The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The vampire Eleonore?
17:03 Jan 27 2012
Times Read: 464




A disturbing archeological discovery in Central Europe shows us a very different vampire: not an Earl, not a Transilvanian, neither a male. In Bohemia, in Cesky Krumlov city, whose old center is preserved almost untouched, are exhumed three skeletons with traces of „magia posthuma”, the special ritual against the vampirism. The decapitated head of one corpse laid between it's feet while another body had a thorn in it's heart. These indicate bizarre rituals, executions of vampires, designed to prevent the return of the dead from the grave, rituals quite common in Central and Eastern Europe in the 18th century (a century of a true hysteria related to evil spirits).

A carefully examination confirms the fact that the skeletons date from 1700 - 1750.



The very detailed archives of the castle Krum and sources for Bram Stoker's classic novel reveal an interesting aspect: first, the novel "Dracula" had another opening chapter who related a different story than we are used. Jonathan Harker doesn’t appear so suddenly in the story, because a previous strange incident with an Austrian princess happen before. Stoker wanted to start his novel with a spectacular attack of a vampire female by the princely tomb. When the hero is coming, the vampire-female(Lenore – a name that apears in Gottfried Bűrger’s poem) rises from the coffin. The clues from the original manuscript lead to Bohemia region, where the skeletons were found. During vampire hysteria, in Bohemia, at the Krumlov castle reigned a very unconventional woman. We are talking about the princess Eleonore von Schwarzenberg. Using the archives some could outline a fairly comprehensive picture of her personality.



The vampire-princess



Eleonore Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena von Lobkowitz was born on June 20th, 1682, in Melnik castle near by Prague. By marriage she became a member of Schwarzenberg house. Eleonore is the daughter of earl Ferdinand August von Lobkowitz and princess Maria Anna Wilhelmine von Baden-Baden. On December 6th, 1701 she married Marshal of the Court of Vienna, The Crown Prince that later became earl Adam Franz Karl Eusebius von Schwarzenberg (the Ferdinand Wilhelm Eusebius’s son). Eleonore was very fond of hunting, even more fond than her husband. Her great dissatisfaction was the inability to give him a son. Therefore, she appealed to a “drug”. Eleonore went on a wolf milk diet (the legend of Romulus and Remus had made the doctors believe that the use of wolf milk would increase the chances of giving birth to a male heir). Therefore, the Countess forbade the killing of wolves during hunting parties; instead, they were caught and kept in cages in the Krumlov castle cellars. At 41 years old the princess gave birth to a son - Joseph Adam - but the event was regarded with suspicion. Giving birth of a child at the old age was considered to be the result of either a miracle or wichcraft. In Eleonore's case was more credible the second version because she was interested in occultism and symbols of evil associated with the wolf. There is a widespread belief that the wolf is one of the metamorphoses of a vampire.



Her husband died in 1732 and the baby grew up at the royal court in Vienna. The Princess remained alone in the palace of Cesky Krumlov. Her health was deteriorating and maybe the death of her husband had a decisive role. The princess was visited by doctors and she spent a lot of money on drugs that aggravate her health (from ferns to whale blubber).

Eleonore has traveled to Vienna, in 1740, but the doctors couldn't helped her. She was very weak, pale, she had a difficult breath and panic attacks. On may 5th, 1741, she died. The cause of death: unknown. In same day she was subject to an autopsy (bizarre! The autopsy wasn't practiced on aristocrats). The conclusion is missing from the document that presents the autopsy process carried out by a lot of doctors. Much curious is the huge fee: 3000 crowns (money). The details from report inform us that the internal organs were atrophied and in the abdominal cavity they found an outgrowth as big as a child head. In fact, Eleonore died by cancer. It's very probably that she would be seen as a victim of vampire in her time. The autopsy was an intervention to assure that she wouldn't be back among the living.

More elements seemed to indicate the fear of vampirism. Her body was sent to Cesky Krumlov, based on a supposed wish of the princess. Bizarre again! Because the Schwarzenberg family had a crypt into a monastery from Vienna. The name appeared in the documents of monastery. There is a tombstone but in her testament she said that her wish was to be buried in her own land, without ceremony and on the tombstone to be write: “ Here rests Eleonore, the poor sinner! Prey for her!”

