Vampires in our time
If we assume that today there is the same hierarchy among vampires as among ordinary people, then only Count Dracula can compare with Kane Presley. After Mrs. Presley gave an interview to the author of the acclaimed American book about vampires "There's Something in the Blood", she is literally barred from the streets of her hometown of El Paso, located in Texas.
Moreover, whole mountains of letters come to her from journalists from Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, France, England and Australia, who beg the vampire to talk to them. Reporters' interest in Presley is also fueled by the fact that, according to the data in the book, there are about 8,000 vampires living in the United States today.
“I never expected to become either a star or a scarecrow,” says 38-year-old Mrs. Presley, whose vampire experience has already amounted to almost 30 years. “Everyone is wondering about the same thing: do I sleep in a coffin and do I have fangs,” she says. And although she does not have and did not have fangs, many believe that there is something "vampire" in her appearance - for example, a thin, pale face framed by black hair. The vampire look is complemented by dark clothing and blood-red lipstick.
According to Mrs. Presley, she needs one or two glasses of blood "like air" every day. She satisfies her need in the following way: either she offers men sex in exchange for their blood, or turns to a local thrush who gives her some cow's blood.
For years, Presley was ashamed of her addiction and did not talk about it to anyone except her closest friends. But one of her friends could not keep his mouth shut, and all Presley's acquaintances learned about the secret. Some of them turned their backs on her, but many took it calmly.
Despite the excitement that began around Presley, she is not at all burdened by the public's attention. “I want to explain to people that we are not murderers at all, but simply thirsty for blood,” she says. According to her, during the “meal”, she slightly cuts the “donor's” hand from the inside and sucks the blood very carefully so as not to stop the vein. “It's much more enjoyable than sex and much more intimate. And not only for me. People who donate their blood become very attached to me,”assures Mrs. Presley.
Among the letters that the vampire receives, there are also proposals from voluntary donors. But quite a lot of mail comes from detractors. So, for example, one man from Ohio promised to come and, as expected, stick a stake in a vampire. She meekly answered him: "Try it!"
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… The FBI declared Paul Merriott one of the most dangerous criminals in the United States. He committed 38 attacks on young girls and sucked their blood. "I understand that it resembles horror movies," says FBI officer John Stockten. - But, unfortunately, the danger he poses is quite real. Merriot is a ferocious predator that nothing can stop in its indomitable lust for blood. The victims of his attacks have already become residents of 11 states. But none of us have any information about the whereabouts of the monster yet.
According to experts, Merriot suffers from a rare genetic disorder that causes a thirst for human blood, which, by any medical definition, makes him a vampire. The FBI found out that the perpetrator told his victims that he was from Georgia and slept in coffins. He committed his first crime in New York in January 1994. Since then, he has traveled throughout the country, at times attacking young girls.
He was arrested in September for multiple traffic violations in a small town in Alabama, but escaped custody several hours later. No one saw him again.
From the protocol, which was drawn up upon arrest, it is known that Merriot is 42 years old, his height is 188 cm, and his weight is 86 kg. It has not been possible to catch him yet. Perhaps it is also because, experts from the FBI believe, that, as you know, vampires are afraid of daylight and go hunting at night.
Vampires at all times
Count Dracula For many people, this name is associated with the image of the legendary vampire from the gloomy and mysterious country of Transylvania - during the day he pretends to be a lifeless body, and at night he goes hunting - kills, terrifying people, since 1897. It was in that year that he became the protagonist of Bram Stoker's stunning horror novel.
But not everyone may know that the name of Stoker's immortal character was borrowed from the real Dracula, who lived in real Transylvania four centuries before. And although that Dracula was not a vampire in the literal sense of the word, he acquired dubious fame for himself as a bloody tyrant, whose cruelty became, perhaps, the most striking example of sadism.
The real Dracula was born in 1430 or 1431 in the old Transylvanian city of Sighisoara and was the second son of Vlad II, Prince of Wallachia. Having inherited the power of his father, he became Vlad III, although he was better known as Vlad Tepes, that is, the Planter-on-Kolya. His father's name was Dracul, "the devil" - perhaps because he was a fearless fighter, or because - and this is most likely - that he was a member of the Catholic sect of the Order of the Dragon, and in those areas the dragon was synonymous with the devil. At least Vlad III called himself Dracula.
In general, he was a brave warrior, but at times it was difficult to understand which side he took in this or that battle between the eastern and western states, churches and cultures that mixed in his empire. He leaned towards the Turks, then towards the Hungarians, from the Roman Catholic Church to the Orthodox Church, fought under the banner of Islam on the side of the Ottomans.
