In Roman mythology, Veritas, meaning truth, was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white. Veritas is also the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main virtues any good Roman should possess. In Greek mythology, Veritas was known as Aletheia.
Fiction
Supernatural
Veritas is the Roman goddess of truth. She appeared in You Can't Handle The Truth, in which she made people say the truth so they would kill each other to pay her fee.
In "You Can't Handle the Truth", she is summoned by a young woman
named Corey using a cat's skull, grains of paradise seed, and Devil's
Shoestring. As a result of her summoning, anyone in Calumet City,
Illinois, who asks aloud for the truth, invokes her curse. Dean Winchester inadvertently invokes the curse and is suddenly bombarded by truths from everyone he encounters, including through phone calls.
Sam and Dean learn that Veritas is posing as Ashley Frank.
She drives what appears to be a Jaguar E-Type or XK-E, a British
automobile manufactured by Jaguar between 1961 and 1975, which is
appropriate given her character's connection with cats. They go to her
home to kill her, but she captures them and, before eating them, decides
to play "Truth or Truth." She forces Dean to admit that he wanted to
kill Sam in his sleep because he thought he was monster; however, when
she questions Sam, she becomes agitated because she can tell that Sam is
lying to her. She asks Sam what he is - he can't be human if he can lie
to her. Sam and Dean use this distraction to free themselves and kill
her with a knife dipped in dog's blood.
Known Abilities
Truth - As the goddess of truth, her signature ability is
force humans to speak the truth. Whatever town she is in, if someone
asks aloud for the truth, they will invoke her curse. Nobody can be lied
to when under her curse. Soulless people are unaffected by this and can
even lie to her as they seem to have a special resistance against the
curse.
Immortality - As a pagan god, she has immortality and
near invulnerability. However, she can be killed if the appropriate
elements are used.
Telekinesis - She can control and move objects with her mind.
Superhuman Agility & Speed - She has cat-like speed and agility.
Superhuman Strength - She has enhanced strength and she can knock down her enemies with one strike.
Weaknesses
As other pagan gods, she has her own weakness; she can be killed with a knife dripped in a dog's blood.
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope (from the Greek λυκάνθρωπος: λύκος, lukos, "wolf", and ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, "man"), is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphicwolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse
and/or lycanthropic affliction via a bite or scratch from a werewolf,
or some other means. This transformation is often associated with the
appearance of the full moon, as popularly noted by the medieval chronicler Gervase of Tilbury, and perhaps in earlier times among the ancient Greeks through the writings of Petronius.
In addition to the natural characteristics inheret of both wolves and
humans, werewolves are often attributed supernatural powers of strength
and speed far beyond those of both wolves and men. The werewolf is
generally held as a European
character, although its lore spread through the world in later times.
Shape-shifters, similar to werewolves, are common in tales from all over
the world, most notably amongst the Native Americans, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.
Werewolves are a frequent subject of modern fiction,
although fictional werewolves have been attributed traits distinct from
those of original folklore. For example, the ideas that werewolves are
only vulnerable to silver bullets
or that they can cause others to become werewolves by biting or
wounding them derive from works of modern fiction. Werewolves continue
to endure in modern culture and fiction, with books, films and
television shows cementing the werewolf's stance as a dominant figure in
horror.
A few references to men changing into wolves are found in Ancient Greek literature and mythology. Herodotus, in his Histories, wrote that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia,
were all transformed into wolves once every year for several days, and
then changed back to their human shape. In the second century BC, the
Greek geographer Pausanias relates the story of Lycaon, who was transformed into a wolf because he had ritually murdered a child. In accounts by the Bibliotheca (3.8.1) and Ovid (Metamorphoses I.219-239), Lycaon serves human flesh to Zeus,
wanting to know if he is really a god. Lycaon's transformation,
therefore, is punishment for a crime, considered variously as murder,
cannibalism, and impiety. Ovid also relates stories of men who roamed
the woods of Arcadia in the form of wolves.
