TIME-LIFE Mysteries of the Unknown by TIME-LIFE Books

Author:TIME-LIFE Books
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / General
Publisher: Liberty Street
Published: 2015-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

VAMPIRES AND ZOMBIES

EERIE TALES OF THE UNDEAD AND HALF-HUMAN MIGHT SEEM LIKE HARMLESS ENTERTAINMENT. BUT SOME OF THOSE STORIES ARE BASED ON REAL-LIFE OCCURRENCES.

Imaginary zombies haunt our movies and TV shows: have real ones walked in Haiti?

VAMPIRES:THEY LIVED!

WHEN IT COMES TO THE UNDEAD, DRACULA WAS JUST THE BEGINNING.

Portrait of Vlad III the Impaler, or Dracula.

Tales of blood-drinking demons have been with us for millennia, stretching from stories told by the Mesopotamians and ancient Greeks to current books, films, and television series. Despite the long passage of time, the stories are remarkably similar. Vampires are typically portrayed as surviving forever and subsisting on the blood of living creatures, preferably humans. With a single bite, they are able to transform their victims into new vampires. They are also virtually indestructible.

But each generation has also reimagined the bloodsucker in its own way. Vampires of the modern imagination tend to be pale, tortured, and dangerously sexy like Edward Cullen and Bella Swan of the Twilight series. Or, like Lestat de Lioncourt, the antihero of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, they are fallen aristocrats who live in feudal castles. They sport fangs and swirly capes.

In contrast, the bloodsuckers of Eastern European folklore of the 1700s were of peasant stock and resided, at least during the day, in the graveyard where they were buried, according to Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality. The undead in these tales were often laid to rest improperly and would return to stalk the living and in turn cause their death, writes Barber. The way to avoid unsettled souls returning and causing havoc was to lay a corpse to rest properly.

WHO KNEW?

The father of Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula, was Dracul. Dracula means son of Dracul, or little devil.

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