In the political chaos of that time, he never stood firm on his feet. Three times he lost and again acquired Wallachia - part of southern Romania, including the regions of Transylvania.
For the first time he found himself on the Wallachian throne in 1448, on which the Turks placed him, after his father and elder brother fell at the hands of Hungarian spies. Frightened by the Turks, who once patronized him, he fled, but returned to the throne in 1456, already with the support of the Hungarians. The next six years of his reign were marked by atrocities.
In that era, torture and murder of political opponents were commonplace - the XIV-XV centuries remained in history as centuries of unheard-of atrocities and crimes. But Vlad, who later became an example for Ivan the Terrible, surpassed all the atrocities even of that time. The number of his victims is incalculable. According to one of the legends, he lured into an ambush a detachment of Turks with whom he was supposed to conduct peace negotiations. He invited them to the city of Tirgovishte, stripped off their clothes, put them on stakes and burned them alive.
For all times, Vlad Tepes will remain synonymous with vampirism - in the figurative sense of the word. What is literal?
Serbian peasant Peter Plogoevits died in 1725 and was buried in his native village of Kizilov. A little less than two months later, another nine peasants - young and old - died within a week. On their deathbed, they all claimed that Pogojevitz had appeared to them in a dream, lay down on them and sucked blood out of them.
That is, instead of peacefully resting in the grave, he turned into a vampire. His wife, or rather his widow, only added fuel to the fire, telling neighbors in a confidential conversation that her ex-husband came to her for boots. And later she generally fled from Kizilova to live in another village.
At the time, this part of Serbia was under Austrian imperial rule. Bureaucratic officials flooded Serbian lands, giving the appearance of hard work. One of these "figures" was sent to Kizilova to be present at the autopsy of the grave of Plogoevets and to witness the mysterious transformations.
The imperial inspector of the Gradis area did not want to do the exhumation at all, but the inhabitants were adamant. They stated that if they were not allowed to examine the ill-fated body, they would abandon the village until the evil spirit would destroy them all.
So the bureaucrat, in company with the priest, had a chance to take part in the autopsy of the grave of Pogojevitsa and to testify the following: “The body, with the exception of the nose, which has partially collapsed, is completely fresh. Hair and beard, as well as nails, old ones of which have broken off, do not stop growing; old skin peeled off, and new skin appeared underneath. Not without surprise, I found blood on his mouth, which, according to observations, he sucked from the murdered citizens …"
These details, indicating that the body had not undergone decay, "proved" that it belonged to a vampire. Driven by fear, the peasants quickly cut out a wooden stake and drove Pogojevitsa right into his heart, while fresh blood poured from his chest, ears and mouth. The body was burned and the ashes scattered.
Plogoev lived at a time when legends and myths about vampires were in full swing in Eastern Europe. In the 17th-18th centuries, it was widely believed here that the dead acquire immortal souls and attack the living, and it was possible to take their life only by certain methods. But ideas about these terrible creatures and their nightmarish passion for blood were far from the same in different parts of Europe.
It began long before Plogoevits lived and continued for centuries. Even in 1912, a Hungarian farmer was sure that a deceased 14-year-old boy came to him at night. According to the British newspaper Daily Telegraph, the frightened peasant and his friends dug up the body of the unfortunate man, put three cloves of garlic and three pebbles in his mouth, and then pinned him to the ground with a stake, stuck it right into his heart. And the police said they did it to stop night visits forever.
These fears still huddle in the backyard of the subconscious today. This is why vampires appear so often in the pages of modern books and in movies. An inescapable erotic element lives in them, they come under cover of night, bite into the necks of victims paralyzed by fear and desire …
But despite the image of Count Dracula, born of the rich imagination of novelist Bram Stoker and becoming a model for many filmmakers who are fond of the topic of vampirism, not all vampires rise from their coffins and turn into bats in order to fly from place to place. (As you can see, the shape of the bat is Stoker's own invention.
Before him, according to folklore, vampires turned into any kind of animals, but not bats!) There are also living people who considered themselves vampires (and even today identify) and who torture and kill innocent victims, celebrating their bloody feast. At least in any form, vampirism has dominated the minds for centuries.
As Christianity spread throughout Europe, stories of vampires also proliferated. The Hammer of the Witches, first published in 1481, describes procedures for identifying and punishing vampires and other paranormal creatures. Vampires were ruthlessly dug up and beheaded. Such stories have been added to the folklore of peoples around the world for centuries.
However, reports of vampires as we imagine them today probably first appeared in the 16th century in Eastern Europe, where Hungary and Romania are today. 1526 - Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Great defeated the Hungarian king in battle. Hungary was divided into three parts: one was ruled by the Turks themselves, the other went to the Habsburgs, and the third, independent Transylvania, was ruled by small appanage princes. It was in these remote areas that prejudices about vampirism flourished in a riotous color.