Besides Ovid, other Roman writers also treated lycanthropy. Virgil wrote of human beings transforming into wolves.Pliny the Elder relates two tales of lycanthropy. Quoting Euanthes, he mentions a man who hung his clothes on an ash tree and swam across an Arcadian
lake, transforming him into a wolf. On the condition that he attacked
no human being for nine years, he would be free to swim back across the
lake to resume human form. Pliny also quotes Agriopas
regarding a tale of a man who was turned into a wolf after tasting the
entrails of a human child, but was restored to human form 10 years
later.
In the Latin work of prose, the Satyricon, written about 60 C.E. by Gaius Petronius Arbiter,
one of the characters, Niceros, tells a story at a banquet about a
friend who turned into a wolf (chs. 61-62). He describes the incident as
follows, "When I look for my buddy I see he'd stripped and piled his
clothes by the roadside...He pees in a circle round his clothes and
then, just like that, turns into a wolf!...after he turned into a wolf
he started howling and then ran off into the woods."
Werewolves were said in European folklore to bear tell-tale physical traits even in their human form. These included the meeting of both eyebrows
at the bridge of the nose, curved fingernails, low-set ears and a
swinging stride. One method of identifying a werewolf in its human form
was to cut the flesh of the accused, under the pretense that fur would
be seen within the wound. A Russian superstition recalls a werewolf can
be recognised by bristles under the tongue.
The appearance of a werewolf in its animal form varies from culture to
culture, though it is most commonly portrayed as being indistinguishable
from ordinary wolves save for the fact that it has no tail (a trait
thought characteristic of witches in animal form), is often larger, and
retains human eyes and voice. According to some Swedish accounts, the
werewolf could be distinguished from a regular wolf by the fact that it
would run on three legs, stretching the fourth one backwards to look
like a tail.
After returning to their human forms, werewolves are usually documented
as becoming weak, debilitated and undergoing painful nervous
depression.
One universally reviled trait in medieval Europe was the werewolf's
habit of devouring recently buried corpses, a trait that is documented
extensively, particularly in the Annales Medico-psychologiques in the 19th century.Fennoscandian
werewolves were usually old women who possessed poison-coated claws and
had the ability to paralyse cattle and children with their gaze. Serbianvulkodlaks
traditionally had the habit of congregating annually in the winter
months, when they would strip off their wolf skins and hang them from
trees. They would then get a hold of another vulkodlaks skin and burn it, releasing from its curse the vulkodlak from whom the skin came . The Haitianjé-rouges
typically try to trick mothers into giving away their children
voluntarily by waking them at night and asking their permission to take
their child, to which the disoriented mother may either reply yes or no.
Various methods for becoming a werewolf have been reported, one of
the simplest being the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of
wolfskin, probably as a substitute for the assumption of an entire
animal skin (which also is frequently described). In other cases, the body is rubbed with a magic salve. Drinking rainwater out of the footprint of the animal in question or
from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of
accomplishing metamorphosis. The 16th century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula. Ralston in his Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia.
In Italy, France and Germany, it was said that a man or woman could
turn into a werewolf if he or she, on a certain Wednesday or Friday,
slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on
his face.
In other cases, the transformation was supposedly accomplished by Satanic allegiance for the most loathsome ends, often for the sake of sating a craving for human flesh. "The werewolves", writes Richard Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1628),
are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an
ointment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a
certayne inchaunted girdle, does not only unto the view of others seem
as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of
wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle. And they do dispose
themselves as very wolves, in worrying and killing, and most of humane
creatures.
Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote.
The phenomenon of repercussion, the power of animal metamorphosis, or of sending out a familiar,
real or spiritual, as a messenger, and the supernormal powers conferred
by association with such a familiar, are also attributed to the magician, male and female, all the world over; and witch
superstitions are closely parallel to, if not identical with,
lycanthropic beliefs, the occasional involuntary character of
lycanthropy being almost the sole distinguishing feature. In another
direction the phenomenon of repercussion is asserted to manifest itself
in connection with the bush-soul of the West African and the nagual of Central America;
but though there is no line of demarcation to be drawn on logical
grounds, the assumed power of the magician and the intimate association
of the bush-soul or the nagual with a human being are not termed lycanthropy. Nevertheless it will be well to touch on both these beliefs here.
