. For a thorough examination of traditional vampire folklore, see the works of Montague Summers and Anthony Masters.
2. Other high sources of pranic energy include semen, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the breath of living animals. Meat -- filled with chemicals, long dead, refrigerated, frozen and "aged" (partially decomposed) as it is -- contains almost none. Many real vampires, aside from drinking blood, are vegetarians.
3. For a somewhat flawed but interesting look at blood-drinking and vampirism, see Stephen Kaplan. Leonard Wolf explores this subject from a more philosophical and personal viewpoint.
4. This is not to suggest that even evolved vampires are always comfortable to be around. They remain unpredictable, intense, emotional, and altogether overwhelming personalities. Most are remarkable sexually, and all still draw energy, although they can generally control this to some extent. Furthermore, this article is not intended to mislead -- real vampires, even evolved ones, do sometimes drink blood in order to obtain their energy. Those who understand the many ways that life "gives way" to nurture more life will see this as no more unnatural than eating live vegetables or animals for food.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Stephen Kaplan, Vampires Are (ETC Publications, 1984)
  Anthony Masters, The Natural History of the Vampire (Berkley Publishing Corp., 1972)
• Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula (New York Graphic Society, 1972)
  Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (University Books, 1960)
• Montague Summers, The Vampire in Europe (The Aquarian Press Limited, 1980)
• James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Duke University Press, 1981)
• Leonard Wolf, A Dream of Dracula (Popular Library, 1972)

Throughout history there have been many reports of criminal vampirism and cannibalism. Some as famous as the Hanover Vampire; others not as famous, but as equally intriguing. This essay selects legendary cases of vampirism/cannibalism throughout history. Most of the cases are early twentieth century with the odd classic or modern day case thrown in for contrast.

One of the most infamous vampire related mass murderers was Fritz Haarmann (1879 - 1925), who with his two accomplices was responsible for the deaths of at lest twenty and as many as fifty young men. He was known as a vampire because of his cannibalism and habit of biting his victims in the throat.

He was a child molester and a homosexual, and spent much time in a sanatorium after being discharged from the army. After being released he rejoined the army, this time serving with an elite group, distinguishing himself throughout World War I.

A civilian again during Germany's post war era, he opened a cook shop and worked as an informer. By this time he was already a murderer and then in 1919 he met Hans Grans, a fellow homosexual, who came do dominate Haarmann and lead him into the gaudy underworld of Hanover's homosexual community.

It was here that Haarmann found a seemingly endless supply of prey. He often brought young men home with him and murdered them in a grisly fashion; all under the watchful eye of Grans.

Another mysterious accomplice entered the scene and aided in body disposal. The victims' clothing was sold on by Haarmann, and the most horrid of all acts was that Haarmann actually sold flesh to unsuspecting people for human consumption.

Finally, the police captured him. They visited his lodgings on previous occasions when bodies were hidden just feet away. He confessed his crimes in minute detail, proclaiming insanity but declaring he was forced to commit the crimes whilst in a trance.

Fritz Haarmann was executed in April 1925; ironically he was beheaded, which is one of the most common and affective ways to dispose of a vampire. His brain was removed by officials and given to scientists at the Göttingen University to be studied. This in more ways than one granted him a kind of vampiric immortality in itself.

Another infamous murderer of vampiric connection is John Haigh. He was more commonly known as the Vampire of London and Acid Killer. The case shocked the British public when the details of his crimes came to light.

A onetime choirboy, John George Haigh was the son of a fanatically pious and puritanical family that forced him to lead a life utterly devoid of social activities and filled with threat of eternal punishment for sin. In this environment he grew up repressed, becoming fixated on religion and blood, with the increasingly uncontrollable urge to drink blood.

By the time he was finally caught in 1949, he had murdered nine people, in each case he drank the blood of his victims, including that of a young girl.

Assuming that he could not be prosecuted if there were no bodies, he routinely disposed of the corpses in drums of sulphuric acid, for which he earned the nickname 'Acid Killer'. What made Haigh so horrible in the public's mind was his absence of remorse, his seemingly normal physical appearance and the detailed often unbelievable accounts of his crimes, told in an inhuman matter-of-fact style.

Of gruesome interest was his own recitation of his early life, including his experiences as a junior organist for Wakefield Cathedral, where he spent hours gazing at the statue of the bleeding Christ, dying on the cross. Haigh was also distinguished by the apparent absence of motivational sexual content in his cravings, a characteristic commonly exhibited by other serial killers.

The Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory (1560 - 1614) portrayed one of the most historical accounts of vampirism. She was a member of the powerful Bathory family and later became known as the 'Bloody Countess' for her multiple murders and obsession with blood.

Married to the warrior count Ferenz Nadasdy, Bathory spent many nights alone while her husband was fighting the Turks. She developed interests that were beyond obsessive in the subjects of her beauty, pleasure, the occult, and in most depraved kinds of sadism, which were normally directed towards her serving girls, with whom she engaged in acts of lesbianism before murdering them with the help of her lieutenants.

Bathory became convinced that blood held the key to halting the process of her ever-increasing age. This idea came about when she hit out at a servant; the blood that splashed onto her hands seemingly, to her, made the skin smoother and younger looking. Henceforth she believed that drinking, bathing in and showering in the blood of young virgins cured the fact that she was ageing, resulting in the murder of hundreds of servant girls in her service.

The exact amount of virgins she murdered will never be known and various accounts have their ideas; some say as many as several hundred others as few as fifty. Inevitably the truth became known, and in 1610 the countess and her henchmen were arrested, tried and convicted. Her accomplices were executed or imprisoned, and Bathory was walled up in her bedchamber at Castle Csejthe.

Four years later the guards who attended to her peered through the slot used to give her food to discover that she was dead. The 'living vampire' was no more, although her memory was kept alive by legends and tales. Several films were made about here, including Countess Dracula (1971), Blood Castle (1972), and Ceremonia Sangrienta (1972).

Martin Dummolard was a late-nineteenth-century mass murderer in France, known as the 'Monster of Montluel', whose crimes were made more macabre because of the control exercised over him by his obese mistress, Justine Lafayette.

After meeting Justine while in her Lyon boarding house, the youthful, handsome Dummolard fell completely under her spell. They were both necrophiles, Dummolard drinking the blood of his victims and bringing the fleshier parts home, which he served up for Justine.

Despite the terror that broke out in Montluel, he was able to murder some eighty girls. The capture of these 'vampires' in 1888 was followed up by a sensational trail. Justine was guillotined (again the common destruction of vampires - beheading) and Dummolard was confined to an asylum. He died early in this century and is ranked as one of the most hideous of the so-called vampires of history.

