What do we know about vampires? First of all, these are folklore characters, the living dead, emerging from the graves to drink human blood, without which their further existence is impossible. They do not cast shadows and are not reflected in the mirror.
Their appearance, of course, inspires fear and disgust. They are servants of the devil and are afraid of religious symbolism. But why are there such similar images in the myths of completely different peoples? What secrets are hidden on the other side of the legends?
Red drink
Records of dead but reviving creatures who consumed human blood have been preserved on clay tablets from the times of the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures (4th millennium BC).
Later ancient Egyptian myths mention the goddess Sekhmet, who drank blood, but could abandon this terrible occupation if she found any other red drink.
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Vetal
In the legends of Ancient India, there are references to the vetals - the dead who live next to cemeteries and hang upside down in the trees, like bats. Their goal is to attack the living and drink their blood.
According to Chinese legends, a blood-sucking monster can be distracted by throwing a bag of rice in its path - then it will abandon the pursuit and begin to count the rice grains.
In Greece, the majority of whose inhabitants have dark eyes, there was a belief that blue-eyed people after death could return to the world and suck blood from the living.
The Slavs considered people with red hair to be vampires, as well as those who were distinguished by any congenital abnormalities, for example, had six fingers.
No soul - no reflection
It was the plots of ancient Slavic mythology that formed the basis for more modern ideas about vampires: these are creatures with white skin and tremendous physical strength. They are those who have died an "unclean" death - executed criminals or suicides, since they are not protected by the Church.
They do not cast shadows and are not reflected in the mirror because they have no soul. Such evil spirits can take the form of a bat.
Since ancient times, the cross and holy water, as well as garlic and hawthorn (according to Slavic beliefs, it was from the hawthorn that the crown of Christ was woven) have served as amulets from vampires.
The main danger was considered that any person, after being bitten by a vampire, himself turns into such evil spirits.
The horse is not wrong
By about the 12th century, these Slavic myths spread throughout Europe, where a massive struggle against vampires began. There is a custom to hang hawthorn branches near doors, and in yards and houses it is mandatory to depict a cross.
In 1487 in the city of Speyer (Germany) the famous book "The Hammer of the Witches" was published. It was written by Dominican monks Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger and was a guide to the search and extermination of evil spirits.
Many pages of the book are devoted to vampires. For example, to determine their burials in the cemetery, it was necessary to bring a horse, because this animal will never step over the grave of a vampire. The found body of the monster was to be destroyed: an aspen stake was driven into the heart of the deceased, and then beheaded and burned.
Documentary evidence has been preserved that the bodies found in some of the graves did not really show signs of decomposition, some lay in unnatural positions or with their mouths open. Sometimes at the moment when a stake was driven into the body, blood began to flow from it and the corpse moaned.
Dead man's cry
But what actually happened? How can you explain this sudden revival of the dead?
Researchers say the belief in vampires was fueled by medieval plague or cholera epidemics. Overcrowded cemeteries were regularly dug up to bury new dead.
And people often saw a terrible picture: the lips of the recently buried were smeared with blood, and a hole had been gnawed in the shroud in place of the face. This terrible sight was explained by the fact that the dead man came out of the grave at night and drank blood.
Meanwhile, everything was much simpler: in order to contain the epidemic, the townspeople often buried the dead without a proper medical examination - and among them there were people who were in a state of clinical death or lethargic sleep. After spending some time underground, they tried to get out - hence the torn shroud and traces of blood.
Accordingly, the "cry" when driving a stake into a dead body was due to the release of air remaining in the lungs, and for blood, ignorant people could take a reddish liquid, which is a product of rotting flesh.
Fear of garlic
Of course, some people also contributed to the belief in vampires - not only dead, but real ones.
Their ailment is now called porphyria, this is a very rare blood disease, which, as a rule, is the result of repeated closely related marriages characteristic of small medieval states.