The curse of lycanthropy was also considered by some scholars as
being a divine punishment. Werewolf literature shows many examples of God or saints allegedly cursing those who invoked their wrath with werewolfism. Such is the case of Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf by Zeus as punishment for slaughtering one of his own sons and serving his remains to the gods as a dinner. Those who were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church were also said to become werewolves.
The power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but to Christian saints as well. Omnes angeli, boni et Mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra ("All angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies") was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick was said to have transformed the Welsh king Vereticus into a wolf; Natalis
supposedly cursed an illustrious Irish family whose members were each
doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is
even more direct, while in Russia, again, men supposedly became
werewolves when incurring the wrath of the Devil.
A notable exception to the association of Lycanthropy and the Devil,
comes from a rare and lesser known account of an 80-year-old man named
Thiess. In 1692, in Jurgenburg, Livonia, Thiess testified under oath that he and other werewolves were the Hounds of God.
He claimed they were warriors who went down into hell to do battle with
witches and demons. Their efforts ensured that the Devil and his
minions did not carry off the grain from local failed crops down to
hell. Thiess was steadfast in his assertions, claiming that werewolves
in Germany and Russia also did battle with the devil's minions in their
own versions of hell, and insisted that when werewolves died, their
souls were welcomed into heaven as reward for their service. Thiess was
ultimately sentenced to ten lashes for Idolatry and superstitious belief.
A distinction is often made between voluntary and involuntary
werewolves. The former are generally thought to have made a pact,
usually with the Devil, and morph into werewolves at night to indulge in
nefarious acts. Involuntary werewolves, on the other hand, are
werewolves by an accident of birth or health. In some cultures, individuals born during a new moon or suffering from epilepsy were considered likely to be werewolves.
Becoming a werewolf simply by being bitten or scratched by another werewolf as a form of contagion is common in modern horror fiction, but this kind of transmission is rare in legend, unlike the case in vampirism.
Even if the denotation
of lycanthropy is limited to the wolf-metamorphosis of living human
beings, the beliefs classed together under this head are far from
uniform, and the term is somewhat capriciously applied. The
transformation may be temporary or permanent; the were-animal may be the
man himself metamorphosed; may be his double whose activity leaves the real man to all appearance unchanged; may be his soul, which goes forth seeking whom it may devour, leaving its body in a state of trance; or it may be no more than the messenger of the human being, a real animal or a familiar spirit,
whose intimate connection with its owner is shown by the fact that any
injury to it is believed, by a phenomenon known as repercussion, to
cause a corresponding injury to the human being.
Most modern fiction describes werewolves as vulnerable to silver
weapons and highly resistant to other injuries. This feature does not
appear in stories about werewolves before the 19th century. (The claim
that the Beast of Gévaudan,
an 18th century wolf or wolf-like creature, was shot by a silver bullet
appears to have been introduced by novelists retelling the story from
1935 onwards and not in earlier versions.)
Unlike vampires, they are not generally thought to be harmed by religious artifacts such as crucifixes and holy water.
Various methods have existed for removing the werewolf form. In
antiquity, the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed in the power of
exhaustion in curing people of lycanthropy. The victim would be
subjected to long periods of physical activity in the hope of being
purged of the malady. This practice stemmed from the fact that many
alleged werewolves would be left feeling weak and debilitated after
committing depredations.
In medieval Europe, traditionally, there are three methods one can
use to cure a victim of werewolfism; medicinally (usually via the use of
wolfsbane), surgically or by exorcism.
However, many of the cures advocated by medieval medical practitioners
proved fatal to the patients. A Sicilian belief of Arabic origin holds
that a werewolf can be cured of its ailment by striking it on the
forehead or scalp with a knife. Another belief from the same culture
involves the piercing of the werewolf's hands with nails. Sometimes,
less extreme methods were used. In the German lowland of
Schleswig-Holstein, a werewolf could be cured if one were to simply
address it three times by its Christian name, while one Danish belief
holds that simply scolding a werewolf will cure it. Conversion to Christianity is also a common method of removing werewolfism in the medieval period. A devotion to St. Hubert has also been cited as both cure for and protection from lycanthropes.