Peter Kürten, the so-called 'Vampire of Düsseldorf (1883 - 1931) he was responsible for murdering or assaulting twenty-nine people during his reign of terror that lasted for years, ruining the city's reputation amongst Europeans.

The son of an alcoholic and a long-suffering mother, whom he revered, Kürten worked as a truck driver, appearing as a boring, bespectacled little man with a moustache and neat clothes. As was true with other mass murderers, beneath this quiet exterior lurked his true demeanour as a remorseless killer.

His victims were strangled and raped, then their throats were slit and their blood consumed by Kürten, who sought to find some release from his unstoppable cravings. Eventually marrying a woman who fulfilled his need for a mother figure, he was a devoted husband by day, setting out at night on his ghastly adventures. His murders probably would have continued had he not confessed his crimes to his astonished wife.

The police picked him up after his wife turned him in; he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, never appealing his conviction. Adding to the horror surrounding Kürten were his letters to the parents of the victims, in which he described how some humans were alcoholics, whereas he needed blood.

The inspiration for the Fritz Lang masterpiece M (1931), Kürten made the statement: "You cannot understand me. No one can understand me." His story was told in the 1964 French-Italian film Le Vampire de Düsseldorf, directed and starring Robert Hossein.

More modern day cases of vampirism/cannibalism, are those of Issei Sagawa known also as the Japanese Cannibal and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Sagawa was a student in Paris who developed an irresistible urge to taste human flesh. In the beginning of his murders a dismembered body was found in a Paris park. Things turned for the worse when police discovered parts of the body had been eaten and that they were dealing with a cannibal.

Sagawa was caught and placed in Henri Colin psychiatric hospital in Villejuif. During his stay at the Henri Colin Asylum, three psychiatrists examined Sagawa. One of them, Dr Bernard Defer, believed there was no cure for perverted sexual fantasies. He told the authorities Sagawa's 'psychosis' was permanent and he would probably have to be kept at Villejuif for the rest of his life, which would have cost the French taxpayer a small fortune. This practical consideration was probably part of the reason why the French authorities decided to get rid of the problem by deporting Sagawa to Japan.

In 1985, Sagawa was deported back to Japan. As he stepped of the plane he was overwhelmed by a mob of journalists and photographers. This was a man who had killed and eaten a woman and to all intense and purposes got away with it. From the airport he was taken to the Matsuzawa Hospital in Tokyo; this was a plan devised by his family to prevent a public outcry. But despite all this people still felt they needed justice.

No one at the hospital was pleased at having to deal with their new patient and the Japanese psychiatrists believed him to be an ordinary sex criminal who had deceived the French into believing he was psychotic and therefor not responsible for his actions. 'I think he is sane and guilty,' declared hospital superintendent Tsuguo Kanego. 'He should be in prison'.

The Japanese applied to Bruguières in Paris for Sagawa's file with a view of bringing him to justice in Japan. However, Bruguières refused to hand over a single document. In due course the Japanese came to the same decision as the French; they washed their hands of the whole incident.

On 12th August 1986, the Matsuzawa Hospital discharged its most notorious patient, as he was only a voluntary patient, into the community to begin his life over again as an ordinary, private citizen.

The Jeffrey Dahmer case is similar to Sagawa's and many others, yet so different in other aspects. Dahmer was the Milwaukee serial killer who killed 17 young men and kept part of their bodies in his home.

Pure chance led police to the home of Jeffery Dahmer in the summer of 1991. What they found inside had the seasoned officers reeling in horror, as they uncovered evidence of years of murder and mutilation. Tracey Edwards, a 32-year-old was nearly Dahmer's 18th victim, but he fortunately escaped and flagged a police car down, which began the investigation into the murders.

After killing each of his victims, Dahmer would decapitate them and he often kept parts of the bodies - torso, skull - in his home. Occasionally he would have oral sex with the corpse before dismembering it. Certain murders were excluded from his trail as he Dahmer was drunk and had no recollection of his actions.

When Dahmer was caught a televised trail began and although it was known by all, including Dahmer himself that he was guilty, it still lasted for three weeks. On the 14th of February 1992 the jury found Dahmer guilty on every charge and sentenced to over nine centuries in prison (quite a lengthy sentence which the folkloric vampire would have easily passed). Dahmer addressed the court with a speech and apologised for the pain he had caused. After spending five minutes with his father and stepmother, he was led away from public view forever.

On the morning of November 28th 1994, Dahmer went to carry out his work detail in the showers of the prison gym and was left for some 20 minutes during which he was not under direct supervision. Dahmer was later found by his guards lying in a blood-spattered shower room with severe head injuries. Despite being rushed to a nearby hospital he was pronounced dead around an hour later.

25-year-old Christopher Scarver, Dahmer's assailant and fellow inmate, claimed that he was the 'Son of God' and had been given divine orders to carry out the murder. He had received a life sentence in 1992 and would not be up for parole until 2042. Scarver was charged for both murders and referred for psychiatric tests.

· · · · ·

All of these cases seem to stem from psychological and obsessive problems. Fritz Haarmann and Martin Dummolard were cases that involved psychological displacement, but harboured the more gruesome fact of actually being talked and mentally pressured into committing the crimes for others as well as themselves.

Bathory is one of the many cases not noted here who's psychological and obsessive was increased more with her interest in sadism and the occult.

Dahmer is a case that is so similar yet so unique. I believe that he was fully aware of his actions and did not have any psychotic disease other than the fact he is seriously unstable.

Sagawa on the other hand is what could be considered as 'curious'. He only killed one person (and although killing is not to be justified it clearly set him apart from the likes of others that killed more than ten times). Despite this it is quite ignorant of the French and Japanese authorities to not at least investigate Sagawa's case further.

I suppose all people have a vampiric/cannibalistic curiosity in their mind, although not everyone will yield to it. All in all no one can be forgiven or forgotten for crimes that involve the consumption of human flesh and blood for means none other than to ease curiosity or the stomach.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

You're cover-shopping at the bookstore. If you're lucky there's a horror section: otherwise, you may be in sci-fi, fantasy, romance, or that wondrous catchall, "novels." You want to find vampire books, of course. Other than the word "vampire" in the title, what will tip you off? You look at the cover paintings. A masked woman gazes at you haughtily, fangs like an adder's at the corners of her mouth; disembodied red lips smile around the claw-like teeth protruding between them; a gilt-framed portrait could be period art ... except for the tusk-tips resting on the man's lower lip.

Fangs.

Other icons are identified with vampires: the silhouette of a bat; a red-lined full-length cape with a chokingly high collar; an exposed neck with two holes (bleeding optional); a single drop of blood depending from a pair of red lips; a widow's peak of black hair; a stake and hammer. But none tell us "vampire" so quickly, so surely, so alluringly as fangs.

Why do those pointy teeth say "vampire" to us? And why do we love them so?

