Vampire (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911)

VAMPIRE, a term, apparently of Servian origin (wampir), originally applied in Eastern Europe to blood-sucking ghosts, but in modern usage transferred to one or more species of bloodsucking bats inhabiting South America.

In the first-mentioned meaning a vampire is usually supposed to be the soul of a dead man which quits the buried body by night to suck the blood of living persons. Hence, when the vampire's grave is opened, his corpse is found to be fresh and rosy from the blood which he has thus absorbed. To put a stop to his ravages, a stake is driven through the corpse, or the head cut off, or the heart torn out and the body burned, or boiling water and vinegar are poured on the grave. The persons who turn vampires are generally wizards, witches, suicides and those who have come to a violent end or have been cursed by their parents or by the church. But any one may become a vampire if an animal (especially a cat) leaps over his corpse or a bird flies over it. Sometimes the vampire is thought to be the soul of a living man which leaves his body in sleep, to go in the form of a straw or fluff of down and suck the blood of other sleepers. The belief in vampires chiefly prevails in Slavonic lands, as in Russia (especially White Russia and the Ukraine), Poland and Servia, and among the Czechs of Bohemia and the other Slavonic races of Austria. It became especially prevalent in Hungary between the years 1730 and 1735, whence ail Europe was filled with reports of the exploits of vampires. Several treatises were written on the subject, among which may be mentioned Ranft's De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis (1734) and Calmet's Dissertation on the Vampires of Hungary, translated into English in 1750. It is probable that this superstition gained much ground from the reports of those who had examined the bodies of persons buried alive though believed to be dead, and was based on the twisted position of the corpse, the marks of blood on the shroud and on the face and hands— results of the frenzied struggle in the coffin before life became extinct. The belief in vampirism has also taken root among the Albanians and modern Greeks, but here it may be due to Slavonic influence.
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G. E. D.
[George Edward Dobson, M. A., M.B., F.Z.S., F.R.S. (1848−1895).
Army Medical Department, 1868−1888. Formerly Curator of the Royal Victoria Museum, Netley. Author of Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera; A Monograph of the Insectivora, Systematic and Anatomical; &c.]
(The Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911, Volume XXVII)