Werewolves in European tradition were mostly evil men who terrorized people in the form of wolves on command of the Devil, though there were rare narratives of people being transformed involuntarily. In the 10th century, they were given the binomial name of melancholia canina and in the 14th century, daemonium lupum. In Marie de France's poem Bisclavret (c. 1200), the nobleman Bizuneh, for reasons not described in the lai,
had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife
stole his clothing needed to restore his human form, he escaped the
king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy and accompanied the
king thereafter. His behaviour at court was so much gentler than when
his wife and her new husband appeared at court, that his hateful attack
on the couple was deemed justly motivated, and the truth was revealed.
Other tales of this sort include German fairy tales, Märchen, in which several aristocrats temporarily transform into beasts. See Snow White and Rose Red, where the tame bear is really a bewitched prince, and The Golden Bird where the talking fox is also a man.
Werewolf folklore is rare in England, possibly because wolves had been eradicated by authorities in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Harald I of Norway is known to have had a body of Úlfhednar (wolf coated), which are mentioned in Vatnsdœla saga, Haraldskvæði, and the Völsunga saga resemble some werewolf legends. The Úlfhednar were fighters similar to the berserkers, though they dressed in wolf hides rather than those of bears and were reputed to channel the spirits of these animals to enhance effectiveness in battle.
These warriors were resistant to pain and killed viciously in battle,
much like wild animals. Ulfhednar and berserkers are closely associated
with the Norse god Odin.
In Latvian folklore, a vilkacis was someone who transformed into a wolf-like monster, which could be benevolent at times. Another collection of stories concern the skin-walkers. The vilkacis and skin-walkers probably have a common origin in Proto-Indo-European society, where a class of young unwed warriors were apparently associated with wolves.
In Hungarian folklore, the concept of werewolf goes back to the Middle Ages. The werewolves used to live specially in the region of Transdanubia,
and it was thought that the ability to change into a wolf was obtained
in the infant age, after the suffering of abuse by the parents or by a
curse. At the age of seven the boy or the girl leaves the house and goes
hunting by night and can change to person or wolf whenever he wants.
The curse can also be obtained when in the adulthood the person passed
three times through an arch made of a Birch with the help of a wild rose's spine.
The werewolves were known to exterminate all kind of farm animals, especially sheep. The transformation usually occurred in the Winter solstice, Easter and full moon. Later in the 17th and 18th century,
the trials in Hungary not only were conduced against witches, but
against werewolves too, and many records exist creating connections
between both kinds. Also the vampires and werewolves are closely related
in Hungary, being both feared in the antiquity.
According to the first dictionary of modern Serbian language (published by Vuk Stefanović-Karadžić in 1818) vukodlak / вукодлак (werewolf) and vampir / вампир (vampire)
are synonyms, meaning a man who returns from his grave for purposes of
fornicating with his widow. The dictionary states this to be a common
folk tale.
Common among the Kashubs of what is now northern Poland, and the Serbs and Slovenes,
was the belief that if a child was born with hair, a birthmark or a
caul on their head, they were supposed to possess shape-shifting
abilities. Though capable of turning into any animal they wished, it was
commonly believed that such people preferred to turn into a wolf.
According to Armenian lore, there are women who, in consequence of deadly sins, are condemned to spend seven years in wolf form.
In a typical account, a condemned woman is visited by a wolfskin-toting
spirit, who orders her to wear the skin, which causes her to acquire
frightful cravings for human flesh soon after. With her better nature
overcome, the she-wolf devours each of her own children, then her
relatives' children in order of relationship, and finally the children
of strangers. She wanders only at night, with doors and locks springing
open at her approach. When morning arrives, she reverts to human form
and removes her wolfskin. The transformation is generally said to be
involuntary, but there are alternate versions involving voluntary
metamorphosis, where the women can transform at will.