Vampires haven't always had fangs. European vampire lore does not list fangs among the vampire's traits. Historical accounts of vampires include blood in the coffin and blood on the mouth, but no fangs for drawing of said blood. The earliest fictional vampires are similarly fangless. Polidori's description of Lord Ruthven in "The Vampyre" (1819) makes no mention of his teeth; one of the great missed opportunities to mention fangs occurs in John Stagg's 1810 poem "The Vampyre," in which the eponymous fiend is caught in the very act and

But no fangs.

Perhaps the earliest literary instance of a fanged vampire occurs in the first chapter of Varney the Vampyre (1840): "With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth...." (That this is indeed an early description is attested by use of the expression "fang-like" to refer to the teeth, as opposed to simply calling them fangs.) A few decades later the eponymous Carmilla (1871) had "the sharpest tooth -- long, thin, pointed like an awl"; "the tooth of a fish." All the vampires of Dracula (1897) had pointy teeth: the three vampire women of the castle, the transformed Lucy, and of course Dracula himself. One of the earliest cinematic vampires, Max Schreck's portrayal of Graf Orlock in Nosferatu (1922) sported prominent ratlike incisor-fangs.

Early vampires of the stage and screen, however, in general did not use dental prosthetics. In the case of the stage, vampire's fangs might not have been practical: anything big enough to see likely would have interfered with an actor's ability to deliver his lines. For movie vampires, however, this need not present a problem. Yet Bela Lugosi's classic portrayal of Dracula did not include fangs, nor indeed did Lugosi ever wear them as part of a vampire role. The first talkie vampire to sport fangs was Atif Kaptan's Drakula in the Turkish production Drakula Istanbulda (1953); the first widely-known portrayal of a fanged movie vampire was Christopher Lee's Dracula in Horror of Dracula (1958).

So even in fiction, even in movies, vampires haven't always had fangs.

And fangs certainly aren't unique to vampires. Many species of animals, from snakes to apes, have two long, pointed upper teeth near the front of the jaw. Even in normal humans the canines are a little longer and sharper than the neighboring teeth. Yet snakes, tigers, chimpanzees, and so forth have no connection to vampires. Vampire bats have canines like many carnivores yet, ironically, they use their incisors to draw blood. And some fictional vampires do not use their teeth for blood-draining: in the movie The Hunger, the "vampires" carried small knives for that purpose.

Fangs are not unique to vampires, are not necessary for drawing blood, do not occur in the earliest Western vampire fiction, and are absent from traditional Western vampire lore. Yet these are foremost among the images (or at least among the foremost images) associated with vampires in popular culture, so essential that artists often violate basic mechanical principles in order to include them in their portrayals of vampires. Look at those book covers again (and stop drooling!). It is not physically possible for vertical fangs to protrude downward between closed human lips as many cover paintings show. But the advertising people want the fangs there. They make for good marketing, if not good mechanics.

None of which answers the question: Why?

Here are some thoughts.

As a visual indicator of the vampire condition, fangs have advantages over most other possible symbols. For one thing, they are, for lack of a better word, 'innate'. A vampire can have fangs without turning into a bat, being swathed in a cape, or wearing an ankh or medallion. And despite their lack of folkloric attestation, fangs for a vampire make intuitive sense. If you're going to drink blood, you've got to get it somehow; what more reasonable than to pierce the skin with something sharp ... like a tooth? Like, in point (ouch!) of fact, a fang?

Fangs give the vampire's appearance an unhuman touch more understated than almost any other animal-like trait could. The fanged vampire is visually a human-animal hybrid, his or her face a human facade that can, in a flash, reveal the gleaming weapons of a beast. And this animal connection may well add to the vampire's appeal, for fangs suggest the strength of the lion, the fierceness of the wolf, the speed of the striking snake. Yet for all their connotations, fangs -- elongated canines -- have an elegant simplicity, a grace that smooths over the raw animal power they represent. A few works of fiction (most notably The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas) and some lore give the vampire a tongue- prick, but its folkloric authenticity can't compete with the aesthetic appeal of the fang.

Fangs in a vampire's mouth necessarily have phallic overtones, but they lack the penis-like grotesqueness of a pointed or barb-bearing tongue. It's difficult to associate a thrusting tongue with any socially acceptable behavior. Fangs, however, suggest biting, an act that can be performed in public (at least while eating). Although not explicitly sexual, biting retains strong sexual and pre-sexual overtones related to both power and pleasure. Biting with fangs can be considered a sublimated form of sexual intercourse, even of rape. However, the mouth is not merely an erogenous zone: it is the part of the body that we consciously control literally from day one. In Freudian terms, it is associated with the earliest stage of development (oral): oral stimuli, and oral acts, can yield satisfaction at a level even more profound than the purely sexual. Thus biting, the most visceral form of oral aggression, appeals to us at the deepest instinctual level. The tot who wants a Halloween costume with vampire fangs recognizes this, even though he (or she) can't articulate the appeal of those pointy teeth. Phallic interpretations notwithstanding, it may be that their location -- the mouth -- accounts more for their charisma than do the fangs themselves. Whether we fear vampires or identify with them, their fangs intensify our focus on the mouth, whether as an erogenous zone or an instrument of aggression -- or both.

Framed by the snarling lips of a fiend or underlying the kiss of a demon lover, fangs are more than a marketing gimmick (though they certainly are that). They are the steel beneath the velvet, strength and speed, pain and delight, the promise of devouring or being devoured -- all rolled into a snippet of dental enamel. Rather than question why the vampire's fangs appeal to us, perhaps we should ask: how can they not?

How indeed?

About those covers:

I took a little artistic license with my bookstore scenario in the first paragraph: given the varying dates of publication, it's unlikely that all covers described would have been visible in a bookstore at the same time. Here, at any rate, are the "cover vamps" I had in mind:

The masked, fanged woman graces the cover of Domination by Michael Cecilione (Zebra, 1993). The design with disembodied red lips is that of Blood Rites by Elaine Bergstrom (Jove, 1991). Gilt-framed eighteenth century-style paintings appear on P. N. Elrod's Jonathan Barrett paperbacks, all published by Ace: Red Death (1993), Death and the Maiden (1994), Death Masque (1995), and Dance of Death (1996).

Other covers, however, may fit some of these descriptions. Fangs are everywhere!

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

WHY IT BEGAN ---

They swept across the Bosphorus and into Eastern Europe with a vengeance, conquering the squabbling Slavs with ease. With them, they brought their middle eastern civilization, and some of their beliefs, but mostly they brought suffering. Suffering in the form of syphilis, leprosy, smallpox, tuberculosis... and God Himself seemed to turn against them, sending flood, earthquakes, and plague.

