#folkloric vampires

[adrianastrix]

Pre-Dracula vampire fiction (1)

Since Halloween is upon us, I decided, as a treat, to rescue my "live reading" tweets about the most important books of vampire fiction (according to Myself, of course) in the form of a reading log. (The things between [ ] are notes I'm interpolating now, for clarity.)

And, since Dracula Daily is coming quickly to a close, I'm inviting you all to a deep dive into the almost two centuries of vampire tradition that Stoker had behind him when he wrote Dracula.

We will start with Augustin Calmet's treatise on the undead (1749), then we will jump to a special edition I have of The Vampyre (the first vampire piece of prose, that we know of, from 1817) with some fanfic short stories based on it attached and then we will visit the Dracula's Brood anthology and a few similar ones (that you only find on Amazon BR). Depending on my ADHD, we may or may not have some highlights of books on folklore vampires (mainly my complaints about them, but there are positive highlights).

ANYWAY LET'S GOO

17/07/2002 - 12:35 am

"I'm reading the vampire reports analysed by Augustin Calmet (a monk that lived around the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th and OH MY GOD MY BRAIN IS SCREAMING. It's too much information in a huge tangle. But the reports he collected ARE the materials that most classical vampire writers read.

I've previously read summaries of his work, not the book itself. I'm reading this free version: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/29412 This log is my way of organizing all the info in a way that is useful to me.

17/07/2002 - 12:56 am

I'm reading a PT-BR version of the vampire reports, they start at page 243 of the Gutenberg ebook.

In case you don't know, Calmet's treatise is his way to give a Catholic Church perspective on what are essentially paranormal stories that were spread by magazines and newspapers as true. [It was written in 1745, a few years after the Vampiromania started in Europe (we will talk more about that later).]

He talks about ghosts, vampires, revenants, angels, demons and more. We will focus on the vampires.

17/07/2002 - 12:57 am

We start with the first (highly controversial) folk ethymology for "vampire" as a derivation of "oupire", both meaning "bloodsucker". They are classified here as a type of revenant, or "those who come back".

[You would THINK we know what the word "vampire" actually means and from which language it originally comes, by now, given how much interest there is on the topic, and you would be naïvely, DELICIOUSLY wrong.]

17/07/2002 - 12:58 am

Another cool fact he adds is that vampires only *sometimes* cause their victim's deaths. As for what causes the vampirism cases known at the time, he lists four possible things: 1 - nothing, it's just superstition; 2 - people buried alive [yikes]; 3 - dead people that God allowed to come back and haunt the living; 4 - Satan shenanigans

17/07/2002 - 12:59 am

I think cause 3 is cool, because when was it the last time you've read a story of a person that became a vampire because God Himself told them "no, no, they really screwed you over, go back and drink a couple liters of their blood to teach them a lesson"?

17/07/2002 - 1:05 am

Here Calmet enters a tangent about cases of actual ressurrections, Lazarus-style. I'm skipping that, it doesn't interest me. Let me get back to action on page 261, with M. Vassimont's case.

17/07/2002 - 1:13 am

Hahahahahaha oh my GOD this is my favourite case. So, the vampire is the ghost of a shepherd that sometimes appear as a man, sometimes, as a dog. He attacks people [not by drinking blood, but] by making them feel weak, and he also ties the tails of two or more cows together [because he is also a petty jerk, apparently].

So, when the peasants decide to stake him to pin him on the ground, he flat out LAUGHS at their faces. The corpse mocks them, saying that the stake is just a stick to shoo dogs, and keeps tormenting him until he is dragged out of the village and burned to ashes.

17/07/2002 - 1:22 am

I love so much the mental image of a group of peasants around the coffin, tired and soaked with blood after staking that jerk and he just keeps LAUGHING at their faces.

17/07/2002 - 1:28 am

Calmet keeps repeating the signals that a corpse is a vampire: its blood is still red and liquid, rosy faces and flesh that is soft, pliable and devoid of worms. And to illustrate it, he offers cases of people that didn't decomposed after death and how things around them sometimes move by themselves.

17/07/2002 - 1:29 am

It's interesting because the vampires in those reports are considered revenants, too, but they don't rise from their tombs and drink blood. Instead, they cause poltergeist phenomena in their former homes, throwing rocks and messing things around.

17/07/2002 - 1:37 am

Another case of vampirism. This time, the vampire appears to his son after his death and asks for dinner. The son feeds him and the old man disappear. The next day, he does the same. The next morning, the son dies. When they exhume the old man's corpse, it's *breathing*.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

This was an eventful early morning. It was 5 months after the beginning of the quarantine and I my home office work didn't have official hours, so my sleep patterns had already gone to space at that point.

At this point, I think it's important to notice how vampires bring signs of life to the corpses they inhabit, and sometimes these signs not necessarily include the corpse moving around. I mean, for all his laughing around, the jerkish vampire shepherd above never did anyting to stop the stake or his own burning.

You will see so much more that sadly never made its way into fiction tomorrow. At the end, I'll make a summary of what was a vampire at that point, before the Germans muddled it all (yeah, the Germans, bet you didn expect it - although the French also had a hand on it). Stay tuned!

[vyvilha]

happy pride!

what is better than vampire x werewolf lesbians? only ukrainian opyrica x vovkulaka lesbians

[oliviarampaige]

“Carpathia”

Day 3 - Vampire

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make.

[candela888]

After much research I have decided that vampiric entities in the Americas come in three different types, based on region. If u have any questions feel free to ask.

Vampiric entities of Mexico & Southwest USA:

Ojai vampire

Chupacabra (dog-like variety)

Tlahuelpuchi

Lechuza

Vampiro de Belen

Cihuateteo

Witch-like or animalistic. Tend to feed on defenseless children or animals. Many can shapeshift, usually into animals like wolves or owls.