In those times a theory claimed that in the moment of turning into a vampire, the corps begins to eat the shroud and other nearby corpses (de masticatiorum mortum). Maybe this superstition is the cause of a burial so far from her family, that was absent the procession. Neither her son. In Sf. Vitus church, where she rests, the investigations brought out that her coffin was covered with a massive tombstone and ground from cemetery, considered sacred, before to be obstruct the lid with the inscription from testament. It was a proof of fear. People thought the princess could be transformed in vampire and she would be more dangerous because she was a noblewoman.

Gerard van Swieten, the doctor of Maria Tereza, persuaded her (the empress) to forbid desecration of the graves.

Eleonore von Schwarzenberg has left a deep impression. This is seen in the “Lenore” ballad (1773) by Bűrger. In this ballad a woman curse the sky because her husband died in war; he’s coming back as a undead. “Dead travel fast”, it saying in ballad. This phrase appearing in the novel of Bram Stoker: for the first time when Jonathan Harker meeting the wolves and the vampires to the princess's grave and later when the count Dracula appears for the first time in the novel. Before publication, Bram Stoker will remove the vampire-female from manuscript.



Recomandation: “The Vampire Princesss” documentary (Klaus T. Steindl, Andreas Sulzer), History Channel.





Here is the URL of the documentary:



http://www.cbs.com/e/Iladu5ubnU2KUXeX1NNGmo6nDLW9vNu9/tvcom/1/

Vampires of Eastern Europe The truth behind vampire myths
09:59 Jan 23 2012
Times Read: 484

This article appeared in the Lincoln Daily News on November 13, 1914.





To those living in Silesia, Moravia, and along the southern frontier of Hungary the word "vampire" has a terrible significance, says the New York Times. For centuries pas the inhabitants of these countries have believed implicitly in such terrible beings, and assert that their belief is founded upon only too real evidence. Travelers who scoff at these assertions have more than once had cause to change their minds owing to some tearful experience of their own. For the benefit of the reader we shall describe, first of all, just what a vampire is, according to those who are most familiar with this terrible being and his ways.



Certain persons who have died, it is said, have the power of leaving their graves, in sense form, and returning to suck the blood of living persons, and in this manner they are enabled to maintain themselves in a state, if not of life, certainly very different from death. Fastening upon their victim, they suck out the life blood through two small needle-like holes which they make in the victim's neck. They sit upon the chest lie an incubus during sleep. Preferably they attack young persons who are full-blooded and have an abundance of vitality.



Occasionally these persons wake during the process, and frightful have been some of the battles that are said to have taken place between mortal and and vampire. Sometimes one and sometimes the other would be victor. Most commonly, however, the person so attacked would not wake, and then he or she would rise in the morning pale, weak, emaciated and exhausted, for no apparent reason. This went on, as a rule, until that person died, when another would be attacked in like manner. This would continue until the vampire would be finally caught, exhumed, his head cut off, his heart cut out or impaled, when, with a fearful shriek, he would finally "give up the ghost." When the body of the vampire was impaled fresh blood would gush out. The body would be so full of blood, on occasion, that it would scarcely hold it all, and it would be found exuding from the ears, eyes and even skin! Any person bitten by a vampire would become one himself when his turn came to die. Such is the fearsome belief still held by many of the inhabitants of the Transylvania mountains and in the countries mentioned. The following cases are typical of many that might be given.



"Mr Tulip was an extraordinary strong well-built and healthy man, but at the beginning of December last he suddenly began to fail in health. The doctors could not locate his disease, and he grew rapidly thinner and weaker, complaining of nothing but extreme lassitude and feeling like a person who was daily bled. Finally, on December 20 last, all Vienna was surprised to hear that Mr Tulip dies. Post-mortem examinations showed all the organs in a perfectly normal condition, and the doctors found nothing better to register than marasmus (emaciation) as the cause of this extraordinary event. Strange to say, during the last days of his disease when his mind became flighty, he often imagined that a stranger was troubling him, and the description he gave of that personage fitted a certain Mr. Helleborus, with whom he had quarreled some time before.



"During Mr. Tulip's illness news come from Meran that Mr Helleborus, who had been very ill was rapidly gaining in health and strength and recovering from his illness in a most remarkable manner, yet immediately after the death of Mr. Tulip Mr Helleborus failed and died."