Wallachia struggled under the heel of the Ottoman Turks for decades at the end of the 14th century, until Mircea the Great, allied with Sigismund of Luxembourg, led a crusade against the infidel in 1395. But the dynasty their saviour established was often more terrible than the Turk. The House named Bassarab whelped four generations of despots, beginning with Vlad.

VLAD I

Sent to the court of Sigismund at an early age, he was inducted into the secret society of the Order of the Dragon in February 1431. For this honor, he was addressed by the landed lords of his homeland as Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon, and for evidence carried around his neck, on his shield, and on his coin, the image of a dragon hanging on a double cross.

But, the common folk did not understand the importance of the honor given by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. They only understood that the icon entertained by the house of Bassarab was identical to the orthodox image of the devil. And, since the word "Dracul" could be translated either "dragon" or "devil", it was not difficult for them to believe that Vlad was in league with dark and terrible forces.

He returned from the Roman court with the staff of office of Prince of Wallachia and governor of Transylvania, establishing his headquarters in the fortress of Sighisoara. From there, in 1434, he began his campaign to affirm his right to the throne and to remove the Turk from his lands. In 1436, he entered the capital of Tirgoviste and became Vlad I of Wallachia. His rule was short, bloody, and troubled. Forced by the death of Sigismund, his most powerful ally, in 1437, he signed a treaty with the Sultan Murad II of Turkey, going so far as to aid him in his raids on Transylvania, spilling the blood of his own.

VLAD II, CALLED TEPES (THE IMPALER)

While still in the bosom of Sigismund's protection, Vlad Dracul sired three legitimate sons, the second of whom was also named Vlad, born in December 1431. He was groomed from childhood as a prince of the blood: proud, cold, and unfeeling. His political science was that a prince should be feared rather than loved, and he carried that philosophy into his adult life.

Fascinated as a boy by death, in the form of hangings of criminals at the Jewler's Donjon near the castle where he grew up, Vlad the Younger soon showed himself a cunning and devious child. He avoided the fate of one of his brothers, who was buried alive by the boyars, or landowners, of Wallachia, as Vlad I's popularity waned.

Held by the Turks after his father's death, he served in the Turkish army as an officer, learning the art of torture and impalement. Finally escaping from the Sultan's forces, he hid away in Moldavia until, with the aid of a force put together at great effort, he was able to reclaim the Wallachian throne in 1456, at the age of 25. His ascent to the throne was greeted by the arrival of a comet in the skies over Europe, an event of dread for most, but for Vlad an auspicious sign. He worked its image into his coin, the Wallachian eagle on the reverse to remind the carrier to whom the comet referred. He fortified Bucharest against the return of the Turk, solidifying the resistance begun by the boyars Janos Hunyadi and Michael the Brave.

To cement his power, he had to remove the boyars from their lands. In the spring of 1457, on Easter day, he took a force and surrounded the boyars at feast. He took their wives and children and impaled them around the feast tables, then chained the men and carried them away as slave labor on his new palace.

Vlad's rule was harsh and cruel, the threat of impalement a constant deterrent to crime and disloyalty. A typical story of the time recalls this in vivid detail:

"Having asked the old, the ill, the lame, the poor, the blind, and the vagabonds to a large dining hall in Tirgoviste, Dracula ordered that a feast be prepared for them. On the appointed day, Tirgoviste groaned under the heavy weight of the large number of beggars who had come. The prince's servants passed out a batch of clothes to each one, then they led the beggars to a large mansion where tables had been set... The beggars had a feast that became legendary... Most of them became dead drunk... and became incoherent, they were suddenly faced with fire and smoke on all sides. The prince had ordered his servants to set the house on fire... the doors were locked... When the fire naturally abated, there was no trace of any living soul."

The tales of Vlad Dracula's cruelty became legendary. Romanian folklore holds hundreds of horribly graphic descriptions of punishments he meted out on his subjects for crimes, real and imagined. He is accused of the deaths of 40,000 to 100,000 people, and not just by impalement. He employed strangling, hanging, burning, boiling, skinning, roasting, and burying them alive. He is known to have ordered cannibalism on prisoners.

At the end of his haunted life, Vlad Dracula is supposed to have been buried at Snagov, under the monastery he helped rebuild, on an island in the middle of a lake. The forest of Vlasia surrounds the lake, whose still waters were said to have been witness to atrocities committed by Dracula there in the ancient monastery.

HOW IT WAS CONTINUED ---

Although the last of the Bassarabs, Prince Constantine, died in 1658, the memory of the viciousness and pure evil of the family endured in legend. The simple folk of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, lived in constant terror of the vampyr, the ghosts of men like Vlad, whose bloodlust was what kept them alive even after their time on this world had expired. It was difficult for outsiders to understand the depth of this fear, ingrown to the region, without firsthand experience of its manifestation. As the region passed from one political regime to another, the people went about their lives steeped in the past, permanently stunted in their psychic growth by the trauma of the rule of Vlad the Impaler. After Dracula's death, books on his exploits were circulated widely in Europe, their sales and popularity for a while rivalling even that of the Bible.

COUNTESS ERZSEBET BATHORY OF HUNGARY

The year 1610 was a bloody one for the inhabitants of the Castle Csejthe. Authorities, led there by a young woman who claimed to have been abducted, attacked, and barely escaped with her life, found within its walls the remains of hundreds of girls and young women. The owner of the castle, the Countess Erzsebet Bathory, was accused of having drunk and bathed in the blood of nearly 650 virgins, in the hope it would rejuvenate her. Her accomplices were tried and beheaded, but the Countess was condemned to be walled into her own chambers, where she was kept, fed through a small hole in the wall, until her death in 1640.

PETER PLOGOJOWITZ

In 1725, in the village of Kisilova, a man named Peter Plogojowitz died. Ten weeks later, he was back, supposedly responsible for the deaths of others. In the next several years, the beginnings of the actual vampire legend as we know it today, would be formed.

ARNOD PAOLE

He claimed to have been bothered by a vampyr, and to have eaten earth from its grave and smear himself with its blood to escape it. Yet, when Arnod Paole died from an accident around 1730 in the village of Medvegia, he was shortly afterword supposed to have been responsible for at least 4 more deaths. At the behest of the authorities, his body was exhumed, and he was found, after 40 days in the grave, to be in a passable state.

In a fit of paranoia, the authorities exhumed all the bodies in the cemetery. Of the 20 or so bodies recently deceased (within the past 8 weeks), they discovered 11 were in a state of apparent vampirism. The bodies had apparently grown new skin, hair, and nails, and fresh blood was discovered in them when

dissected. Paole had apparently been very busy, and indiscriminate in his favors, victimizing a child of 8 days as easily as a woman of 60 years.