Vampiric entities of South America:

Pishtaco

Abchanchu

Peuchen

Chonchon

Capelobo

Patasola

Tunda

Boraro

Animalistic and monstrous, many of these are barely even humanoid, usually horiffic to look at. Tend to go after adults, and are usually malicious. Many have backwards feet.

Vampiric entities of the Atlantic Coast:

New England Vampire panic

NYC vampire sightings

Hag, Ole-Higue, & Boo Hag

Chupacabra (alien variety)

Vampiro de Moca

Loogaroo/Rougarou

Soucouyant

Asema

New Orleans vampire sightings

Jacques St. Germain

Almost always humanoid, usually undead, sometimes witch-like, tend to attack people of all ages.

[prokopetz]

Hi! In your post about vampires you mentioned that Stoker's vampires can't be drawn or otherwise depicted. I haven't been able to find anything online that mentions this, do you recall where in the book this is mentioned?

(With reference to this post here.)

The idea that vampires can't be drawn or painted appears only in Dracula's early drafts; the novel's cast of characters originally included a subplot involving a painter named Francis Aytown, but the character (and associated subplot) were eventually dropped from the published text. I brought it up to illustrate that the oft-cited "well, mirrors are silver and photos are prepared with a silver emulsion" explanation probably isn't what Stoker had in mind regarding the business with the mirrors – entirely apart from the fact that the novel's text never mentions silver being particularly baneful to vampires in the first place!

[guardcanine]

[vampiresheart]

Dark Christmas

(Source)

[ladyvictoriart]

The Guaxa, also called the Guajona, has often been seen wandering the forests of northern Spain, where she has made her home. She appears mostly human but can be distinguished by her bird feet and single long tooth with which she punctures the veins of her victims so as to feast on their blood.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Suicidal Vampire by Jesús Bey

[marzipanandminutiae]

Being Spooky Season, it's a good time to remind everyone that those "vampire hunting kits" were not a thing in the 19th century and that they're all fakes made by assembling various real antiques in fancy boxes, which sellers started doing sometime in the late 20th century!

Important reminder thank you!

In many places in the 19th century, “vampire hunting“ worked more like “there has been a tuberculosis outbreak; let’s dig some corpse up, burn their heart, and feed the ashes to a sick family member to see if that helps.” Google Mercy Lena Brown, for one notable case much later than you might expect to see it

Or the truly fascinating story of people in Eastern Europe who claimed to be half – vampires (dhampir) and went around “fighting vampires“ for money or just food, in small villages. I’m told this would sometimes involve pretending to wrestle with invisible vampires for the benefit of people watching, and that the last known instance of it was in the 1950s.

[victusinveritas]

[cheesy-cryptid]

tw // blood, body horror

“Honora…“

“Not now, Benito! We've just uncovered—-“

“No…look!”

🥀🐦‍⬛🧛🍂

Tropical gothic my beloved i am SO back 🩸 decided to make a fake book cover about filipino monster hunters solving mysteries together

[anim-ttrpgs]

@thewelllitweenie

These are two very related asks so I’m going to answer them both in the same post.

Okay so first of all, it’s pretty unlikely that a Eureka party will be all in the same room together for the entire duration of the mystery/adventure, so there is plenty of opportunity for investigators to do things behind each others’ backs!

Next, yes, there is a special procedure for when a monster needs to go off and eat people without the rest of the party watching, and this is often handled in a secret solo session, though it doesn’t have to be.

That doesn’t mean that all monster stuff has to be handled in a private solo session. If a monster has a chance to quickly scarf someone down mid-session and can reasonably do so without anyone noticing (which a witch in particular is extremely capable of), they can do that too.

I’m going to write a simplified summary of an Example of Play that isn’t currently in the rulebook that’ll give you an idea of how a monster might use a power without alerting all other players to the fact that they’re a monster.

This actually comes directly from real gameplay, a playtest in which a vampire went the entire 6-month campaign without ever being identified by any other players or PCs.

Yvette (vampire) and Eunica (does not know that Yvette is a vampire, neither does her player) are in the town hall, and need to get into the office of a missing person to investigate the disappearance, but the office door is locked.

Yvette lies to Eunica, saying she can pick locks, and that she just needs Eunica to go to the end of the hall and stand watch in case anyone is coming.

Eunica agrees and starts walking to the end of the hall.

Then, Yvette’s player sends a secret text to the Game Master, saying something like “Yvette turns into smoke and flies under the door, then rematerializes and opens it from the inside.”

The Game Master sends a text back to confirm.

Yvette’s player fakes making a roll for the lockpicking, then says that Eunica hears a click and when she looks back, Yvette has opened the door and is motioning her inside.

Normally, rematerializing as smoke and then back to a human would have caused Yvette to make 2 Composure checks at a +3 Modifier each. Failure on these checks would not have caused her to fail the action, but would’ve cost her some of her Composure. However, there’s also a rule that so long as at least one other player at the table is unaware of the monster being a monster, those Composure checks can be skipped entirely. This not only makes it easier to hide your monster from the other players because you’re not making as many mysterious dice rolls, but also serves as a nice little bonus in reward for keeping the secret as long as you can.

By the way, if you want yourself, a friend, or an OC to appear as an encounter when monsters go on hunts, please check out the post linked below! We have empty slots on the tables that we’re trying to fill!

[rosieandthemoon]

[maxyvert]

🦇Hexoween 2023 masterpost!🦇

1 - Button eye

2 - Bloody desire and its consequences

3 - Demon shop and dark deals

4 - Sea of Monsters

5 - Sisters of the Night

6 - Ominous Children

7 - Curse of the Full Moon

8 - Secret of the Antique Talisman