Another case is the following:



"A miller at D--- had a healthy servant boy, who soon after entering his service began to fail. He had a ravenous appetite, but nevertheless grew daily more feeble and emaciated. Being interrogated, he at last confessed that a thing he could not see, but which he could plainly fee, came to him every night and settled upon his stomatch, drawing all the life out of him, so that he became paralyzed for the time being and could neither move nor cry out. Thereupon the miller agreed to share the bed with the boy, and proposed to him that he should give him a certain sign when the vampire arrived. This was done and when the sign was given the miller grasped an invisible but very tangible substance that rested upon the boy's stomach and, though it struggled to escape, he held it firmly and threw it into the fire. After that the boy recovered, and there was an end of those visits.



Cases such as these might be multiplied indefinitely. What is one to think of such happenings? Like all beliefs of the kind, we must assume that there is some residium of truth amid the error and superstition. It cannot all be imagination. But if there is any truth in these stories, how much, and what is it?



About 200 years ago a learned priest, by name Augustine Calmet, published a work in two volumes, in which he critically examined a number of these stories of vampires. After narrating a number of them he goes on to say: "I lay down at first this principle -- that it may be that these are corpses which, although interred some days, shed fluid blood through the pores of their bodies." Although this is hardly the case, under certain peculiar conditions something akin to it may take place and thus give rise to the stories where fresh blood is found in the corpse.



As to the death of some of the persons who were attacked by vampires, Calmet says, "I add, moreover, that it is very easy for certain people to fancy themselves sucked by vampires, and that the fear caused by that fancy should make a revolution in their frame sufficiently violent to deprive them of life."



Had he lived in these days he would have put such cases down to the "influence of suggestion."



There are cases on record where the beard, hair, nails, etc. are found to have grown after death, and this was thought to be a sign of vampirism. But to this Calmet says:



"Experience teaches us that there are certain kinds of earth which reserve dead bodies perfectly fresh. ...As to the growth of the nails, the hair and the beard, it is often perceived in corpses. While there yet remains a good deal of moisture in the body, it is not surprising that sometimes we see some augmentation in those parts which do not demand a vital spirit.



As to the cry uttered by the vampires when the stake is driven through the heart, nothing is more natural; the air is there confined, and thus expelled by violence necessarily produces that noice in passing through the throat."



While much of Mr. Calmet's physiology is a little shaky, still he has grasped the main truth of the question. He saw that natural physical causes operating in the body produced, on occassion, those odd changes and influences which were thought to be proff of vampirism.



Yet the difficult problem still remains. How does the body get out of its grave to come and haunt living persons? To this Cahnet replied that the figures seen were doubtless apparitions (hallucinations) and not physical beings at all, and were helped out by dreams, delusions and other morbid phenomena. When the person said he touched the figure this was probably a case of so-called "tactile" hallucination, just as there are "auditory" and "visual" hallucinations. None of them is real or objective.



Such are probably the foundations of a belief which has overshadowed South-eastern Europe for centuries. Doubtless there are no real vampires. In the sense commonly supposed, but there are odd psychical facts which have given rise to the belief—apparitions, dreams, hallucinations of various kinds, suggestion and the effects of fear, as well as certain morbid physical and physiological phenomena. These are the fundamentals of the belief. Accompanying them we have also certain odd cases where the bodv has been remarkably preserved after death -- as we know to be the case when the body is placed in an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas, in certain earths, when the patient has died of certain diseases, etc. These, then, are the basic facts; the vast superstructure of this fearful belief has been built upon them. May the day not be far distant when advancing education, civilization and progress will forever banish the vampires from these lands, and they have been banished from other countries over the civilised globe.





http://www.logoi.com/notes/vampires-eastern-europe.html

Enticing vampires - Vampire beliefs from the old world
09:56 Jan 23 2012
Times Read: 484

This story appeared in The Zanesville Signal on November 20, 1927 under the title "New Facts about Vampires: Winged and Human."

The prevailing belief in European countries was that vampires were the ghosts of suicides or others who had died violent deaths and were forced by the devil to leave their graves at night and feed on the blood of men and women, and any who died at the hands of these dreadful creatures also became vampires. In this way beautiful women became vampires and enticed young men and fed on their blood and flesh. It was believed that they had power to assume any shape or form desired between sunset and sunrise and that they committed most of their awful deeds at midnight. They were powerless in the daytime and were generally in a torpid state. Garlic and wild rosebushes were guards against them, and crucifixes were feared by them. To prevent suicides from becoming vampires they were buried with n stake driven through their hearts, and the straw they had slept on was burned. All the dogs and cats in the village were locked up, for if a dog or cat jumped over a corpse it was sure to become the home of a vampire. -- Chicago Tribune, 1903.







http://www.logoi.com/notes/enticing-vampires.html

Can a blond be a vampire? by De Sacia Mooers
09:54 Jan 23 2012
Times Read: 484

This article appeared in The Sandusky Register on December 28, 1919:

When Delilah, of the Philistines, lured Samson, the Israelite, to her tent, that she might practise upon him those artful wiles for which she was famed, and which proved his undoing, this raven-haired and black-eyed houri became, unconsciously, the prototype of the modern sirens to whom were first given the designation "vampires."



