Happy All Hallow's Eve

As promised, here’s my Halloween post about vampires.

First off, let me say that I now know more about vampires than I ever thought was possible.

The first reference I could find to vampires was a cave painting dating back to 3000 B.C. in Nepal which depicted blood drinking creatures. Ancient Indian holy writings (called the Vedas circa 1500 B.C.) depict the Rakshasas (or destroyers) as vampires. There are also tales of the vetalas, ghoul-lie beings that inhabit corpses, and a monster in India’s lore which hangs from a tree upside-down (like a bat) and is devoid of blood, called a Baital. The ancient Indian goddess Kali, with her fangs and a garland of corpses or skulls, was also linked with the drinking of blood. In Egypt, the goddess Sekhmet drank blood.

The ancient Malayans believed in a type of vampire called the Penanggalen. This creature consisted of a human head with entrails that left its body and searched for the blood of others, especially of infants. The ancient Greeks believed in the strigoe or lamiae, who were monsters who ate children and drank their blood. The ancient Peruvians believed in the canchus, devil worshipers who sucked the blood of the young. The Caffre, in Africa, believed the dead could return and survive on the blood of the living. Pottery shards from ancient Persia depicted creatures attempting to drink blood from men.

I could go on (and I probably will keep researching this for my own interest) but my original post topic from earlier in the month was, how did the vampire go from a creature of horror to a romantic hero?

The first literary reference to the vampire was not, as I believed, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). A more charismatic and sophisticated vampire can be found in The Vampyre, by John Polidori (1819). This was followed in 1847 by the best-selling (in its time) Varney the Vampire, by Thomas Prest. That being said, Stoker's Dracula is still probably the best known.

But when did the vampire cross over from horror to romance? I think we have to side track to films for a moment. The first vampire movie was Nosferatu in 1922, followed by Dracula (starring Béla Lugosi) in 1936. In 1958, Christopher Lee starred in Dracula, which was so popular it was followed by seven sequels. Let’s face it, these were strictly horror movies.

Then we skip ahead to 1979, when Frank Langella stars in Dracula. He portrays the vampire as sophisticated, charismatic, and sensual. Suddenly, we’re rooting for the blood sucker to win! To me, this was the turning point for the vampire. Okay, so technically he was still a blood-sucking fiend, but he was a hot, blood-sucking fiend. Maybe even a misunderstood blood-sucking fiend. All he really wanted was to find his soul mate and live happily ever after. Sounds like a romance to me.

To be honest, I can’t really pin point to an exact book when the vampire became a romantic hero. My first exposure to the vampire in romance was in the Silhouette Shadows series. Sometimes the vampire was the seductive antagonist, sometimes the hero. But they were always good reading.

Today’s vampire is handsome, wealthy and seductive. He possesses superhuman strength, heightened sensory perception, the capacity to hypnotize his victims and, last but not least, immortality. He offers old-fashioned romance in the arms of an alpha male.

In the last five years the vampire as a romantic hero has really hit a boom. I, for one, hope it continues.

If anyone’s interested in vampire romances, there’s a great booklist HERE . Have patience with this site, it’s pretty graphic intensive and may take a while to load.

For other reading, we have:
The Vampyre; A Tale by John Polidori 1819 HERE
and Varney the Vampire by Thomas Prescott Prest 1847 HERE