Barber, P. 1988. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Black, G. F., and W. T. Northcote. 1903. Examples of Printed Folklore Concerning Orkney and Shetland Islands. Publications of the Folk-Lore Society. London.

Black, W. G. 1883. Folk-Medicine: A Chapter in the History of Culture. Publications of the Folk-Lore Society. London.

Brendle, T. R., and C. W. Unger. 1970. Folk Medicine of the Pennsylvania Germans: The Non-Occult Cures. Proceedings of the Pennsylvania German Society, vol. 45. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.

Briggs, K. 1976. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books. 481 pp.

Carlson, M. M. 1977. What Stoker saw: An introduction to the History of the Literary Vampire. Folklore Forum 10:26-32.

Coote, H. C. 1878. Some Italian Folk-Lore. Folk-Lore Record 1:187-215.

Currier, J. M. 1891. Contributions to New England Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 4:253-56.

Foust, R. 1986. Rite of Passage: The Vampire Tale as Cosmogonic Myth. In Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, ed. W. Coyle. Contributions to the Study of Fiction and Fantasy, no. 19, 73-84. Westpoty, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Frazer, S. J. G. 1911-15. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 3d ed. London: Macmillan. 12 vols.

------. 1977. Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion. New York <London>: Arno Press, Macmillan. 2.

------. 1977. Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion. New York <London>: Arno Press, Macmillan. 1.

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Hand, W. D., ed. 1964. Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Vol. 6-7, Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Holte, J. C. 1987. The Vampire. In Mythical and Fabulous Creatures: A Source Book and Research Guide, ed. M. South, 243-64. New York: Greenwood Press.

Ultimately, what ties these seemingly diverse traditions together is the belief that a corpse—perhaps undead, perhaps animated by an evil spirit—is responsible for an otherwise unexplainable sequence of deaths. Reduced to its common denominator, the vampire is, as Paul Barber suggested, a scapegoat: A vampire is “a corpse that comes to the attention of the populace at a time of crisis and is taken for the cause of that crisis” (Barber 1988, 125). Barber’s elegant definition incorporates most instances that have been labelled vampirism, even though it opens the door to beings excluded by the “splitters.” For the purposes of this study of America’s historic vampires, Barber’s definition works quite well.

By the twentieth century, vampires had disappeared from their natural habitat in the New England countryside. Ironically, those who argued in the late nineteenth century that civilization was on the verge of eradicating the last vestiges of “primitive survivals from a barbaric past” were, in a sense, at least partially correct: an empirically tested bacterium had banished this traditional scapegoat. As the vampire tradition became an oddity of the past rather than “a horrible superstition” actually practiced by folks living down the road, Hollywood was beginning to teach people how to enjoy vampires. New England’s vampires soon were adopted, then adapted, by a mass media eager for new Dracula clones. As Holte (1987:261) pointed out, “the vampire has served as a metaphor for the dark side of human emotions and behavior.”  What better food for the human imagination than sex, violence, superhuman power, and eternal life?

Among eighteenth-century Serbs, local gypsies served as the experts in vampire destruction:

In the year 1731 vampires disturbed the village of Medvedja. The High Command from Belgrade immediately sent a commission of German officers and others to the spot. They excavated the whole cemetery and found that there really were vampires there, and all those dead found to be vampires were decapitated by the Gypsies, their bodies cremated and the ashes thrown into the river Morava.

Vukanovic writes that “both Gypsies and other races in the Balakns believe that Dhampir, a magician created through the love relations between a vampire and its living wife, has the supernatural power of seeing, removing and destroying vampires” (Vukanovic 1960, 53). In some localities, this position is like an inherited trade that is passed down in families from father to son.  In others, it is the “posthumous” child (that is, born after its father’s death) who may serve as the vampire’s destroyer. There is a prescription, widely held throughout the Blakans, that absolute silence must be observed during the ceremony. Among the Balkan Gypsies, Serbs and Albanians, the successful magician is paid a sum of money in addition to being given a fine meal and traveling expenses (if needed).