The 11th Century Belarusian Prince Usiaslau of Polatsk was considered to have been a Werewolf, capable of moving at superhuman speeds, as recounted in The Tale of Igor's Campaign:
"Vseslav the prince judged men; as prince, he ruled towns; but at night
he prowled in the guise of a wolf. From Kiev, prowling, he reached,
before the cocks crew, Tmutorokan. The path of Great Sun, as a wolf,
prowling, he crossed. For him in Polotsk they rang for matins early at
St. Sophia the bells; but he heard the ringing in Kiev."
There were numerous reports of werewolf attacks – and consequent
court trials – in 16th century France. In some of the cases there was
clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases people have been terrified by such creatures, such as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf but none against the accused. The loup-garou eventually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic and reverted to the pre-Christian notion of a "man-wolf-fiend." The lubins or lupins were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loups-garous.
Some French werewolf lore is associated with documented events. The Beast of Gévaudan terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan, now called Lozère, in south-central France. From the years 1764 to 1767, an unknown entity killed upwards of 80 men, women, and children.
The creature was described as a giant wolf by the sole survivor of the
attacks, which ceased after several wolves were killed in the area.
At the beginning of the 17th century witchcraft was prosecuted by James I of England, who regarded "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a natural superabundance of melancholic."
The Naskapis believed that the caribou afterlife is guarded by giant wolves which kill careless hunters venturing too near. The Navajo people feared witches in wolf's clothing called "Mai-cob".
When the European colonization of the Americas
occurred, the pioneers brought their own werewolf folklore with them
and were later influenced by the lore of their neighbouring colonies and
those of the Natives. Belief in the loup-garou present in Canada, the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan and upstate New York, originates from French folklore influenced by Native American stories on the Wendigo. In Mexico, there is a belief in a creature called the nahual, which traditionally limits itself to stealing cheese and raping women rather than murder. In Haiti, there is a superstition that werewolf spirits known locally as Jé-rouge (red eyes) can possess the bodies of unwitting persons and nightly transform them into cannibalistic lupine creatures.
Shewolf
In the mountains of Auvergne, a story dating back to
1588 was told of a royal female werewolf. In the story, a nobleman was
gazing out of his window and upon seeing a hunter he knew he told him to
check back with details of the hunt. While in the forest, despite still
being in sight of his master's chateau, the hunter stumbled upon a
wolf. In the ensuing struggle, he severed one of the wolf's paws and
placed the it in a pouch.
Upon returning to the chateau with his gruesome prize,
he opened the pouch to show the nobleman evidence of his encounter. What
they discovered was not paw at all, in fact, it the pouch now contained
what looked to be a feminine hand bearing an elegant gold ring. The
gentleman recognized the ring, sent the huntsman away, and sought for
his wife. When he went came upon her in the kitchen, he found her
nursing a wounded arm in the kitchen he removed the bandage only to find
that her hand had been cut off.
Upon questioning her she finally admitted to being the
wolf with whom the hunter encountered, and by her confession, she marked
herself for certain execution -- in a matter of days she was burned at
the stake.
The Berserkers
In the Folklore of Norseman, there are many legends of
warriors called Berserkers. They are band of ancient Norse warriors that
are legendary for their savagery and reckless frenzy in battle. Fearing
no one, feeling no pain, having superhuman strength and never
surrendering are common characteristics.
Preparing for battle these warriors would attire
themselves in skins from bears or wolfs. The term Berserker translates
from old Norse to be "bear skin". There were also warriors who donned
the wolf skins known as "ulfheobar" or "ulfhedinn" (wolf-coats) but they
were eventually lumped together to be known as Berserkers.
The feeling was that once dressed with the skins of an
animal, the warrior would take on the characteristics of that animal.
Ynglingasaga records this tradition, saying of the warriors of Óðinn
that "they went without coats of mail, and acted like mad dogs and
wolves". A Byzantine emperor described the Berserkers in battle as being
possessed by a ferocity and madness seen only in wild beasts. The term
"berserk" was derived from the Beserkers.
