Vampire Books Online / The Legend of the Vampire

Unknown | Lyon County Reporte | 1916

Queer Beliefs That Cling About This Old World Superstition.

The vampire, according to the belief of eastern Europe, is the physical body of a dead person, male or female, that maintains itself in a sort of half life in the grave by returning to its former haunts and nourishing itself on the blood of living persons. This superstition is characteristically Slavonic.

The vampire superstition is strongest in White Russia and the Ukraine among all the Slavs. The vampire is most prevalent and the Slovaks of Hungary and is to be traced as far as Albania and Greece. Comparative philology proves it to have had a common origin with the equally hideous legend of the were wolf, a human being who could at will assume the appearance and characteristics of a wolf, which if abandoned in its nocturnal pursuits in the haunts of man, never ceases its injuries of escape detection when it returned to human form.

The vampire is to be detected during its visits to the haunts of man by his extreme pallor, his unnaturally long and pointed canine teeth and his fetid breath. The vampire also throws no shadow either upon the ground or on a looking glass and is never seen to eat or drink. How he leaves and reenters his grave is an undecided point, because the window to the grave and the closely closed windows are no bar to his movements.