Vampire is defined as a corpse that can return to life
at night to suck people's blood by biting them on the neck. A Vampire must
do this to keep its strength. The victim eventually losses all strength and
will soon die and become vampires also.
But are vampires real? There are many stories about these creatures from all
over the world. Even today there are many superstitions surrounding vampires
in European countries. In these countries people believe that if a person
dies violently, by suicide or is condemned by their church these pour souls
will become vampires.
The characteristics of a vampire are pale skin and a violent reaction to
sunlight. Graves have been dug up to see if the suspected deceased is one of
the undead. Signs of a corpse having a swollen appearance, lack of rigor
mortis, and no signs of decay many years after burial was often a sign that
the deceased was indeed a vampire and the only way to stop its feeding was
to drive a wooden stake into its heart.
Europe is not the only place that Vampires were thought to reside; The
United States had many outbreaks of Vampirism in the New England area in
1854, 1888, and 1890. One family in particular experienced a large amount of
deaths among their 14 children. After the sixth child had passed a deceased
daughter appeared to the woman in her dreams. Fearing that possibly this
child was possessed by a vampire the family did the gruesome task of
exhuming all their children's bodies. Each body, except the daughter's that
appeared in the wife's dream, was decomposed, the daughter was preserved.
The parents and towns people began the task of taking each dead child's
heart and burning it in a fire before they reburied the body.
In the year 1854 in Connecticut a family came down with tuberculosis and the
dreaded disease took the father and two sons' another became ill. In the
year 1800s tuberculosis had no known cause or cure, superstitious family
members began to believe that the deceased were indeed vampires. So once
again they dug up the bodies and burned them before burying them once again.
During the next years there were many reported outbreaks of tuberculosis
through out Vermont, Rhode Island and other New England states. Many
townspeople looking for way to stop the disease exhumed the deceased and
burned the hearts before reburying them.
In the late 1970s a sub-culture among the youth has grown up around vampire
and is called Goth. Goth idolizes the vampire in many ways. Many vampire
groups and clubs have surfaced around this sub-culture. There are many
people that have even taken on the vampire way of life, by sleeping in
coffins, sleeping during the day and only going out at night. Blood sucking
has also been incorporated into their way of life, either drinking their own
blood or a willing partner. Some vampires have even gotten fangs implanted
over their own teeth to make their mouth more authentic looking.
Once thought to be stuff of horror movies, stories and superstitions some
people today are living the vampire lifestyle.