DR. JOHN POLIDORI'S "THE VAMPYRE"

In 1819, the "New Monthly Magazine of London" published a story entitled "The Vampyre" and attributed its authorship to Lord Byron. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the author had actually been Byron's doctor, John Polidori (1795-1821). The sexual nature of this tale was titilatting to the usually cold

British demeanor and set the stage for the seductive nature of the vampire tales to come. In appearance, the vampire, named Lord Ruthven, was gentlemanly and handsome, yet his temperament and deportment was most passionate and violent.

JAMES MALCOLM'S "VARNEY THE VAMPIRE"

In the middle of the 18th century Britain was inundated with what were called "Penny Dreadfuls." These mini-novels were like the comic books of today, though uncensored, and had an avid following. The character of "Varney the Vampire" (1846) starred in over 800 issues of these books, taking the readers through tales of horror, sex, and violence, and furthering the vision of the vampire as a blood-sucking monster who hypnotized his victims into submission.

"THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER"/ THE KNIGHT AZZO VON KLATKA

He was of the race that "turned night into day, and day into night," commanded wolves, and despised humankind. The author of his story is as unknown today as it was in 1860, when the story first appeared, but bits of his personality endure in today's vampires.

BRAM STOKER'S "DRACULA"

Drawing on the sources readily available in the last decade of the nineteenth century, including information provided by Arminius Vabery, a researcher for the British Museum, Abram Stoker (1847-1912) filled out the details of the nightmares that tortured his sleep and rendered the masterpiece Dracula in

1897. Written in the epistolary style peculiar to his time period, it has never been equalled for instilling horror in the reader.

WHERE IT STANDS ---

The appearance of Dracula at the turn of the century was taken as an announcement of the true nature of the vampire. Few changes have been wrought on its image since then, although recently attempts have been made to soften the vicious core of its image into a more palatable fare.

With the coming of motion pictures, the vampire found a new audience. From the genius of Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) and Browning's "Dracula" (1931) to the latest efforts by such diverse talents as Rice, Coppola, and King, the vampire leaps at us from the printed page, art, and motion picture. It has become a fixture in the imagination of modern civilization, the symbol of the darkness that resides within all of us.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

Are there vampires who dwell beneath the waters of the world?
What myth, legends, and folk tales surround them?
Are they normal vampires who just prefer water to the land?
Are they blood-drinking mermaids?
Are there any such vampires in fictional books or movies?

To fully answer such questions, a whole book would be required. But let me give some telling examples.

In myths, legends, and folk beliefs, I've found four categories vampiric or neo-vampiric beings who dwell in water or come out of the water.

(1) Revenants (i.e., undead humans) who dwell in or return from the sea, lakes, or streams.
(2) Mermaids or neo-mermaids who were not born human but can be classified as vampires or neo-vampires.
(3) Those who were born human but became vampiric, or neo-vampiric, mermaids or neo-mermaids after they died.
(4) Other vampiric or neo-vampiric, supernatural creatures who dwell under water.

For category (1), the best examples I've found are the "draugs" as described in Norwegian folk tales recorded in the 19'th and 20'th centuries. In these tales, the draug is most typically the undead, animated body of a person who had drowned at sea and come out of the water at night to attack the living. It isn't clear that they had a special appetite for blood. But the same can be said for many of the Eastern European revenants which are the basis of our fictional, literary vampires.

It seems worth mentioning that in a historic case where, on the Croatian Island of Lastova in the Adriatic Sea vampires were suspected to be the cause of an epidemic of disease. The vampire hunters' first suspect was a man who had drowned at sea. They were disappointed that they could not find the man's grave to unearth the corpse and impale it with stakes. When the vampire hunters were brought to trial by Church authorities for desecrating graves and corpses, one of them testified that it was a long held belief that those who drowned at sea became vampires. (A transcript of the trial testimony is contained in _The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism_ by Jan L. Perkowski. c. 1989)

For category (2), there are examples from myths and folklore.

Among my favorites is a legend which has lamias swimming the sea in like mermaids. They grasp the bow of a boat with their hands and ask the crew if Alexander the Great is dead. If the crew replies that he is still alive, the lamias, rejoicing at the tiding, gladly conduct the ship to its destination. If the crew replies that he is dead, they conjure up a storm which sinks the ship. The crew then drown. Since the lamia has a vampiric reputation going back to pagan Greek times, it doesn't seem to be a long stretch to suppose that the fate of the doomed crews involved more than merely drowning. And of course the most popular image of a lamia is the one in which she has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of serpent. I don't know if in this tale the lower body had the tail of a fish or not. Anyway, both fish and serpents have scales.

I find the malicious side of mermaid lore well expressed by Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh in their book, _Sea Enchantress_ (c. 1961), p. 13:

"....the mermaid is the femme fatale of the sea; she lures man to his destruction, and usually he goes unresisting to his doom."

In many Scottish tales, mermaids were gentle creatures. But this is not always the case. In the story of "The Laird of Lorntie", a lord was returning to his castle with a servant when he heard the cries for help from a beautiful woman in a nearby loch. She appeared to be drowning and the lord rushed off to save her. But the servant recognized the reality of the situation and rescued his master from his folly in the nick of time. After the servant explained his forceful rescue, the mermaid then admitted:

"Lorntie, Lorntie,
Were it na your man,
I had gart your heart's blood
Skirl in my pan."

There are also tales in which mermaids caused shipwreck by luring sailors into dangerous waters with their charm and beauty and devoured them as they drowned.

Good examples of this are among the folk tales of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, near the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Here the mermaids play the role of sirens - they would sing from rocks and their enchanting song would lure sailors to come dangerously close to these rocks. Then suddenly a terrible storm would arise and force the ships to crash into the rocks. The mermaids would then carry the sailors down into the depths of the sea and devour them.

The Channel Islanders called these mermaids 'seirenes'. But at least according to the testimony of one islander, a school teacher who saw six of them on a beach, they had the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish.

On the west coast of France there are also many places that have tales of siren-mermaids. It seems often the case here that the siren-mermaid led her victims to death for the sake of fiendish fun rather than to satisfy her appetite. But in one old song sung in Poitou, a diver searching for the golden keys of a princess is lured to his death by such a siren. The princess later tells the siren that she has reason enough to sing - she has the sea to drink and the princess's lover to eat.

There are also tales where a mermaid lures a man into the sea and then marries him, and they then live together beneath the sea and have children. In the legend of Matthew Trewella told in Cornwall, a beautiful mermaid came up a stream from the sea and heard Matthew singing as a church chorister. She lured him down into the sea. He was never heard again, but he could be heard singing in Pendour Cove to his mermaid bride. In another version, the mermaid took the complete form of a woman and attended the services of the church at Zennor for many generations before being enthralled with Matthew's singing. The congregation was already wondering about her since she had never aged through the years. And there is a sequel tale in which the skipper of a ship dropped anchor off Pendover Cove. The mermaid rose from the sea and complained to the skipper that his anchor was laying across the door to underwater home where she, Matthew, and their children lived. The skipper obligingly raises his anchor. When he returned to Zennor, he informed the people about the fate of Matthew Trewella.