Vampires are mythological or folkloric
beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the
form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person/being. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures, and may go back to "prehistoric times", the term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
While even folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a
wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting
corpses, it was interpretation of the vampire by the Christian Church and the success of vampire literature, namely John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre
that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated
vampire; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early
19th century, inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula.The Vampyre was itself based on Lord Byron's unfinished story "Fragment of a Novel", also known as "The Burial: A Fragment", published in 1819.
However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar legendary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of late Victorianpatriarchy". The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre,
still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, video games, and
television shows. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror
genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".
Folk beliefs
The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans
had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to
modern vampires. However, despite the occurrence of vampire-like
creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity we
know today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early
18th-century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.
It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the
folkloric vampire, though there are several elements common to many
European legends. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in
appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these
characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood.
Indeed, blood was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one
was seen in its shroud or coffin and its left eye was often open.
It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth,
hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were
not a feature.
The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. In Slavic and Chinese traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead.
A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was
also at risk. In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been
witches or people who had rebelled against the Russian Orthodox Church while they were alive.
Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a
recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant.
Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly
objects, such as scythes or sickles,
near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease
the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method
resembles the Ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx
in the underworld; it has been argued that instead, the coin was
intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this
may have influenced later vampire folklore. This tradition persisted in
modern Greek folklore about the vrykolakas, in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire. Other methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet,
or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was
intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen
grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania.
Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampire-like being came
across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a
theme encountered in myths from the Indian subcontinent, as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings. In Albanian folklore, the dhampir is the son of the karkanxholl or the lugat. If the karkanxholl sleeps with his wife, and she is impregnated with a child, the offspring is called dhampir and has the unique ability to discern the karkanxholl; from this derives the expression the dhampir knows the lugat. The lugat
cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the dhampir, who himself is
usually the son of a lugat. In different regions, animals can be
revenants as lugats; also, living people during their sleep. Dhampiraj is also an Albanian surname.
Many elaborate rituals were used to identify a vampire. One method of
finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a
graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse would
supposedly baulk at the grave in question. Generally a black horse was required, though in Albania it should be white. Holes appearing in the earth over a grave were taken as a sign of vampirism.
Corpses thought to be vampires were generally described as having a
healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs
of decomposition.
In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even
described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its
face.
Evidence that a vampire was active in a given locality included death
of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours. Folkloric vampires could also
make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-like activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects, and pressing on people in their sleep.
Apotropaics, items able to ward off revenants, are common in vampire folklore. Garlic is a common example, a branch of wild rose and hawthorn plant are said to harm vampires, and in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was said to keep them away. Other apotropaics include sacred items, for example a crucifix, rosary, or holy water. Vampires are said to be unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as those of churches or temples, or cross running water. Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors
have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a
door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes
do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire's lack
of a soul). This attribute, although not universal (the Greek vrykolakas/tympanios was capable of both reflection and shadow), was used by Bram Stoker in Dracula and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.
Some traditions also hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless
invited by the owner, although after the first invitation they can come
and go as they please. Though folkloric vampires were believed to be more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to sunlight.
Methods of destroying suspected vampires varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in southern Slavic cultures.Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states, or hawthorn in Serbia, with a record of oak in Silesia. Potential vampires were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany and the stomach in north-eastern Serbia.
Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated
vampire; this is similar to the act of burying sharp objects, such as sickles, in with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.Decapitation was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the buttocks or away from the body.
This act was seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul,
which in some cultures, was said to linger in the corpse. The vampire's
head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to
prevent rising.Gypsies
drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of
steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the
time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a
hawthorn stake through the legs. In a 16th-century burial near Venice,
a brick forced into the mouth of a female corpse has been interpreted
as a vampire-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in
2006.
Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or
complete incineration of the body. In the Balkans, a vampire could also
be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by
sprinkling holy water on the body, or by exorcism. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 19th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure. In Saxon regions of Germany, a lemon was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires.
Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood or flesh of the
living have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many
centuries. Today, we would associate these entities with vampires, but in ancient times, the term vampire did not exist; blood drinking and similar activities were attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the Devil was considered synonymous with the vampire. Almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India, for example, tales of vetālas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the Baitāl Pacīsī; a prominent story in the Kathāsaritsāgara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one.Piśāca, the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes. The Persians
were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking
demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on
excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of the mythical Lilitu, synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith (Hebrew לילית) and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies. And Estries, female shape changing, blood drinking demons, were said to roam the night among the population, seeking victims. According to Sefer Hasidim, Estries were creatures created in the twilight hours before God rested. And injured Estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given her by her attacker.
Ancient Greek and Roman mythology described the Empusae, the Lamia, and the striges.
Over time the first two terms became general words to describe witches
and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and was described as a demonic, bronze-footed
creature. She feasted on blood by transforming into a young woman and
seduced men as they slept before drinking their blood. The Lamia preyed on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood, as did the gelloudes or Gello. Like the Lamia, the striges
feasted on children, but also preyed on young men. They were described
as having the bodies of crows or birds in general, and were later
incorporated into Roman mythology as strix, a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.
Christianity
With the arrival of Christianity in Greece, and other parts of Europe, the vampire "began to take on decidedly Christian characteristics." As various regions of the continent converted to Christianity,
the vampire was viewed as "a dead person who retained a semblance of
life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had risen
after his death and burial and appeared before his followers." In the Middle Ages, the Christian Church reinterpreted vampires from their previous folk existence into minions of Satan, and used an allegory to communicate a doctrine to Christians:
"Just as a vampire takes a sinner's very spirit into itself by drinking
his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ's blood
take the divine spirit into himself."
The interpretation of vampires under the Christian Church established
connotations that are still associated in the vampire genre today. For example, the "ability of the cross to hurt and ward off vampires is distinctly due to its Christian association."
Medieval and later European folklore
Many of the myths surrounding vampires originated during the medieval period. The 12th-century English historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants,[27][73] though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant. The Old Norse draugr is another medieval example of an undead creature with similarities to vampires.
Vampires proper originate in folklore widely reported from Eastern
Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis
of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where
they were subsequently embellished and popularized. One of the earliest
recordings of vampire activity came from the region of Istria in modern Croatia, in 1672. Local reports cited the local vampire Giure Grando of the village Khring near Tinjan as the cause of panic among the villagers.
A former peasant, Guire died in 1656; however, local villagers claimed
he returned from the dead and began drinking blood from the people and
sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be
driven through his heart, but when the method failed to kill him, he was
subsequently beheaded with better results.
During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in
Eastern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings to identify
and kill the potential revenants; even government officials engaged in
the hunting and staking of vampires. Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment,
during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in
vampires increased dramatically, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout
most of Europe. The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg Monarchy
from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. Two famous vampire
cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole from Serbia.
Plogojowitz was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly
returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused,
he was found dead the following day. Plogojowitz supposedly returned and
attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood. In the second case, Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying.
After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was
widely believed that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours. Another famous Serbian legend involving vampires concentrates around a certain Sava Savanović living in a watermill and killing and drinking blood from millers. The character was later used in a story written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić and in the Serbian 1973 horror film Leptirica inspired by the story.
The two incidents were well-documented: government officials examined
the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe.
The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "18th-Century Vampire
Controversy", raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by
rural epidemics of so-claimed vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the
higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities,
with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them. Although
many scholars reported during this period that vampires did not exist,
and attributed reports to premature burial or rabies, superstitious belief increased. Dom Augustine Calmet, a well-respected French theologian
and scholar, put together a comprehensive treatise in 1746, which was
ambiguous concerning the existence of vampires. Calmet amassed reports
of vampire incidents; numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and supportive demonologists, interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote:
These vampires were corpses, who went out of their
graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats
or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons
so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.
The controversy only ceased when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten,
to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that
vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the
opening of graves and desecration of bodies, sounding the end of the
vampire epidemics. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in
artistic works and in local superstition.