Consistent with the dynamic nature of folklore, the up-to-date Dhampir often kills the vampire with a firearm. There is a Macedonian story about a woman named Karolinka “who became a vampire after her death and for a year haunted her living relatives frequently.  Once her family wanted to throw her into the water, but she sensed their intentions and immediately escaped.  The peasants told the whole affair to the administrative authrorities of the day, and when the police came into the village and used their guns against her, she fled; and nobody ever saw her again” (Vukanovic 1960, 47-48).

A much-respected dissenting clergyman, still alive, called at this cottage . . . to inquire for a poor woman who was dying of consumption. On hearing she was no better, he inquired if they had used means to aid her recovery: “Yah,” said her aged mother, “we gaed to the kirkyard, and brought mould frae the grave o’ the last body buried, an’ laid it on her breast. As this had nae effect, we gaed to the brig ower which the last corpse was ta’en, an’ took some water frae the burn below, an’ made her drink it. This failed too, an’ as a last resource, we dug a muckle hole i’ the grund, an’ put her in’t” (Black and Northcote 1903, 151).

Folk logic, of course, is doubled-edged, and the same reasoning can be used to cause, rather than cure, consumption. In African American witchcraft practices, the intention of the perpetrator determines the result. Graveyard dirt, which presumably contains some portion of the buried corpse (much like kirkyard mould), is fed to a relative of the person in the grave to cause lingering bad health, eventually resulting in death [see (Hyatt 1970-1978, 4:#7544)]. The following formula was collected from an African American woman in Mississippi by Newbell Niles Puckett (1926:141) in the 1920s:

The Mississippi slave Negroes would pull up the grave-board from the head of the tomb and whittle a few shavings from it, letting them fall on the grave itself. These shavings were then picked up, together with a little of the gravedirt, boiled in water, and strained. This decoction mixed with whiskey and given to an enemy was sure to cause his early death by consumption (Puckett 1926, 141).

All food and drink consumed at a pomana as well as the songs sung and the music played, are regarded as sacrifices to the deceased in whose honour the ceremony is conducted. Accordingly, the more guests are invited to a pomana, and the more food and drink is consumed, and the more joy and music, the more the needs of the soul are catered for in the world beyond (Schierup 1986, 181).

Included in the protective acts and objects used for disabling a vampire, among the Gypsies of the Balkan Peninsula, are putting a sprig of hawthorne into the stocking of the deceased, covering the mirrors while the corpse is still in the house (thus preventing him from seeing himself), and placing a piece of iron (sometimes a file, small saw, or small axe) to the head of the corpse. Driving a nail into the ground beneath the death spot can also serve the same purpose. Frazer notes an Asian analog: "In Cochin China the troublesome ghost of a stranger can be confined to his grave by knocking a nail or other piece of iron into the earth of the grave at the point where his head reposes" (Frazer 1977, 3:29).

Despite the popular notion that driving a stake through the heart of a vampire is the method for killing a vampire, there actually are several ways to destroy it. Both burning the corpse or its parts and decapitation are widespread rites of riddance. Staking, itself, may suggest different theories: staking through the heart implies that the heart is the seat of the soul or spirit, so that driving a stake through it will decidedly kill the vampire. Staking the corpse to the ground, on the other hand, is an expedient means of immobilizing it, ensuring that it cannot leave the grave. Sometimes more than one method may be used. For "very obstinate cases of vampirism" in Romania, for example, "it is recommended to cut off the head and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic; or to extract the heart and burn it, strewing the ashes over the grave" (Frazer 1977, 2:86-87). [Frazer might have found these practices in Emily Gerard’s Land Beyond the Forest (1888), used by Stoker for background to Dracula.]

If the vampire is not recognised as such, and rendered innocuous, it goes on with its evil ways for seven years. First it destroys its relations, then it destroys men and animals in its village and in its country, next it passes into another country, or to where another language is spoken (Murgoci 1926, 327-328).