For the modern vampire, like Delilah of old, preys upon impressionable men, luring him with her smiles, fascinating him with beauty that is only a hollow mask, and weaving about him a fatal spell with her inviting eyes. And, like Delilah, she casts her victim aside, helpless and broken, when he has served her purpose.



Although the traits of Delilah have been recorded for us in the undying pages of the Bible itself, and Kipling's vampire immortalized us "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair," after all it is the motion picture audiences who know most about vampires and their sinister, deceptive ways. It is the movie screen that has made the modern siren a familiar thing in all corners of the earth. And it is the movie screen that has visualized her, and virtually set her apart as never being anything else than a tall, sinuous, beautiful young woman with coal-black hair and scintillating black eyes.



Delilah was a brunette -- as were all the Philistine women -- and she was chosen to trap Samson because her hair was blackened, her eyes the darkest, and her face the fairest of them all. Kipling's vampire was a brunette, beautiful teeth shone like pearls, the more jewel-like because their whiteness contrasted so strikingly the blackness of hair and eyes and the darkness of her luscious lies.



And those who make motion pictures followed the fashion set by the foolish men who have pictured vampires on the screen and presented them in the theatres, being entirely too slavish to the Delilah precedent. Mrs. Edward Demarest Mooers who is just out of her teens and yet has had, because of her position as one of the leaders of the younger millionaires of Southern California, great experience with the society in which vampires tend to move, declares that, if the truth was known, blondes make better vampire, than brunettes. And to prove her assertion, revolutionary as it is, young and lovely Mrs. Mooers has temporarily laid aside her social career, closed her California mansion, left her rich, handsome husband for a while to become a vampire herself either on the stage or in the movies.



She wants to be the first "blonde" vampire, and, incidentally, but quite as important to her, Mrs. Mooers, who is to be known by her maiden name, De Sacia Saville, is going to prove that a vampire can be a lovely, wholesome young woman, after all.



Not long ago Southern California society was shocked when Mrs. Mooers calmly announced to her friends that she was going to close her home on Alvarado Terrace, forsake her clubs and her gay round of social duties, and go on the stage. No one could believe such a thing. Her marriage several years ago to young "Eddie" Mooers, the heir to the great Yellow Aster Gold Mine, the richest gold mine in the United States, had been a great event. She had become immensely popular in the circle of Mooers's family friends, and was easily upholding the Mooers traditions. And she attracted a great deal of attention because she was said to be the most striking blonde in all Southern California -- where native families still display a frequent trace of Spanish days, when blondeness was a curiosity.



If it had been "Eddie" Mooers, now, who proposed going on the stage, or going into motion pictures, that, would have been different. In his college days he joined the chorus of the "Morning Glories" burlesque troupe just for a lark, and remained, quite fascinated by his unique surroundings, until rescued by his mother. And once, when he grew angry at his college professor, he retaliated by almost running away with that professor's daughter. His mother again saved him. But nothing of the unconventional ever had been dreamed of his charming, vivacious young wife -- certainly not that she could do such a plebeian thing as go on the stage.



But, Mrs. Mooers said she was tired of seeing vampires who always were brunettes. "A real vampire has to display one of the most valuable accomplishments a woman can have," said Mrs. Mooers, "the power to make her man love her. Why is it that all dramas, appealing daily, as they do to millions and millions of our new generations, have to create the impression, gradually but certainly, that only a dark-haired woman -- a brunette -- can make the man she is interested in love her? It's ridiculous. Of course, the vampire uses her power with sinister intent. But it is the same power every woman wants to wield, the good woman reserving it for the man she wants to marry, or the man to whom she is married. But if this 'brunette-only-vampire' idea continues to be drilled into our impressions, men gradually will come to think that the only woman who can arouse and feed the emotions is the brunette. I'm going to prove that idea all wrong."



