What is a vampire? Travel to different countries and one will receive different answers on the subject, but some characteristics hold true to all cases. One of these traits is, of course, that the vampire drinks blood. "In popular thought, the vampire was considered to be 'undead,' having completed earthly life but still being tied to that life and not yet welcomed by the realm of the dead." However, the vampire was not a ghost or a ghoul. The vampire inhabited a human body, whereas a ghost was a spirit with no physical form. A ghoul had no control over its actions, which were guided solely by its hunger, and most often ate the body of its victim, rather than its victim's blood (Melton, 1994, pp. 629-630).
The vampire legend seems common to most countries and has been accepted as truth to many underdeveloped, superstitious countries over time. However, vampire stories tend to be concentrated in countries such as Russia, Poland, and Eastern Europe. Why Eastern Europe, and why especially Transylvania? It may be that in places such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Russia the cruelty inflicted upon the people over years of war and invasion was warped as time passed. These twisted memories became tales of horror. Disguised as a bat the vampire could fly to its victim's bedside unnoticed, and then return to human form. The vampire's victim would have already been sleepy; the intruder's hypnotic eyes would complete the trance. As the vampire kisses the victim's mouth and throat, it bites the neck and drinks the blood (Cooper, 1973, pp. 34-37).
Most people would respond to a question about the traits of a vampire with the description above or with what they had seen from the media. Stephen Kaplan of the Vampire Research Center claims otherwise. "Of the hundreds of people we have interviewed at the Vampire Research Center both in person and by telephone, we feel that seven of them fall into this category. Two others, probably. Here are some of the characteristics common to the seven we have personally met:
Other "vampire crimes" were committed over time, one by a woman. That woman was Elizabeth Bathory, called the Blood Countess. Elizabeth was born in Transylvania in 1560 to a noble family, and the nobles of the country could do almost anything they wanted. "Bathory seemed to enjoy tormenting pretty girls. A cousin of her husband's was accused of stealing fruit, and in punishment Bathory had her tied naked to a tree and smeared with honey to attract insects. Her husband also taught her to discipline servant girls by putting oiled paper between their toes and setting the paper afire. The girls' wild attempts to get rid of the paper were called 'star-kicking,' to the amusement of the nobles." Elizabeth, according to the story, was shown the power of blood by accident. She punished a clumsy maid by striking her across the face with a pair of scissors, causing blood to splash onto Elizabeth's hand. When the skin appeared younger later in the day, Bathory was hooked onto her future course. Servant girls were lured into the castle with the promise of a good job, then tortured, bled, and killed so that Bathory could bathe in their blood (Guiley, 1994, pp. 190-191).
John George Haigh was born in England in 1960, and grew up a friendly boy in a strict Pilgrim Brethren family. "He frequently dreamed about railway accidents with injured and bleeding people...he would see a forest of crucifixes change into green trees that were dripping blood, which he would drink, and then awake with the desire for blood. The dreams tended to follow a weekly cycle of increasing intensity from Monday through Friday." Haigh rented a warehouse and purchased drums of acid. Over the next five years he drank the blood of nine of his friends and dissolved their bodies in the acid. The solution was then dumped in front of the warehouse (Guiley, 1994, pg. 193)
"There are many more theories and thoughts I could tell you about, but the ones here, along with the facts and the educated guesses, should give you a glimpse of the mounds of information we've dug through during the past years.
"New data pours in constantly, from our correspondents around the world, from newspaper and magazine articles, from people who are doing their own research and share their findings with us...There seems to be no end to the new cases. Sometimes I feel that, rather than being near the end of our research, after ten years we've only just begun" (Kaplan, 1984, pg. 178).
Check out Suzi's opinion of vampires in Bela Lugosi's Dead...