Transylvania - a land where bloody battles were going on every now and then, and the nobility built gloomy castles on the gentle slopes of the Carpathians - has always been considered a rather mysterious place. The forested mountains were inhabited by deeply religious peasants who piously believed that the soul could fly away from the body during life and travel around the world like a bird or any other animal.
In Dracula, Stoker clearly describes this situation: “Among the population of Transylvania, 4 nationalities are clearly distinguished: the Saxons in the south and the Vlachs (Romanians) mixed with them, who are descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the west and shekels in the west and north. I read somewhere that the deepest prejudices are born in the foothills of the Carpathians, as in the center of an imaginary whirlpool."
Life in the middle of such a whirlpool was a living hell for the Transylvanian peasants who depended on their land plots. The epidemics that originated here spread with lightning speed throughout the district and devastated entire cities. These macabre events only strengthened the belief in vampires, who were often held responsible for any death.
Helpless before epidemics, residents buried the dead immediately after death, unfortunately, often before a person died and was in a state of catalepsy, in which breathing can be interrupted. The unfortunate victims woke up in the graves and tried to get out. Later, robbers or ordinary residents, alarmed by the thought that vampires might be buried, dug them up and with horror found the twisted bodies of those who in vain tried to get out of the grave captivity.
Knowing the level of education of those people, it is not difficult to imagine what horror gripped them when they opened the burial and saw blood under their nails or in the mouth of a corpse, gaping in the last cry. And, of course, it became clear that another vampire had been discovered. And if the coffin was opened, as they say, in time, when the body was still showing signs of life, all indicators of vampirism were evident, and a stake stuck in the chest ended all the torment of the unfortunate.
It was believed that a full-blooded person could quickly become a victim of a vampire and turn into one himself, because a bite entails conversion (as in the case of rabid dogs), but in European folklore there are legends that some people showed a great tendency to vampirism. than others. Those who lived "at the bottom" of society were always treated with suspicion, and it was they who were suspected of returning from the grave.
Redheads were also suspected, born in a "shirt" of babies born on Christmas, and in general all those born under unusual circumstances, or, for example, with a cleft lip, deformation of the skull or limbs, and even those whose behavior differed from the generally accepted one. In Greece, where people tend to have dark eyes, those with blue eyes were considered vampires. The suicides were the first candidates for revival as bloodsuckers, because they were excommunicated by the church.
The ancient Greeks buried the dead with an obol (Greek coin) in their mouths. She prevented evil spirits from entering through the mouth. And in the 19th century, the Greeks similarly prevented the penetration of vrikolkas, fixed a wax cross on the lips of the deceased.
Hungarians and Romanians buried corpses with sickles at their necks, so that if the deceased wanted to rise from the grave, he would cut off his own head. Some of the more zealous residents also put a sickle at their hearts - especially for someone who had never been married and therefore risked becoming a strigoi, or vampire. The Finns, for example, tied the hands and feet of the deceased, or stuck stakes into the graves to pin the body to the ground.
It was believed that the breath of a vampire was fetid, but the vampires themselves did not tolerate strong smells, for example, of garlic, therefore heads of garlic were often lowered into the graves, they hung bundles of it on the neck of the deceased. And, like other evil spirits, vampires have always been afraid of silver items and images of the cross, which were hung on doors and gates to prevent immortal souls. People slept with sharp objects under their pillows. It even got to the point that, fearing nocturnal visits of vampires, they spread human feces on their clothes and even put them on their chest.
If for some reason the bodies were incorrectly buried or the amulets turned out to be useless, the living looked for the culprit - those who overcame the barrier of death and returned back - and killed them. In some cults, there was a strong belief that a horse would not cross the grave of a vampire. For this procedure, as a rule, a one-color horse, black or white, was selected, and a young virgin drove it.
In Serbia, any burials that have failed due to old age were considered the graves of a vampire. Vampire hunters have exhumed many of the bodies and examined them for vampire affiliation, based on the degree to which they were decomposed. Regardless of the method of detection, the means of killing vampires were very diverse and included not only an aspen stake, but also burning, decapitation, or a combination of all three methods.
In the countries of Eastern Europe in the old days they opened the grave of a suspect in vampirism, filled it with straw, pierced the body with a stake, and then set it all on fire. Often the head of a corpse was chopped off with a gravedigger's shovel. The head was then placed at the feet of the deceased or near the pelvis and, for reliability, was fenced off from the rest of the body with a roller made of the ground. Bulgarians and Serbs placed hawthorn branches near the navel and shaved the whole body, except for the head. In addition, they cut the soles of their feet and put a nail behind the head.