For category (3), revenants who resemble mermaids, a good example of this is the 'rusalka'.

The rusalka is identified in Ukrainian and Russian lore as the ghostly soul of a young woman who died by drowning or that of an infant who was stillborn or who otherwise died unbaptized. The rusalka most typically appears to people as a beautiful young woman. But she might also appear in the form of a bird or a beast, a mermaid or a young boy. A rusalka's haunt was a river, a pond, a lake, or a bay. The rusalka had a reputation for appearing to a man as a beautiful young woman, leading him with her seductive appeal into the water, and then drowning him. In some tales where a rusalka is like a mermaid, she leads the man down to her beautiful castle beneath the water and marries him. But even in these tales the rusalka has a dark side - the soul of the seduced man is doomed to end in hell.

In Brittany, there is also a legend in which a wicked princess became a siren-mermaid after the great sea-gate of her city, Ys, was opened during a severe storm at high tide and the city was totally deluged. She had been seduced and tricked by the devil, in the form of a handsome young man, into providing him the keys to the sea gate. The princess drowned with most of the other people in the city. But then she returned from the dead as a siren-mermaid.

For category (4), other vampiric or neo-vampiric, supernatural creatures who dwell under water, there is, for one example, the water-horse.

The Celtic water-horse is most well known today as the kelpie. Variations of the kelpie can be found in the lore of Ireland, the Shetland Islands, the Isle of Man, the Scottish Lowlands and the Scottish Highlands.

Considering both shape-shifting ability and voraciousness, the kelpie of the Scottish Highland and the Island of Man in the Irish Sea was the most fearsome.

One of its tricks was to take the form of a beautiful horse and lure children onto its back. It then headed for the loch. After jumping into the loch with its victims, it devoured all of the flesh and blood within their bodies except for internal organs such as livers, hearts, and lungs, which then came floating to shore.

In human form, the Highlands kelpie sometimes behaved like a a true vampire. In one story, a kelpie took the form of an old woman and begged some girls tending cattle to share their shelter with her. The girls consented. One of the girls woke up in the middle of the night and saw the old lady sucking blood from one of the other girls. The girl managed to escape and tell the tale.

The Highlands kelpie also sometimes took the form of a handsome man to take advantage of women. Typically, he had trouble maintaining human form. In one tale of a woman being courted by a kelpie, the masquerade is foiled when the woman notices that the 'man' has horse-hoofs. In another, the man's hair begins to turn to sea weed.

The folk beliefs found on the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland include both the kelpie and the 'nucklelavee'. The nuckelavee somewhat resembles a centaur. The upper body is basically humanoid and the lower body is basically equine. But it had flippers instead of hooves, and it's head, like that of a cyclops, had only one eye. It had neither skin nor scales - the whole surface of its body displayed naked flesh with yellow veins through which blood pulsed like black tar. It would come to land to prey upon people and domestic animals. Also, its foul breath could blight the crops. It could not dwell in fresh water or cross over fresh water, and in the folk tales about it this often provided a way for a person to escape the creature's pursuit.

Also to be considered are the 'worms', the dragon-serpents of Anglo-Saxon, and Scottish lore. Some of these lived in the sea and can be considered to be sea serpents. But even the land versions often dwelled in wells and lochs. Both preyed upon humans and livestock, and their fowl breath could blight crops and cause epidemics of disease among humans.

So far I haven't found any clear-cut cases in myth, legend, or folktale where a mermaid or neo-mermaid was an outright blood-sucker. But it doesn't seem like too much of a leap to write a story about such a vamp. After all, if the 19'th century creators of the modern literary vampire such as Bram Stoker had got hung up in making their vampires exactly match those revenants in folklore which are their basis, they would not have succeeded in their efforts.

Bram Stoker indeed did write a story which involves both Medieval legends about the "worm" and the image of the lamia as a vampish snake-woman: _The Lair of the White Worm_. In this story, a gigantic, blood thirsty "Worm" dwells in a deep well on an estate in England whose history goes back to at least the time of the Roman occupation.

One of the story's protagonists, the uncle of the story's central hero, gives a neo-Darwinian explanation for the existence of such a creature and its presence in old legends and in their neighbor's well. In prehistoric times such enormous serpent-like creatures lived in the great swamps and marshes that surrounded the mouths of European rivers. As the climate changed, they adopted to dwelling in natural caverns and tunnels that extended from the bed of these wetlands, and as part of this they also developed the ability to tunnel through clay and other soils. At the same time, their mental powers evolved greatly.

The snake-woman in the story, Lady Arabella, is the widow who now owns the estate and its well. She was once a nice young girl but one day while out in the country side alone, she received a venomous bite. After she was found and brought home, she was at first severely ill. Then, suddenly, she suddenly had a remarkable recovery. But she was no longer a nice girl. The central hero's uncle deduces that she actually did die from the bite, and the White Worm took possession of her as soon as her own soul departed from her body.

The creature is still dependent on dwelling in the well in worm-form part of the time, but, in the form of Lady Arabella, it has taken full control of the estate.

There is one passage near the end of the story that is quite erotic in a vampish way:

"She [Lady Arabella] tore off her clothes with feverish fingers, and in full enjoyment of her natural freedom stretched her slim figure in animal delight. Then she lay down on the sofa - to await her victim! Edward Caswall's life blood would more than satisfy her for some time to come."

There is a movie spin-off of Stoker's story available as a VCR tape at video stores which is well worth watching: "The Lair of the White Worm", produced in Great Britain in 1988, starring Ken Russell and Amanda Donahoe. There are many differences between this movie and the original story. It's really a whole new story. But it preserves and enhances the best elements of the original story. It's actually better than the original.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

Early Mom and Dad gazed lovingly upon their teenage sons and daughters only to wonder in amazement, what happened? Prepubescense, these wonderful offspring leapt with joy from their beds at dawns? early light and wolfed down a hearty breakfast. Sometime after the puberty monster hits, they howl with indignity as the blinds are drawn and they shrink back from the glare as the sun touches upon their skin. They try to quickly cover themselves with blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, dogs, what have you, lest the UV rays forever mar the epidermis.

Breakfast consists of fruitloops in a cup in the evening and conversation consists of "pass the milk". Around 10 p.m. is when the "day" officially begins. Out the door to prowl the streets at night, many an unsuspecting coffee shop owner has felt the shivers run down her spine as the vampires have hovered around the cappuccino machine. Undaunted by the black clothing and ghostly skin pallor, the coffee shop mistress knows she is protected from the vampires by her silver spoons that only she can provide. As long as the vampires have their double lattes and biscotti the coffee wench is safe.

