Marie Laveau, the famous 19th century voodoo queen from Old New Orleans, was once said to be a vampire. She was not. But a noted New Orleans writer in the late 1800s, Lafcadio Hearn, said she was -- at least it was so speculated. He was probably speaking of her daughter, also named Marie, with whom he purportedly once lived. Then again, Mr. Hearn was a romantic. Born in Greece (the land of the vrykolakas), renowned as a journalist and writer in New Orleans where he became a familiar with the voodoo community, and a sojourner to a then exotic Japan where he was married eventually and settled down, Lafcadio Hearn walked on the wild side, to be sure. But his alleged statement about Marie Laveau was not altogether unbelievable. In New Orleans voodoo in the 19th century, the blood of the rooster was drawn and, it was said, consumed. Wild, unsubstantiated tales were spread that the voodoo worshipers cooked children in cauldrons and ate them. This didn't happen, but some people believed it, just as many people believed that vampires spread the Black Death and other plagues in Europe. But there may have been another reason for calling beguiling Marie Laveau a vampire; dare we say, a vamp? She was sensual as well as supernatural. And not unlike Laveau (who lived in the exotic city where the fictional vampire Lestat would dwell), the vampires of old Europe carried the subliminal message of sex with them as they rose from the dead at night in search of blood. The Victorian mind would be confronted with the subliminal sensuality of vampires through the fiction of Dracula, but in ancient lore there were two demons who were not so subtle about the purposes of their nocturnal visits and they may have supported the beliefs about vampires. These "romantic" demons were the incubus and the succubus. Nightmares, under classic and probably outdated Freudian analysis, may relate to anxiety or sexual repression, so we are told. But in the Middle Ages, visions of demons in the night who visited one's bed chamber were unquestionably the work of the incubus (male) and succubus (female). The incubus/succubus was a demon who attacked a human during sleep. (Could this be an early manifestation of the modern-day belief in "alien abduction" as well?) The night creature paralyzed the victim (read this as sleep paralysis) and engaged in sexual relations with the victim, against the human's will, of course. This belief in romantic night demons is explained away today as a rationalization of sexual repression from the oppression and guilt instilled by organized religion -- at least, that's one view. The vampire legend is not much different from the tale of the incubus/succubus, except the vampire will drink the blood of a victim instead of engaging in relations with the victim. Still, a true Freudian could have a field day with an analysis of this action as well, no doubt. Some say the female succubus was essentially a gorgeous but demonic shape-shifter who assumed the female form and whose goal it was to mate with a male human to reproduce new little demons. Hence, a vamp... Others say the succubus would turn into an incubus after having relations with a male human, then as a new incubus it would pursue a female human, and so on... The incubus/succubus was usually associated with witchcraft as well. A book from 1584 called Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot discussed the incubus/succubus phenomenon, and stated that in one case witnesses saw an incubus on the bed of a woman. However, in other cases he attributes the demon to the imagination. But basically someone would be very reluctant indeed to claim to have had relations with an incubus/succubus, for in witch trials, assumed sexual relations with the devil or a demon was evidence of being a witch. And they killed witches. It is also interesting to note that people believed there were different classes of demons, some more exalted than others. The incubus/succubus was at the bottom; it was the low-life in the pecking-order of demons.