Becoming a Vampire

European folk beliefs about vampires and other fiends frequently overlap—unlike the American situation. Why one becomes a vampire is another major distinction: In Europe, explanations abound. Indeed, as one scholar noted, “the causes expanded over the years until it became much easier to become a vampire than not to be one” (Thompson 1982, 151). While American folklore is oddly silent on this point, in Europe, suicides, excommunicates, perjurors, bastards, unavenged murder victims, those who died violently or drowned, the seventh child of the same sex, those born with a caul or with teeth, anyone who ate a sheep killed by a wolf, persons in league with the devil, or someone bitten by a vampire all may be candidates for vampirism. Among the Wallachians, “improper behavior towards the deceased in his or her lifetime, as well as disregard of proper rituals and precautions at death and afterwards, may impede the soul in its passage, and cause it to wander about in no man’s land between the two worlds, to seek its former house and to haunt close relatives” (Schierup 1986, 180).  (For a complete discussion on ways to become a vampire, see (Summers 1928, 77-170)).

Treating the Problem

Folk tradition has defined two major approaches to dealing with a vampire threat. The first line of defense is to prevent or at least hinder a corpse from becoming a vampire in the first place. Failing that, one must find and destroy the vampire. The practice of incapacitating a corpse to prevent it’s return is ancient and universal. Such restraints assembled by James Frazer (1977 2:63ff.) include breaking or tying together the limbs of a corpse, pegging the remains into the earth (probably related to the staking that most people associate with vampires), decapitation, burial face down, and weighing the corpse down with stones (Frazer 1977, 2:63ff.). Frazer collected many examples of “tying up or mutilating and maiming a corpse . . . to bar the return of the ghosts, or at all events to render them impotent for mischief” (Frazer 1977, 2:63).  The Dieri of Central Australia, for example, used to tie the large toes and thumbs of a corpse together to prevent it from walking.

Most of these disparate conceptions of a vampire probably can be subsumed in the two-part definition offered by J. A. MacCulloch in Hastings Encyclopaeida of Religion and Ethics: “A vampire may be defined as (1) the spirit of a dead person, or (2) his corpse, re-animated by his own spirit or by a demon, returning to sap the life of the living, by depriving them of blood or of some essential organ, in order to augument its own vitality” (MacCulloch 1928, 589).

The Victims

The vampire typically finds its victims among its immediate family. Certainly, victims of vampire attacks in America belong to the same family, a universal pattern connecting the New World to the Old. Montague Summers illustrates the vampire’s penchant for attacking “those who on earth have been his nearest and dearest” with the old proverb, “Curses are like young chickens, and still come home to roost” (Summers 1928, 161). (Dundes, p. 132, reviews the notion that vampires attack those closest to it, that is, those "nearest and dearest.") In their detailed analysis of Pennsylvania German folk medicine, Brendle and Unger trace the ancient roots of the belief that diseases are evil spirits or caused by evil supernatural powers, writing that “our pagan ancestors believed that sicknesses were caused by malignant demons--some of them the spirits of dead ancestors” (Brendle and Unger 1970, 17).  This belief is both widespread and ancient, as James Frazer documented during his prodigious collating of what he termed primitive beliefs. “Strange as it may seem,” he observed of the indigenous cultures British New Guinea, Sumatra, India, and Africa, “it is especially the ghosts of near relations who are blamed for sickness” (Frazer 1977, 144).

Left unchecked, the vampire will devour its family and continue on into the village and countryside.  The terrible consequences of not stopping a vampire attack were addressed by Calmet (quoted in Nethercot):

This reviving being, or oupire, comes out of his grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to embrace or hug violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death. This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted (Nethercot 1939, 68-69).

So, descriptions of vampire attacks show strong affinities to accounts of being “witch ridden” or “hagged.” David Hufford, in his thorough study of this subject in Newfoundland, found four identifying features of being hagged: (1) awakening (or an experience immediately preceding sleep); (2) hearing and/or seeing something come into the room and approach the bed; (3) being pressed on the chest or strangled; (4) inability to move or cry out until brought out of the state by someone else or breaking through the feeling of paralysis on one’s own (Hufford 1982, 10-11).