Of course when the sun rises, the entire city is safe. It is a well-established fact that vampires only gallivant around in the dead of night; which really means they sleep all day. Often travelling in gangs sometimes a solitary vampire disengages itself from the group to skateboard himself to work. This is when you will see the dramatic event known as shapeshifting. At work the vampire is warm, friendly, smiling, willing to clean, always ensuring your comfort level asking if you would like fries with that.

But at home the shapeshifting reoccurs at a break neck pace and that same smiling soul is either sullen, sleeping or showering.

Another well-known fact is that vampires always leave the dead bodies lying around for somebody else to clean up. At home it is no different. You can always find towels left in a pile on the bedroom floor and a fine collection of cutlery and dishes in an amazing state of animation. Upon closer examination, the empty glass of milk left under the bed for weeks on end will create life. Scrutinize the furry base of the glass and you can almost see the entire subway system laid out and the tiny creatures travelling back and forth to work.

The most frightening character trait of the vampire, the one that brings instant fear to the hearts of young and old alike is the ability to suck the life out of poor unsuspecting souls while roaming the vast outdoors. Indoors this uncanny ability manifests itself by sucking the money out of poor unsuspecting parents.

As a general rule, Vampires have an uncanny ability to remember entire conversations word for word, especially those concerning the pay out of money. But alas, this ability is not quite as refined as other traits. Unfortunately there are other times when entire weeks of endless repeating of phrases and sentences have absolutely no ability to retain any meaning. The most common phrases soon forgotten are ?Close the door, the air conditioning is on?, ?Put the milk back in the fridge when your done?, ?Please clean your room before you go out, I would like to remember the color of your carpet.; To which the most common reply that is returned is "What carpet?

Vampires have a sense of style all their own. Each will dress according to his or her own group code. For example; the Sporty Vampire will wear only Adidas, Nike, or Fila shoes and clothing. They can be distinguished from the other vampires by the secret symbol of the check mark.

The Trendy Vampires will only wear Calvin Klein?s, Tommy, or Versace clothing. These are also the only class of vampires that will change clothing a minimum of three times a day depending upon the activity, group dress code for the day or who might potentially see them.

Their oversized pants, KORN T-shirts, backward hats, and of course the ever present skateboard can distinguish the last group of vampires. These are also the only group of vampires that are completely dependant upon what is blasting from their stereos and it must be heard above 300 decibels, be it in the kitchen, bathroom, shower or bedroom. This leads me to believe that this poor unfortunate group must have a hearing problem. None of the three groups ever seem to inter mix, preferring to stick closely to their own kind. If by chance they do happen to cross paths there is much snarling and gnashing of teeth.

Life with a vampire is never dull and there are many high points as well. Vampires are naturally charming and witty creatures. They are also extremely intelligent, creative and fun to be with. Conversing with vampires on a regular basis, you can discover the scope of their keen perception and the intellect of their imagination. They tend to have opinions on life and viewpoints that are often most insightful, and most often missed by their parents. Maybe the real paradox of living with the vampire is the inability of parents to understand them.

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

As the 20th century evolved, rational man turned to science to explain mythology that had pervaded for thousands of years. How could a man be mistaken for a vampire? How could someone appear to have been the victim of a vampire attack? Science, in time, came back with answers that may surprise you.

Anemia

Derived from the Greek word for "bloodlessness", anemia is a blood disease in which the red-cell count is unusually low. Red cells are the carriers of oxygen throughout the body. When a person suffers from anemia, their symptoms are caused by inadequate oxygen. These symptoms may include:

• A pale complexion
• Fatigue
• Fainting spells
• Shortness of breath
• Digestive disorders

There are three main causes of anemia: disease, heredity, and severe blood loss. Over the ages, a person suffering from these symptoms may have been under suspicion of a vampire attack. Once again, myth warps to suit the needs of the believer. Although the victim may have contracted a disease or simply have inherited the blood disorder, society would have found it easy to believe that the symptoms resulted from a vampire attack. Indeed, these symptoms may even have suggested to our ancestors that the victim was beginning his own transition to a vampire, marked with a pale complexion and trouble eating food.

Catalepsy

Catalepsy is a disorder of the nervous system that causes a form of suspended animation. It causes a loss of voluntary motion, a rigidity to the muscles, as well as decreased sensitivity to pain and heat. A person suffering from catalepsy can see and hear but cannot move. Their breathing, pulse, and other regulatory functions are slowed to the extent that to an untrained eye, it would seem as though they were deceased. This condidtion can last from minutes to days. Before 20th century medicine came along, there were few diagnostic tests that could be done on a body to ensure it was in fact dead, and so it is possible and even likely that persons suffering from catalepsy could have been declared dead prematurely. Embalming a corpse before burial is also a 20th century idea, so it's very possible that these bodies were declared dead and buried while the person still lived. Upon recovering from their catalyptic state, the person would try to dig their way to the surface. Many myths may have arisen from this single condition alone.

Porphyria

Of all the disorders and diseases even loosely linked to vampirism, the most bizarre must be porphyria. It is a rare hereditary blood disease; its symptoms so closely match the myths associated with our modern conception of vampirism it's eerie. A victim of porphyria cannot produce heme, a major and vital component of red blood. Today, this disease is treatable with regular injections of heme into the body. However, as little as fifty years ago, this treatment was unavailable and the disease unknown. In the past, a porphyria sufferer would show symptoms that include:

• Extreme sensitivity to sunlight
• Sores and scars that break open and will not heal properly
• Excessive hair growth
• Tightening of skin around lips and gums (which would make the incisors more prominent)

This disease would likely cause the victim to only go out at night, in order to avoid the painful rays of the sun. In addition, while garlic stimulates the production of heme in a healthy person, it would only cause the symptoms of porphyria to become more painfully severe. Porphyria was eventually discarded by scientists as a reasonable explanation of the vampire myth that has pervaded our history. Although vampire accounts of the past bear little resemblance to the dashing figure we romanticize today, these qualities may have contributed to our look at the vampire in film and fiction: pale skin, extended incisors, even the fear of the sun!

(taken from: vampirewine.com)

All around the world, the vampire goes by different names. Each culture in history has their own distinct name and meaning of vampire. Here are just a few.