When the stake pierced the vampire's body, witnesses often noted certain sounds, most often wheezing, as well as the pouring of dark blood. The sounds arose as a rule because the air remaining in the lungs was leaving, but this was perceived differently - it means that the body was alive and it belongs to a vampire! A bloated body in a coffin and traces of blood in the mouth and nose are today considered common signs of decomposition about a month after death - it was during this period that most bodies were exhumed for vampires.
The belief in the living dead turned out to be so strong, and terrible traditions were so deeply rooted in human memory that the most educated minds of that time began to write down specific stories. Karl-Ferdinand de Charoux wrote the book "The Magic of Posthum", it was published in the Czech Republic in 1706. De Charoux considered the issue of vampirism from the point of view of a lawyer and offered legal means of dealing with mysterious creatures. He concluded that the law allows corpses to be burned.
A lot of facts about vampires during that period were collected by Dom Augustine Calmet (Calmet), a French Benedictine monk and bibliographer, who published in 1746 a book entitled "A dissertation on the appearance of angels, demons and ghosts, as well as on the manifestations of vampires in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia. and Silesia ".
Kalme told the story of a soldier who was on allowance in a peasant farm on the Hungarian border, who, as always, sat down at the table to dine with the owners of the estate. Once a man sat down with them, whom the soldier had never seen before, and he very much frightened everyone, mainly the owner. The soldier did not know what to do.
The next day, the owner of the estate died, and when the soldier asked what had happened, they explained to him that this strange man was the owner's father who had died more than 10 years ago, and this time he brought his son the news of his imminent death. Father, of course, was a vampire.
When the soldier told this story to his commander, he - and it was Count of Cabrera - gave the order to investigate the case. Together with a surgeon, a notary and several officers, he visited the house and heard the same story about his father. The villagers dug up his body, and "it was in such a state as if it had just been buried, and the blood was like that of a living." The count ordered that his head be cut off and his body burned.
The commission examined the remains of other vampires, including a man buried more than 30 years ago. The bodies of all three were subjected to the same ritual ceremony.
After collecting all the information received, including the testimony of the Count of Cabrera, Calmet concluded: "The circumstances mentioned in the report are so unique, as well as weighty and diligently documented, that it is impossible not to believe all this." But he showed some skepticism, suggesting that the hasty burial of a person in a state of coma, trance, or paralysis could also have such surprising consequences. And he called the practice of killing and burning such bodies vicious and erroneous and marveled at how the authorities could give permission for this.
More than a hundred years after House Agustin Calmet focused attention on how vampires can get out of their graves, Frenchman Adolphe d'Assier, a member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, concluded that the bodies of vampires are filled with some kind of liquid substance, “which is responsible for some functions . In his work on ghosts, dated 1887, d'Acier wrote that the ghost of a vampire becomes a night marauder at the behest of its master.
"The struggle for existence continues in the graves with the same ferocity, cruelty and cynicism as among living people." D'Acier argued that the blood sucked by the ghost enters the organs, preventing decomposition, ensuring the freshness of the skin and limbs and the reddish color of soft tissues. "The death cycle can only be broken by digging up the corpse and burning it."
Famous for his eccentricity, British researcher Montague Summers has devoted a significant part of his life to the study of "the terrible things that lie at the very bottom of civilization", including vampirism. Summers is still considered the best specialist in this field thanks to his two works "The Vampire and His Family" and "The Vampire in Europe".
At its core, Summers' work was the study of any transformation as such. His interest in vampirism, as well as in lycanthropy and witchcraft, was so great that he left the Church of England, to which he belonged as a deacon, and became an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. He needed the strict magic of Catholic rituals to exorcise the devilish forces.
Summers, based on long-term research, came to the conclusion that not all vampire stories look so traditional. In the dark annals of history, as, indeed, in the newspapers of the new era, information has been preserved about living, modern people who become vampires due to an irresistible craving for human meat and blood.
In this special category of vampires, Summers included a 14-year-old French girl who loved to drink blood from fresh wounds, the Italian mobster Gaetano Mammon, who had "a habit of putting his lips on the wounds of his unfortunate captives," and cannibals of all times and peoples. This also includes those who have a similar predilection for corpses rather than living people.
"Vampirism," Summers said, "is presented in a brighter light, it is generally some kind of desecration of corpses, and there is no crime more terrible and repulsive." The last sentence applies equally to living vampires and those who dig up bodies suspected of vampirism.
N. Nepomniachtchi