And so Mrs. Mooers, with many, many more millions than she has had days of experience, went to New York and said to the great motion picture producers there:



"I have come to be a vampire."



"Impossible, "they replied. "A blonde vampire? Such a thing does not exist."



"But, I am here to prove to you," she returned, "that a blonde is the greatest of all vampires, when she turns her abilities that way. No brunette who ever lived, Delilah to the contrary notwithstanding,' can lure and trap a man so quickly as can a blonde, if she once sets her mind to it. I'll prove it, and I don't want any salary -- for I've plenty of money of my own."



So young and lovely Mrs. Mooers, "the most striking blonde in all California, with eyes the shade of a Colorado lake and hair the color of a Klondike nugget," has set out to prove the general belief that brunettes "were made for love and vampires, and blondes for ornaments and chums" completely erroneous.



It is interesting to observe that Mrs. Mooers, in furthering her ambition, has science in her favor and science against her. Professor W. B. Mooney, chief of the extension department of the Colorado Teachers' College, not long ago completed a series of investigations into the characteristics of the blonde and brunette woman which have been generally adopted as conclusive in many leading universities throughout the world. Professor Mooney found that blondes are inherently sharper, shrewder, more combative, and more likely to fight for their rights and hold on to their property -- masculine or material -- than the brunette. He founded his conclusion upon a research into the very origin of blondeness -- the prehistoric peoples of the North. These peoples had to struggle for their existence against, a harsh climate: they had to fight for their food against an improvident nature; their women were not pampered and petted, but made to carry their share of the tribal burdens, to master all the arts of trickery, subtlety, and quick-wittedness by which their tribes overcame the rigors of cold and famine.



"The blonde woman will hold her man against all odds," says Professor Mooney in his book, "Mental Measurements," "even if she has to fight for him to the death. In the first days of her existence she had virtually to trap her man, because the men of her tribe always were hungry, and a hungry man seldom has thoughts of love. She learned to bait, him with such wiles as wore hers to fall hack upon, and having baited him, she held him in a bondage as firm as iron."



So far science is on the side of Mrs. Mooers. For the vampire first, must "bait" her man, and then she must hold him until she is ready to sunder his fetters and cast him aside."



But, on the other hand:



"The brunette," says Professor Mooney, "descends from the women of the warm countries. Her tribes had food in abundance -- they merely had to pluck it from the trees, or linger in the earth for it. Their life was largely idleness -- relieved only by their intertribal clashes. The woman of these tribes soon discovered that her sex enabled her, by various artful practices, to influence the men to bring her food to her, sparing her the necessity of hunting for it. She traded kisses for a meal, and lured her man by coquetry, in which she had plenty of time to become a master."



So the brunette was given to coquetry and kisses -- as any vampire must be. Here science is against Mrs. Mooers. In summing up his observations, Professor Mooney says: "A brunette weeps quicker, screams easier, and caresses oftener than does a blonde; a blonde is more self-possessed in an emergency, more unemotional as concerns the tendencies of her heart, and when she does kiss she makes that kiss count."



Mrs. Mooers agrees wholly with this last observation of the learned scientist. "That is just the difference between a blonde vampire and a brunette one," she says. "The vampires we are accustomed to, the black-haired ones, kiss much and often. To kiss is their second nature. They would rather kiss than say 'thank you.' Their caress is endowed with more of art than sincerity.



"But with the blonde it is different -- and I am a blonde and so speak from an intimate knowledge. The blonde kisses but seldom, but when she does kiss, her soul goes with it. When she turns her head toward a vampire's goal, she has more in her one kiss with which to lure her intended victim than has a brunette in a score of her caresses."



Mr. Mooers is quite willing that his charming wife expound her theories upon the screen, but there are some of his relatives, millionaires like himself, who are not. So there was a bargain made -- Mrs. Mooers, as De Sacia Saville, is to have a year as the blonde vampire on the screen. Each month her rich husband is to visit her in her studio, accompanied by representatives of his relatives. They are to watch Mrs. Mooers progress quite closely. And if, at the end of the year, Mrs. Mooers still remains the lovely, charming, conventional young woman her friends know so well, all is to be well at the Mooers mansion. But if being a vampire on the screen has made her too unconventional in her demeanor -- then there may be a different story. That is the agreement in the Mooers family.





http://www.logoi.com/notes/blonde-vampire.html

Pictures of Dracula - Drawings and paintings of Dracula
09:45 Jan 23 2012
Times Read: 485

The pictures of Dracula below come from different sources. The first picture shows the original cover of Bram Stoker's book Dracula. This was the book from which the originally obscure legend of count Dracula gained its unprecendented fame.



