Vampire Books Online / Vampire of Slav Origin - The Birmingham age-herald (Birmingham, Ala.), February 20, 1916

From the London Globe.

The vampire, according to the belief of eastern people, 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, though it also pervades the popular beliefs in Poland and Servia, among the Czechs of Bohemia 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 werewolf, a human being who could at will assume the appearance and ferocity of a wolf, which, if wounded in its nocturnal pursuits in the head or limbs, could not efface its injuries or escape detection when it returned to its human form. This was no doubt added by the fashioners of the legend as an appropriate touch of poetic justice. The werewolf is, in fact, a pleasant anticipation of the idea which R. L. Stevenson worked out in his story of dual personality, "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

No detail which could make it more gruesome is lacking from the legend of the vampire. The earth has not its usual power of decay over this body, and when his grave is opened he lies with fresh cheeks, open, staring eyes, and hair still growing. Night is of course the time when he arises, and he sucks the blood of his victims during their sleep; as is usually represented from the throat, and a detail sometimes added is that there is an inflamed mark on the spot where he has been at work. As a rule, victims are unable to explain the strange and depressing languor which affects them, or to discover its cause, and they are doomed gradually to fade away and die unless some wise and courageous friend appears on the scene who is inspired to detect the cunning author of the mischief and to succeed in the difficult and dangerous task of putting an end to his evil power, which is only to be done by driving a stake (in Russia of aspen) through his body at a blow as he lies in his coffin. It is to be noted that this was the way in which a suicide was buried under the law of England—at the crossroads with a stake through his body—and the barbarous custom was not abolished until the reign of George IV.

The vampire is to be detected during his visits to the upper air by his extreme pallor, his unnaturally long and painted 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 no one is ever supposed to have had the courage and address to see, but the belief is that locked doors and closed windows are no bar to his movements.