87 books like Vampires, Burial, and Death

I can’t get enough of this supernatural classic, which is made all the more vivid by the way its story unfolds through letters, telegrams, diary entries, and newspaper clippings. It is the found-footage horror story of its era.

Like Frankenstein, it has been adapted hundreds of times, officially and unofficially, into nearly every medium, yet the original novel is unparalleled for holding the reader in its icy grip. Stoker brought his own fears to the page, and I am always surprised at how, in just a few pages, they become my fears, as well.

This book has engendered controversy for almost forcefully bridging the gap between the 15th Century Wallachian Prince Vlad III or Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. Stoker had already constructed his character, called “Count Wampyr,” before he learned of his future namesake. However, he quite clearly establishes a connection between the two through an explanation provided by Abraham Van Helsing. The Dracula of the eponymous novel is a heavily fictionalized version of the real-life figure, but so are most similarly positioned characters in literature, film, and television. Florescu and McNally provide a cursory overview of Slavic and Balkan vampire folklore, a biographical sketch of Vlad the Impaler, and illuminate the process by which Stoker adapted this violent, cunning, and sometimes brilliant nationalist and military tactician into a fictional monster.

Michelle Belanger is a psychic vampire and an intellectual leader of the real vampire community. This book draws on her experiences of coming to self-identify as a psychic vampire and she actually began writing it in notebooks while in college. The Psychic Vampire Codex provided vocabulary for people in this community to talk about their experiences and a metaphysical theory of what exactly psychic vampires are and why they are different from other people.

I have had the opportunity to meet Belanger and she is a really fascinating person. She founded a metaphysical community called House Kheperu and offers workshops on magick and psychic energy.  She is also a fiction author, musician, activist, and many other things.

This is a really thorough, fascinating encyclopedia of all things vampire––from folklore to nineteenth-century literature to obscure religious movements to comic books and movies to true crime. Whatever you want to know about vampires, this book will have it or tell you where you can find it. J. Gordon Melton is a total fanatic when it comes to vampire lore and he encouraged me early on when I first began researching the vampire community. Besides vampires, Melton loves to collect obscure information and data on all manner of religious groups. He once described himself to me as “a very greedy scholar” because there are so many topics that he tracks and researches. He can also tell you the best used bookstores in any city in America.  

Whereas Barber expounds upon the anthropological origins of the vampire myth, McClelland focuses on the practices, principles, and logistics of killing the dead. The most familiar form comes in the unearthing and mutilation of bodies. McClelland explains the whys and wherefores of that practice, but he also gives their killers more than their due, explaining the role of vampire slayers as shamans, village elders, and quasi-religious figures during Europe’s transition from its pagan roots to modern Christianity. He demonstrates that vampires fell into an uneasy space between a fading system of peasant folklore and the organized religious rituals and beliefs that ultimately took their place. There are no vampires in the Bible, so where was the church during the vampire hysteria of the 1800s and how did they regard these mythical creatures? McClelland answers that and more. He also includes an overview of our modern conception of vampire slayers from… show more.

Montague Summers was a really unusual fellow for the early twentieth century. He was a closeted gay man (closeted because homosexuality was brutally repressed at the time) who was obsessed with the occult and liked to present himself as a religious witch hunter/demonologist. Reportedly he was often seen leaving libraries with a big black file that read “Vampires” across the front where everyone could see it.

Despite being a colorful character, Summers is one of the best early scholars of vampire lore. His work is even more interesting because it reflects the occult revival underway at the end of the nineteenth century. Occult groups such as the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn were reimagining what vampires could be. They hypothesized that vampires could be real but are perhaps more akin to invisible ghosts that feed on human life force. Summers also discusses things like… show more.

There are people out there who think they are (or at least call themselves) vampires. At the extreme end, a handful of violent, deranged individuals believe they are the real article and are entitled to attack the living for sustenance. At the other end are role-players, cosplayers, and fans that are just in it for the fangs and the finery. In the middle, there are a wide range of types and personalities. Some believe they are physically addicted to drinking blood and seek out willing donors. Others find a morbid, sexual thrill in the practice. Still others believe they can, and need to, drain the energy of those around them (Colin Robinson, anyone?).

The subculture is vast, nuanced, and always growing. But what it is more often than not is misunderstood. While many are happy to talk about their practices, others shun attention for fear of being mocked, misunderstood, and… show more.

The title may not sound compelling, but the story is.

One of the chief competitors of Christianity in Imperial Rome was the religion of Mithraism. We have some accounts of this mystery religion, and have excavated several of their underground worship centers, called Mithraeae, but none of the sacred texts or internal documents survive.

Why would the Romans be so taken by the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism? Ulansey suggests that Mithaism was not just a variant of Zoroastrianism, but a new religion based upon Zoroastrian images and foundations, but incorporating new scientific knowledge about the stars and the heavens, and makes a strong case for his suggestions.

Adrienne Mayor, a historian of ancient science and folklorist at Princeton University, looks at classical myths that ultimately owe their inspiration to fossils found and interpreted by the Greeks and Romans.

Stories of Giants and Monsters grew up around the giant and mysterious fossil bones that resembled nothing they knew. In particular, she relates the image and stories of griffins to ceratopsian fossils, like those of Protoceratops and Psitticasaurus.

She also shows how dwarf elephant fossils may have inspired the myth of the Cyclops. An excellent read.

Willy Ley was a fascinating individual – a member and founder of the German VfR, the Rocket Society whose membership included Werner von Braun.

He fled Nazi Germany and settled in the United States, writing popular science articles, translating German science fiction, and writing some of his own. He was instrumental in popularizing the Space effort, even appearing on Disney’s Man into Space shows on television.

But he wrote on a range of topics, and his articles discussed the dwarf elephant fossil role in the myth of the Cyclops, the possible origins of the Babylonian sirrush, the role of fossil mammoths and wooly rhinoceros in shaping European legends, and the possible origins of the Unicorn legend.