Viewed from the “subjective experience of the victim,” Hufford finds connections between the two apparently separate traditions of vampire and hag: “As with most complex supernatural traditions, vampire attacks are surrounded by such a welter of associated events and interpetive statements that the Old Hag attack is not immediately obvious. Close examination, however, reveals clear examples even in Bram Stoker’s literary creation, Dracula.”  Hufford (1982:231) also identifies examples in sources that may be closer to actual reported experiences and finds that:

When comparing the accounts of vampire attacks to other Old Hag attacks, the characteristic detail in the former of the draining of either blood or spiritual essence stands out sharply. When we view this traditional belief from the subjective perspective of the victim, it is hard to avoid a comparison with the fatigue generally reported by those who suffer a series of Old Hag attacks in close proximity to one another. In fact, in Case 31 above it is suggested that even those who avoided actual attack became fatigued by their efforts at constant vigilance. Although more evidence is needed, it is possible to hypothesize that the traditional belief about the sustenance the vampire gains from his victims is at least in part based on the observation of this increasing fatigue (Hufford 1982, 231).

To their rendezvous the French witches repair, after the fashion of their English sisters, astride upon a broomstick. But the gracefulness of antique mythology still adheres to the Italian witch, who has never degraded herself into electing and utilizing so mean a medium for locomotion, or at least very seldom uses it. Before starting the strega anoints her whole body with an unguent, which turns her straightway into a bat. Her body is left on the ground as inert and lifeless as the clothes of which she has divested herself. On her return from her merry-making she re-enters the accommodating matter and becomes herself again. [footnote: In the “Il figlinuolo del re, stregato,” the witches, while they are rubbing themselves over with the ointment, say, “Ointment, make me go three times faster than the wind.” All then take their seats, and a bat coming out of each one’s mouth, they remain there like dead; at three o’clock the three bats return, re-enter their bodies, and begin to eat their supper. . . . “]

This is, of course, a mere matter of subordinate detail.

There is, however, an additional property which the strega possesses to the exclusion of her French sister. She is a vampire, which the other never has been. She sucks the blood of sleeping people through the little finger, thus inducing an inscrutable and therefore incurable marasmus. [footnote: This is inferrible from the “Il figliuolo del re, stregato” (ante). The king is dying in this way through the witches. When the latter are publicly burnt “there arose a stench from their bodies as of the dead in a churchyard, because they ate the blood of the people of the country. [para] In the “I dodici buoi” (Comparetti, p. 206) the witch sucks a girl’s blood through her little finger. In “La Nuvolaccia” (ib. p. 128) it is through a finger, without specification.]

As a rule, moroi haunts close relatives, with whom it has experienced some kind of conflict before death. Moroi can be one who has died to whom the proper ceremonial homage has not been paid, or who has a reason to return in order to redress acts of injustice committed against him or her during life. Moroi never haunt those who have behaved well towards them, but only those who did not pay proper respect. Moroi can take up domicile in the bodies of weaker persons—small children or old people. It will creep into their heart and “eat it up”. People giving shelter to moroi will start bleeding from their nose. These “weaker” people are relatives of the “wicked” persons, whom the moroi persecutes in order to redress injustices (Schierup 1986, 179).

Vampires sometimes are linked to witches and wizards. In Romania, Murgoci found accounts of a “live-vampire type”—a person fated to become a vampire after death who, while still alive, can send out its soul, or even its body, to meet with reanimated corpses at the crossroads. Murgoci observed that this kind of vampire “merges into the ordinary witch or wizard, who can meet other witches or wizards either in the body or as a spirit” (Murgoci 1926, 321). She also documented a belief that vampires cannot drown because they always float on top of the water (Murgoci 1926, 332), connecting Romanian vampires to the witches of colonial New England who were sometimes tested to see if they floated upon being thrown into water. Those who drowned were proclaimed innocent while those who floated were condemned as witches.

In Romania, one might easily confuse strigele, the spirits of witches, with strigoi, the most common name for vampires. The strigele are spirits of either living witches or dead witches unable to find a resting place. According to folk tradition, they are seen as little points of light floating in the air. But in Italy, the strega, or witch, can also play the part of a vampire insofar as “she sucks the blood of sleeping people through the little finger, thus inducing an inscrutable and therefore incurable marasmus” (Coote 1878, 214).  Marasmus is a gradual loss of flesh and strength for no apparent cause, a condition that could very well be ascribed to consumption.

Next we will look at David Hufford’s examination of being “witch ridden” in relation to subjective accounts of vampire attacks.