Non-European beliefs
Africa
Various regions of Africa have folkloric tales of beings with vampiric abilities: in West Africa the Ashanti people tell of the iron-toothed and tree-dwelling asanbosam, and the Ewe people of the adze, which can take the form of a firefly and hunts children. The eastern Cape region has the impundulu, which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the Betsileo people of Madagascar tell of the ramanga, an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles.
The Americas
The Loogaroo is an example of how a vampire belief can result from a combination of beliefs, here a mixture of French and African Vodu or voodoo. The term Loogaroo possibly comes from the French loup-garou (meaning "werewolf") and is common in the culture of Mauritius. However, the stories of the Loogaroo are widespread through the Caribbean Islands and Louisiana in the United States. Similar female monsters are the Soucouyant of Trinidad, and the Tunda and Patasola of Colombian folklore, while the Mapuche of southern Chile have the bloodsucking snake known as the Peuchen.Aloe vera hung backwards behind or near a door was thought to ward off vampiric beings in South American superstition. Aztec mythology described tales of the Cihuateteo,
skeletal-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole
children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them
mad.
During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was widespread in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and Eastern Connecticut.
There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and
removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who
was responsible for sickness and death in the family, although the term
"vampire" was never actually used to describe the deceased. The deadly
disease tuberculosis,
or "consumption" as it was known at the time, was believed to be caused
by nightly visitations on the part of a dead family member who had died
of consumption themselves. The most famous, and most recently recorded, case of suspected vampirism is that of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown, who died in Exeter, Rhode Island
in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from
her tomb two months after her death, cut out her heart and burned it to
ashes.
Asia
Rooted in older folklore, the modern belief in vampires spread throughout Asia with tales of ghoulish entities from the mainland, to vampiric beings from the islands of Southeast Asia.
South Asia also developed other vampiric legends. The Bhūta or Prét
is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wanders around
animating dead bodies at night, attacking the living much like a ghoul. In northern India, there is the BrahmarākŞhasa, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood. The figure of the Vetala
who appears in South Asian legend and story may sometimes be rendered
as "Vampire" (see the section on "Ancient Beliefs" above).
Although vampires have appeared in Japanese cinema since the late 1950s, the folklore behind it is western in origin. However, the Nukekubi is a being whose head and neck detach from its body to fly about seeking human prey at night.
Legends of female vampire-like beings who can detach parts of their upper body also occur in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. There are two main vampire-like creatures in the Philippines: the Tagalogmandurugo ("blood-sucker") and the Visayanmanananggal ("self-segmenter"). The mandurugo is a variety of the aswang
that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings
and a long, hollow, thread-like tongue by night. The tongue is used to
suck up blood from a sleeping victim. The manananggal is
described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its
upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge bat-like wings and
prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes. They use
an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck fetuses from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails (specifically the heart and the liver) and the phlegm of sick people.
The MalaysianPenanggalan may be either a beautiful old or young woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic
or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local
folklore to be dark or demonic in nature. She is able to detach her
fanged head which flies around in the night looking for blood, typically
from pregnant women. Malaysians would hang jeruju (thistles) around the doors and windows of houses, hoping the Penanggalan would not enter for fear of catching its intestines on the thorns. The Leyak is a similar being from Balinese folklore. A Kuntilanak or Matianak in Indonesia, or Pontianak or Langsuir in Malaysia,
is a woman who died during childbirth and became undead, seeking
revenge and terrorizing villages. She appeared as an attractive woman
with long black hair that covered a hole in the back of her neck, with
which she sucked the blood of children. Filling the hole with her hair
would drive her off. Corpses had their mouths filled with glass beads,
eggs under each armpit, and needles in their palms to prevent them from
becoming langsuir.
Jiang Shi (simplified Chinese: 僵尸; traditional Chinese: 僵屍 or 殭屍; pinyin: jiāngshī;
literally "stiff corpse"), sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by
Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living
creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 pò) fails to leave the deceased's body. However, some have disputed the comparison of jiang shi with vampires, as jiang shi are usually mindless creatures with no independent thought. One unusual feature of this monster is its greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or mould growing on corpses.
