Vampire Notes

The movie Break­ing Dawn, Part I, is about to hit the­aters. This and other media pro­duc­tions like The Gates, The Vam­pire Diaries, and True Blood, are just a few of the recent crop of vam­pire sto­ries. But the fear that moti­vated the sto­ries of those grave rob­bers stems from a long his­tory of folk­lore reach­ing back thou­sands of years. Let’s take a short look at the his­tory of the vam­pire leg­end and see if we can draw any insights into our Chris­t­ian faith through our fas­ci­na­tion with these myth­i­cal creatures.

The basics

From ancient tales of Hebrews, Per­sians,  and Greeks, to medieval tales of Slavic gyp­sies, to trashy comic-​​book-​​style tabloids in Vic­to­rian Eng­land… the details of their ori­gins and behav­iors have changed across cen­turies and cul­tures. But one thing is cer­tain: there is some­thing peo­ple find ter­ri­fy­ingly fas­ci­nat­ing about myth­i­cal crea­tures who drink blood.

Demons and unbear­able trauma

The ancient sto­ries of blood suck­ing, evil crea­tures seemed to deal with two main themes, demons and unbear­able trauma. Many of these sto­ries, such as the Hebrew Lilith, the Greek Lamiai, and sto­ries from Malaysia dealt with a woman who gave birth to a still born baby, or who lost her baby, and dri­ven by grief take out their vengeance on oth­ers in vio­lent ways. Gen­er­ally, these are wildly fic­ti­tious sto­ries, like most mythol­ogy, that were used to explain things about life that defied explanation.

Fast for­ward sev­eral cen­turies to the Medieval period, and you’ll find a sim­i­lar theme of deal­ing with the loss of a loved one. These vam­pires, how­ever, were not at all the suave, intox­i­cat­ing fig­ures we imag­ine. They were thought to be more like zom­bies. And the two main expla­na­tions for them were 1) an effort to explain strange occurences and 2) reli­gious mis­un­der­stand­ing. If someone’s sheep or live­stock was being mys­te­ri­ously attacked, one could blame a vam­pire. If there were strange mur­ders in a local area, one could also blame a vampire.

Reli­gion, death, and after-​​life

As we just said, people’s mis­con­cep­tions about reli­gion, death, and after-​​life blended into these sto­ries. Accord­ing to these leg­ends, one could become a vam­pire nor­mally only after death.

Some of the neg­a­tive cir­cum­stances of death that seemed to set off people’s imag­i­na­tion were the fol­low­ing: 1) If the body of a dead per­son was not prop­erly buried, 2) if the per­son had com­mit­ted sui­cide, or  3) if the per­son had not been baptized.

Cer­tain phys­i­cal birth defects, men­tal ill­ness, and unknown dis­eases could also qualify.

Peo­ple of this time did not have clear ideas about what hap­pens to a soul when a body dies. So they believed that if a soul could not go to heaven, per­haps the body could be invaded by an evil spirit, and could be made to move and act even though it was dead.

Our Catholic faith tells us that after death we either go to heaven, hell, or pur­ga­tory. Our souls don’t stick around here, except in a way that does good, not evil.

That’s why we can ask the saints in heaven for help. They are our friends and allies. Jesus is the one who most helps us, but he also lis­tens to the prayers of his friends, both those who are still on this earth and those who are with him in heaven.

Yet we still won­der whether those who have died can come back to this earth or com­mu­ni­cate with us in any way. It’s nat­ural to won­der about this, and the Bible talks very lit­tle about this pos­si­bil­ity, so we often try to fill the void with our imagination.

It’s not always easy to believe that peo­ple are totally gone after they are dead. We know that they do live on. It’s just the how (How do they live on? In what way?) that we don’t have a lot of details about. These leg­ends try to fill the void, but they are make-​​believe, not fact.

Still they do tell us that we all need to fig­ure out how we can make it to heaven. That’s where we will be happy. That’s where God wants to bring us. Vam­pire leg­ends are a way that lit­er­a­ture has wres­tled with our desire to live forever.

Unfin­ished business

In many cul­tures it was thought that souls who had unfin­ished busi­ness or unre­solved feel­ings could come back as vam­pires. Often, these sto­ries orig­i­nated from griev­ing wid­ows, who claimed to be vis­ited by these un-​​dead hus­bands or lovers. There is a psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non in which peo­ple expe­ri­ence feel­ing like some­one is press­ing on them in their bed while they are sleep­ing. Cen­turies ago this could be attrib­uted to a vampire.