The second is Dracula on the cover of the comics magazine Dracula. Here Dracula appears as a superhero, giving a weird twist to the original concept of evil.



The third picture is an old image of Vladislav Dracula, or Vlad Tepes the Impaler, the 15th century Romanian price who stood behind the myth. The name Dracula comes from the word "demon" in Romanian and etymologically related to the word "dracon" or "dragon."



The forth picture is a production staff printer's film negative sheet used in the production and printing of the VAMPIRELLA comics, starring the sexy woman vampire from Harris Comics/Warren Publications.



The fifth picture is a woodblock print of the attoricities of Vlad the Impaler, more commonly known by the name of Dracula.



The sixth picture is the cover of the comics magazine The Tomb of Dracula, showing Dracula escaping with a woman in his arms.

http://www.logoi.com/pastimages/dracula.html

Vampires - Facts and fiction behind vampire stories
09:38 Jan 23 2012
Times Read: 485

This story appeared in The Zanesville Signal on November 20, 1927 under the title "New Facts about Vampires: Winged and Human."



The word "vampire," aside from its current slang significance, suggests superstition, ghosts, werewolves, hobgoblins, purely fabulous monsters, fiction tales of so-called "mystery and horror" based on highly wrought literary imagination rather than any shred of fact.



In these weird tales the vampire is sometimes a huge bat, sometimes a beautiful woman, sometimes, as in the case of Count Dracula, a man with a mania for sucking human life-blood. Dracula is the classic type of fictional human vampire. He was created by Bram Stoker, a British writer of horror stories, and instantly became the literary rage all over the world. The Count's popularity has lasted twenty years; he is now the hero of a play based on Stoker's book, adapted by the American journalist, John Balderstori, and enjoying runs in York City and London. Women frequently faint at the matinee performances.



It seems now proved beyond any possibility of scientific doubt that such sinister and dangerous creatures, both bat and human, actually exist. Only a few weeks ago from mysterious Haiti, but from the quite modernized town Of Aux Cayes in that tropical West Indian island, where American Marine officers in motor cars pass every day, came the authenticated confession of a coppery-haired, handsome mulatto woman, by name Anastasie Dieudonne, that she had for several months been draining the blood from her nine-year old niece.



The child, once healthy and robust, had begun to fade away. Neighbors and relatives thought she had some wasting disease. Physicians, including those of the American clinic at Trouin, could find nothing wrong with her. Then an old black native doctor was called into conference. "She is the victim," he said, "of a vampire, or a loup garon. The life-blood is being secretly sucked from her body. If the monster is not discovered, she will die." "Bosh!" said many of the natives, who are not very superstitious in a modernized town like Aux Cayes. It looked like, bosh, indeed, when the old man carefully went over the girl's entire body and found not even a pinch-prick. But he was not satisfied and made a second examination. This time he discovered, a small, clean, unhealed incision hidden on the middle of her great toe. Anastasie Dieudonne subsequently confessed that she had been giving the girl a stupefying vegetable drug and then sucking her blood. She was, of course, an unbalanced creature, driven to this dreadful practice by an uncontrollable urge. She was literally, in actual fact, a human vampire.



That there are and have been other human vampires, in both high and low walks of life, and in circumstances much more terrible and dramatic than the case in Haiti, will presently be shown.



With reference to bat vampires, Dr. August Kronheit of the German Academy of Science, and member of a number of leading American societies, has made an elaborate study of them in South America.



He discovered that the true vampire is a montrous blackish-brown bat, with a wing-spread of about two feet, with razor-sharp teeth and a hideous snout like a pig. It flies chiefly in the late hours of the night, attacking sleeping horses, other animals and human beings. It lives almost entirely by sucking blood.



Dr Kronheit cites the specific case of a young girl in Bolivia, who was sleeping during the Summer on the unscreened porch of her father's house. By merest accident the father, who was planning a hunting trip next day, went out on the porch, just as dawn was lighting the sky, to observe the weather.



He saw the huge bat crouching against his daughter's bare shoulder, and with horror recognized it for what it was. He seized it and crushed it to death with his hands. It was then discovered that the vampire had sucked almost a pint of blood from the girl.



