Vampires, Burial, and Death

The figure of the vampire has become very familiar through portrayals in literature, stage, and cinema, but where does the myth itself originate?

Many have speculated on the roots of the vampire legend, ascribing it to various diseases, like porphyria or rabies. But Barber stripped away the cultural additions imposed on the legend by its fictional interpretation and looked for origins consistent with the bare, original legend.

A nice piece of folkloric detective work, and one that influenced my own book.

This was a breakthrough in our (and my) understanding of vampires as an explanation for disease in the context of pre-industrial, agrarian societies. Everyone understood that there were (and to some degree, are still) persistent folk beliefs about vampires around the world, with Slavic and Balkan variants having gained a foothold in the popular imagination. Paul Barber explains the intricacies of belief, the particulars of that folklore, and illuminates one of humanity’s oldest tendencies that lies at the root of vampire stories—to blame death on the dead. There are gruesome anecdotes aplenty and Barber explains the logistics of vampire “attacks”… show more.

This is an important book of vampire lore for several reasons. First, it goes in-depth into early modern texts about vampires and vampire hunting as well as vampire “panics” that were once common in communities in Eastern Europe. Second, it applies forensics to theorize why normal aspects of the decomposition process could have been interpreted as evidence of vampirism. The book is informative but also written in a way that is witty and humorous.