With such a disease, the body cannot produce red blood cells, and metabolism is disturbed in the tissues. A person is categorically contraindicated in sunlight, under the influence of which he begins to break down hemoglobin. Tendons are deformed, fingers curl, and sharp nails grow on the hands and feet. In such patients, the skin turns very pale, the ears are pressed against the skull, and the teeth look reddish-brown due to porphyrin deposits.
Porphyria sufferers cannot eat garlic because the sulfonic acid it contains increases the disease.
According to ancient recipes, such patients could be treated only with fresh blood (it has now been proven that its use does not affect recovery).
Bodies without signs of decay
During the Middle Ages, people with porphyria symptoms were ruthlessly killed. According to archival records, in France alone, from 1520 to 1630, more than 30 thousand people, recognized as vampires, were executed.
The fate of the resident of Serbia Peter Plogojevic, who died in 1725, is amazing. He was buried in the cemetery in the village of Kizilov. Within two months, nine more people died in the village - and all of them before their death said that Pogojevits had come to them in a dream the day before and sucked their blood.
Officials were sent to the village, in whose presence the grave was opened. From their report it followed that the body of Pogojevits was not touched by decay, hair and nails continued to grow, blood was observed around the mouth. Frightened peasants drove a stake into the heart of the corpse, burned its body, and scattered the ashes in the wind.
For many years, stories about vampires were collected by the French monk Dom Calmet, who in 1746 published a book "A dissertation on the appearance of angels, demons and ghosts, as well as on the manifestations of vampires in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia."
It contains many documentary facts about the safety of some of the exhumed corpses. According to Kalme, this is a consequence of the fact that a person was buried in a coma or trance state - and in his book the author argued that such bodies should not be burned.
The most famous monster
For our contemporaries, Vlad Dracula remains the most famous vampire. He was born in 1431 in Transylvania (a region in northwestern Romania) and was the prince of Wallachia, Vlad III. The nickname Dracula meant "devil" or "dragon" (Vlad III was the head of the Order of the Dragon, and the dragon in those places was a symbol of the devil).
During his reign, there were the most terrible massacres and murders in the history of a small state. There are legends about how a cruel prince threw a feast next to the impaled victims or ordered to hammer nails into the heads of the ambassadors, who did not immediately take off their hats in front of him.
Surprisingly, the real Vlad Dracula did not drink blood! In any case, no documentary evidence of this has survived. But in 1897, the Irish writer Bram Stoker published the novel "Dracula", where he made the main character, firstly, a count, not a prince, and secondly, turned him into a vampire who hunted people at night to drink their blood …
The stunning success of the novel and its subsequent film adaptations contributed to the fact that it was Dracula in the human mind that became the most famous and bloodthirsty vampire.
In exchange for donation
What is happening these days? Are there modern vampires? Statistics show that their number is very small - and they are all mentally ill or want to become famous, demonstrating their unusual addiction.
For example, German serial killer Peter Kurten, executed in 1931, drank the blood of some of his victims.
Convicted in 1979 in California, Richard Chase was nicknamed the Vampire of Sacramento because he ate the blood and remains of those killed.
In the late 1990s, FBI agents were actively looking for Paul Merriot, who attacked young girls in order to drink their blood. It was not possible to arrest the criminal, but the attacks stopped after a while.
In 2002, the Bochum court (Germany) sentenced husband and wife Daniel and Manuela Ruda to 15 and 13 years in prison for the murder of 33-year-old Frank Haagen. The couple drank the victim's blood in the hope of gaining immortality.
In the city of El Paso (Texas) lives Mrs. Kane Presley, who announced that she is a vampire. True, she satisfies her needs without crossing the line of the law and offering sex in exchange for a glass of her partner's blood. Many men have become voluntary donors for Mrs. Presley.
And, of course, vampires have found a long and happy life in literature, cinema, and computer games. And here their existence will probably last for many more years.
Nikolay MIKHAILOV