October 27, 2023 – Theme Week Day 5

We’re wrapping up our theme week on Monsters today, talking about vampires! Vampire legends have been part of folklore in many different cultures for millennia. It’s estimated that 98% of past and present cultures have vampire legends in them. But what we know as vampires today originates from early 18th century southeastern Europe. Early versions of vampires look a bit different than what we think of today. They were usually said to be bloated in appearance, with a ruddy, purplish, or dark color. They were dressed not in capes, but in the linen shrouds they had been buried in, and fangs were generally not a feature.
Vampire superstitions thrived in the Middle Ages, especially as the black plague rapidly spread across Europe. At the time, it was common for anyone with an unexplained physical or emotional illness to be called a vampire. Some researchers have pointed to a rare blood disorder called porphyria, which can cause severe blisters on skin that’s exposed to sunlight, as one disease that could have been linked to the vampire legend. Vampires were basically blamed for things that didn’t yet have medical explanations, like the spread of disease or what happens to human bodies after death.
While vampires are fictitious creatures, real-life “vampires” can be found in the animal kingdom! There’s the vampire bat, which is native to Latin America (and rarely attacks humans) and the vampire ground finch in the Galapagos Islands which occasionally feeds by drinking the blood of other birds. Then there’s the vampire squid, which lives thousands of feet deep in the ocean. It doesn’t drink blood, but it gets its name from the cape-like webbing that it uses as a shield.
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula is the most famous vampire novel and provided the basis for what we know as the modern vampire. It shaped the popular understanding of how vampires function, including their strengths, weaknesses, and many other characteristics. As of 2015, Dracula is the most portrayed literary character of all time, and he’s also the most portrayed character in horror films. Learn more here.