Africa
asabonsam, obayifo

Australia
yara-ma-yha-who

Bulgaria
obur

China
chiang-shih

Czech Republic and Slovakia
upir

Germany
Nachtzehrer

Greece
vrykolakas

Gypsy
mulo

India
Kali

Mexico
tlahuelpuchi

Phillipines
aswang

Romania
strigoi

Russia
uppyr

Blood

Blood has been a symbol of life since very ancient times. The blood in our veins has always been iconic of our continuing life. To lose too much blood is to lose consciousness, breath, and eventually, our very lives. If a person or animal is already dead and is cut open, blood does not flow. Only the living have blood that flows. Blood has been used throughout the ages as a ceremonial sacrifice. In pagan times our forefathers worshipped their gods with blood sacrifice. And today, indeed, we are not so different. Even in modern times, in our churches, there are those taking communion or the Eucharist, and drinking of the wine that symbolizes Christ's blood.

It seems appropriate, then, that this creature who is an antithesis of both death and life should gain his strength from feeding from the life's blood of humans. For the vampire, the drinking of blood is its life, its sustenance, and the single thing that makes it identifiable all around the world, regardless of the culture in which you were raised or the language you speak.

As the ages progressed and new modern technology and medicine became available to the masses, the exact nature of the vampire's need for blood changed. In many literary instances it was linked to anemia, and blood loss. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing prescribed a blood transfusion for Lucy, in an attempt to divest her of the vampire blood in her body.

Blood is what animates the vampire, what gives him his life. Without it he can dry up into a husk, much like a starved human. Many theories have been tested in fiction as to why it is so. In Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, the entire vampire race is infested with a demon/spirit that makes them what they are, and the demon needs blood in order to retain his hold on their collective bodies. Thus, the need to feed on blood, particularly when the vampire is a fledgling.

Fangs

A vampire must drink blood in order to survive. And so, with our advancing understanding of how animal and human evolution works, vampire novels and stories in the late nineteenth century began to describe the vampire as having protruding or elongated canine teeth. This made it easier for the vampire to puncture the skin of the neck and the jugular vein while feeding. Up until that time, however, vampires were not thought to have fangs at all. But it is a fact that races of animals (we humans as mammals are included in this) evolve physically to make their tasks easier to perform. And so it is with the vampire.

As cinematic prowess increased and the movie industry was able to do more with special effects, a new vampiric ability evolved. In movies today it is common to see the vampire with retractable canine fangs. This allows him to circulate with humans more easily; with the fangs retracted, he is more easily perceived as human. In Forever Knight, the character Nick's fangs only protrude when his dark, vampiric nature is unleashed.

Fingernails

In European and Slavic history, fingernails were thought to be one of the tell-tale signs that a corpse was a vampire. Vampires were thought to lose their old nails and grow new ones upon their entry to the vampiric world. An exhumed body that lacked nails or had grown new ones was summarily staked, and very often burned or reburied with garlic to seal the corpse within the ground.

In modern literature, two major vampire novels have mentioned fingernails specifically. In Dracula, Jonathan Harker notices that Dracula's "nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point." When Dracula later opened a wound on his chest for Mina Murray to drink his blood, he did so with these sharp, pointed nails. In Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Louis and Lestat both mention the glassy appearance of their fingernails, so different from that of humans. Many times it is something that they take care to hide.

Hair

The histories of both European and Slavic vampire hunts also show hair growth as a sign of vampirism, although this sign was generally not found unless the corpse also displayed many other traits thought to be associated with a vampire.

Anne Rice does discuss hair in her Vampire Chronicles, although she is one of the few. Her vampires are cursed with the same length of hair that they had when they died and were made into vampires. Regardless of how often they cut it, it will always grow back.

Reproduction

The term Dhampir refers to the offspring of a vampire and a human mate, traditionally a male vampire mating with a human female. This offspring was normally male. The dhampir was thought to have special qualities. He could sense where vampires hid themselves from the world, and therefore he had the ability to be a superb vampire hunter. These qualities would be passed down genetically to his offspring, and it was thought to last many generations.

As well, the terms incubus and succubus refer to vampires who perform a sexual attack upon their intended victims, and it was likely these types of vampires who produced offspring. However, references to exactly how (!) this was accomplished is very scarce.

Senses

A vampire's sense of vision is thought to be very acute. This is largely due to the fact that they are a nocturnal creature, and therefore must be able to adapt to their environment. It also explains why sunlight is thought to be so painful to their eye. Their eyesight has often been attributed to a residue from their ability to change into bats (see Shape Changing).

Hearing is also heightened in a vampire body. This allows them to hear mortals from a great distance (far greater than human ears could pick up) and also to discern when another vampire draws near. This is evident in Forever Knight; Nick can hear over great distances, and this allows him to capture the criminals he chases. Their acute sense of hearing may also be attributed to their nocturnal nature; as night hunters, the ability to hunt quietly and hear well would be invaluable.

Shape-Changing

Although there was a small link between shape-changing and vampires for hundreds of years, it was not until Dracula that the true connection was made. In the novel, Stoker described Dracula as able to change into a rat, a bat, or the very mist itself.

Vampire bats became by far the most common of these shapes a vampire could command at will. This could be because vampire bats, by their nature, are closely related to the vampire itself. They are nocturnal, and feed exclusively off the blood of various mammals and other vertebrates. They have very sharp teeth which they use to pierce the victim's skin, and then they lap up the blood as it flows. It has also been known as an emerging problem; it is a proficient carrier of rabies (not unlike the definition of Nosferatu, which itself mean plague-carrier).

The ability to transform at will into mist has brought many advantages to the vampire, allowing him to escape vampire hunters and other dangers quickly. In addition, mist (in some cases) has allowed the vampire to move great distances at one time.

Skin

Historically, vampire skin was dark instead of the alabaster skin we see today in film. Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial and Death, suggests that this is becuase suspected "vampires" were actually corpses decomposing in their graves. Skin naturally turns darker and sloughs off the bone as the body decomposes. This may account for many reports in medieval Europe of vampires "growing new skin".

Today, vampire skin is by nature very white and smooth. This is likely due to the fact that these creatures are nocturnal, and never get to see the sun. Their skin therefore gets bleached over time. Also, the vampire is an undead creature, and unless he has recently fed, there is a lack of colour-giving blood in his body.

In The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice describes the vampire skin as nearly transparent when the vampire is starved for blood. After feeding, they attain a healthier, more human skin tone, but this is a temporary change. Lestat mentions on several occasions having to powder his skin to pass for human.

Strength

The vampire came by its supernatural strength through modern film and literature. Vampires, historically, were not know for their great strength; they normally attacked only "weaker" victims, such as children or the elderly. They never attacked a group of people for fear of being overcome. However, the modern view of vampires have allowed them a certain arrogance, knowing that no mere mortal could overpower them. Many of the personality traits that we have come to so adore in the vampire today are a result of this arrogance, knowing that they are truly immortal but for a few weaknesses (see the Vampire Hunter's Guide).

(taken from: vampirewine.com)