This is impor­tant for two rea­sons: 1) the theme of a dead lover ris­ing from the grave to rejoin his for­mer love begins the for­ma­tion of sex­ual desire in the leg­ends, and 2) because it began the belief that these undead crea­tures would father chil­dren with their wid­ows, called dham­pirs. These half vam­pire, half human chil­dren would become in folk leg­end what we know of today as “vam­pire slayers.”

The venge­ful

Dur­ing the time between 11th and 17th cen­turies a new twist began to affect vam­pire leg­end. Real his­tor­i­cal fig­ures and events emerged in some form or another as part of the sto­ries. Per­haps the most famous is a Roman­ian king named Vlad the Impaler. His nick­name was “son of the dragon,” or Drac­ula.

He was a ter­ri­fy­ing and vicious war­rior. Betrayed by his coun­try­men and his own brother and cap­tured by the Turks, he was tor­tured mer­ci­lessly for a long time until he man­aged to escape. When he returned home he was hard­ened and vengeful.

After he returned, Vlad suc­cess­fully defended his king­dom many times through cru­elty and ter­ri­ble violence.

Often, his ene­mies retreated even though they could have won, sim­ply because they saw the dis­gust­ing ways he slaugh­tered peo­ple. He had very lit­tle respect for human life, and seemed to enjoy watch­ing peo­ple die. His favorite means of killing peo­ple was to place a stake in the ground, sharp side up, and have them impaled on it.

This gave birth to three parts of vam­pire leg­end: 1) the name Drac­ula, 2) the loca­tion he was from is called Tran­syl­va­nia, and 3) the con­cept of the wooden stake hav­ing some­thing to do with vampires.

Vic­to­rian literature

Even though most cul­tures had some beliefs in blood-​​sucking crea­tures, the term “vam­pire” only became pop­u­lar in the early 18th cen­tury. John Poli­dori, the physi­cian of the famous writer Lord Byron wrote a fic­tional novel about his illus­tri­ous patient in which he mixed true ele­ments of the wild life of Lord Byron with the false myths that cir­cu­lated in Europe about blood-​​sucking undead. The book was called The Vampyre. It was pub­lished in 1819, and was a great suc­cess.  It por­trayed the myth­i­cal crea­ture in a new light: a charis­matic and sophis­ti­cated lover who is also a murderer.

But the most famous vam­pire novel of all times is Bram Stoker’s work Drac­ula, pub­lished in 1897. Stoker also por­trays his fic­tional vam­pire as aris­to­cratic and sophis­ti­cated. Stoker’s Drac­ula is from Tran­syl­va­nia, but comes to Eng­land in order to have access to more vic­tims. The novel is a true thriller, com­bin­ing detec­tive ele­ments, romance, sex­ual over­tones, death, inter­na­tional intrigue, and of  course a blood-​​sucking vam­pire (actu­ally, several).

The novel Drac­ula remains the clas­sic vam­pire novel today, and has inspired many other works of literature.

Vam­pire myth lives on 

Mod­ern media has increased our fas­ci­na­tion with vam­pires. Many works of the­ater, movies, and tele­vi­sion series play on our fas­ci­na­tion with the ele­ments of the vam­pire myth: romance, mys­tery, dan­ger, death, vengeance, mur­der, etc.

There is no doubt that author Stephanie Meyer has cre­ated a very suc­cess­ful vari­a­tion of the vam­pire theme in her Twlight series. Her hero, Edward Cullen, is a vam­pire who is able to over­come his evil impulses and use his pow­ers for good, not evil.  He is res­cued from a life with­out love by  a girl who believes in him more than he believes in him­self. And he  also res­cues her from a life with­out love and then from all sorts of other dan­gers. The story strikes a deep cord in the hearts of many peo­ple (espe­cially girls) who long for true romance. It’s cer­tainly a vam­pire story with a happy end­ing, unlike many of the other versions.

Chris­t­ian atti­tude towards vampires

So, what does our faith have to say about the vam­pire myth?

Well, it helps us deal with many of the ele­ments that con­tinue to cre­ate our fas­ci­na­tion with vam­pires: death, dan­ger, revenge, life after death, love, intrigue, vengeance.

Death and life after death

As Chris­tians, we know that Christ has con­quered death. We know that death does not have the last word in our lives. Christ’s love, God’s love, is more pow­er­ful than death.

As Chris­tians we expe­ri­ence the tragedy of death, but we have con­fi­dence that death does not have the last word. We try to fill our hearts with hope rather than despair when we see some­one we love die or when we our­selves face death or tragedy.

Hope does not totally take away all the fear and sad­ness when we deal with death, but it does show us a clear light at the end of the tunnel.