These true accounts of the vampire need frighten no reader in the continent of North America. The true vampire bat is confined exclusively to tropical countries, and never comes even so far north as Florida. The bats of the United States are harmless and, in many cases, useful. The useful ones live on insects; others by sucking the juice from fruit on trees. In the United States there is a large bat with a wingspread of more than fourteen inches, which is sometimes called "vampire," but which is known to science under the name of "false vampire," because it sucks only the juices of fruits.



But the existence of the real blood-sucking bats in tropical countries has been conclusively proved by science. One reason why people m general have hesitated to believe in them and regarded them as fictitious is that it has been difficult to understand, in common sense, why victims do not awaken when the vampire fastens upon them. Those who did believe in them invented the fantastic explanation that some insidious, sleep-producing poison was first injected from the bat's fangs into the victim's body. The true explanation is simpler. The upper front teeth of the vampire are flat, thin, unpointed and razorsharp. The vampire, properly speaking, neither bites nor sinks fangs like a needle into its victim. Instead, it delicately shaves off a thin portion of the skin, not deep, and the wound is practically painless. Then it applies its lips only to the spot, which is little more than an abrasion, and by suction alone keeps up a constant flow of blood.



Human vampires, on the other hand, are demented or semi-insane people who have a mania for drinking human blood. Recent investigations both current and historical, have shown that it is not so rare an occurrence as one might suppose.



The most completely authenticated case in history, since it is a part of actual old court record, is that of the beautiful Countess Bathori, who lived in Hungary about three hundred years ago. The complete minutes of the trial, her final confession, the testimony of her servants, the record of the conviction and the amazing punishment inflicted on her by the law-all still exist.



She was rich and owned a castle on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains, which had a mysterious and evil reputation in the neighborhood. For many years the peasants believed that she practiced magic, and was, in league, like Faust, with the devil. They did not dream, however, of the even more dreadful secret that the castle actually hid, for what occurred there, over and over again, was more terrifying than anything in the Bluebeard stories or the horror tales of Poe.



Over a period of several years a number of young and pretty peasant girls and boys had disappeared from the neighborhood and had never been heard from again. For a long time it was supposed that they had been carried off by bandits from the mountains. But finally suspicion was directed toward the already mysterious castle of the Countess Bathori, and after an investigation a company of the King's Guard appeared suddenly one night with search warrants from the Emperor, placed the Countess under arrest and thoroughly searched the castle.



In an underground dungeon they found six of the missing children, emaciated, but still alive, chained so that they could not kill themselves, which they would all too willingly have done to escape the slower death they were suffering. The bones of several others who had finally died were found in an oubliette. The Countess herself, under subsequent threats of legal torture, confessed that each night she went to the dungeon, opened a vein in the arm of one of the prisoners, drank quantities of blood, and also bathed her face and shoulders in it. She believed, in her mad, magical superstition, that this would keep her always young and beautiful. As a matter of fact, the records say, she had a marvelously smooth and lovely skin, a complexion like "snow and roses." It was a cruel period, and Hungary in those days was a cruel country. Instead of executing the Countess Bathori, the judges sentenced her, making the punishment fit the crime, to have the skin flayed from her face and neck. So her face became an object frightful to look upon instead of beautiful, as it had once been.



The most famous case of a modern human vampire attested by the courts and legal record is that of Fritz Haarman, in Hanover, Germany, who was executed after the World War. He was a true vampire, scientifically speaking. He lured no less than twenty-seven youths into his home and drank their blood.



The existence of such living human monsters as Anastasie Dieudonne in Haiti, Fritz Haarman in Germany and the Countess Bathori in Hungary is believed to be the basis for the legends concerning a third type of vampire which exists only in superstition and folklore. That is the vampire ghost, the dead man or woman, who periodically emerges from the grave to feed upon the blood of a living person. A whole literature has been built up around these folklore legends, and there are thousands of hair-raising stories. The best of them all, perhaps, is the "Succubus" by Balzac, which was illustrated by Gustave Dore. The most famous of them is probably "Dracula," with Robert Louis Stevenson's "Ollalla," a blood-curdling story, as runner-up.



These stories, common to the peasantry of all European countries, tell how, when the vampire's grave is opened, the body, no matter how long dead, is found to be still fresh and rosy. To put a stop to the ravages of the supposed vampire, the people go solemnly to the cemetery, open the grave and drive a stake through the heart. Then the grave is closed again and boiling oil and vinegar are poured upon it.



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