Chris­t­ian hope also shows us that we are not alone when we face death and tragedy. Christ accom­pa­nies us in our sor­row and fear. He faced the same things. He knows what it is like. He never aban­dons us.

Dan­ger and evil

Christ’s ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ing, tor­ture, and hor­ri­ble death are a reminder that evil is very real.

But Christ’s suf­fer­ings are also a reminder that God can work tremen­dous good even in the most ter­ri­ble cir­cum­stances. Christ took on suf­fer­ing, tor­ture, and death, but lived these moments with love, and he rose from the dead.

As believ­ers in Christ, we know that no sit­u­a­tion is hope­less. God’s love is more pow­er­ful than evil. We may not see every­thing work out for good in this life, but we are shown by Christ’s love and his res­ur­rec­tion that vic­tory over evil is assured.

Even though despair can often assail us when we are faced with ter­ri­ble occur­rences in life (such as the death of some­one we love dearly), we still know that evil is not the final word.

Fear

We are all scared of some­thing. The vam­pire myths play on some of these fears. Often these fears are fur­ther fueled by igno­rance. When we see evil in the world we can let our imag­i­na­tion take over.

A Chris­t­ian tries to edu­cate him­self about truth, even though his imag­i­na­tion can some­times push him in the oppo­site direction.

A Chris­t­ian believes deeply in God, but does not jump to the con­clu­sion that some­thing he can­not explain is caused by an evil spirit, a vam­pire, etc.

A Chris­t­ian knows that there are also nat­ural causes to events, and that he needs to inves­ti­gate the nat­ural causes first.

God has done a good job in cre­at­ing the world. Most events have a nat­ural expla­na­tion. We may not have all the answers, but that does not mean we jump to the con­clu­sion that evil spir­its caused all the bad things we are experiencing.

Adren­a­line

As strange as it sounds, there is a fun aspect in fear,  Sud­den fear pro­duces a strong adren­a­line rush. As long as we find out that the scary thing is not really that bad, the excite­ment of a sud­den scare is fun, espe­cially when we are young.

It’s sim­i­lar to when we get on a roller coaster. We know we are not going to die, but there are moments when it feels that way. Expe­ri­enc­ing the strong emo­tional rush and mak­ing it through the moment unharmed is fun and excit­ing.

That’s why we will often find it fun to see scary things. As long as they are not too scary. But the closer we are car­ried to the edge of fear and then brought back, the stronger the rush.

Is this bad? Not really. We need to learn to deal with fear in our lives.

There is how­ever a dan­ger we can become almost addicted to the adren­a­line rush. But for most peo­ple this does not become an addiction.

Usu­ally, scary movies are just a fun moment in which we know it’s just a story, not real­ity. It’s usu­ally a way we work out some of our fears.

So, are vam­pire sto­ries evil? Not really. Yes, some vam­pire sto­ries today can do dam­age because of their pro­mo­tion of an irre­spon­si­ble atti­tude towards sex or their glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of mur­der, but the basic ele­ments in vam­pire sto­ries are not evil in them­selves. They are just a way that we wres­tle with impor­tant ques­tions.

We sim­ply need to remem­ber that they are myths, not truths. They are make-​​believe.

Our Chris­t­ian faith isn’t make-​​believe. Jesus really lived and died. He died for us. And he has inspired and strength­ened mil­lions and mil­lions of peo­ple to con­tinue doing good in their lives even though they also live tragedy and sor­row in many moments of their lives.

Our faith doesn’t always make every­thing work out imme­di­ately, but we see in the life of Christ and in the lives of so many Chris­tians, that “all things work out for the good for those who love the Lord.” God’s love has the final say.

It is not always easy to believe this. That’s why we need to focus on good things in our lives, not just the tragic things. That’s why even most vam­pire sto­ries show that good even­tu­ally tri­umphs.

Let’s con­tinue to cul­ti­vate the Chris­t­ian virtue of hope. We can cer­tainly have fun watch­ing scary movies, but we should also take time to dis­cover pos­i­tive sto­ries, sto­ries that increase our hope. The lives of saints are often a great source of hope. These are real men and women who faced tragedy and adver­sity but were able to be a source of good­ness and light in the world. Their sto­ries are often very inspir­ing.

You might want to read some of their stories.

There are lots of sites on the inter­net, books, and videos that tell true sto­ries of saints. You might want to check some of them out after you see the lat­est scary movie. It’s another way to wres­tle with the age-​​old ques­tions that we all have. And it’s a way that helps us see some very pos­i­tive role-​​models and get some good answers.

(Note: Alex Kubik also con­tributed to this article.)