Nowadays, vampire themes are at the peak of popularity and even some kind of "fashion". The film images of these "otherworldly" creatures are extremely attractive: as a rule, they appear before us inhumanly beautiful, unrealistically strong and impetuous, dangerous, but at the same time very charming (to the extent that many young fans and admirers of movie vampires really seriously want someday join their ranks).
But our ancestors had completely different ideas about all sorts of similar bloodsuckers (ghouls, ghouls, bat, vampires, etc.). In fact, the legends of these terrible creatures were found among many peoples of Europe, starting from Ancient Greece (and in medieval Romania, Serbia, Croatia, they were everywhere).
So: those vampires were absolutely not pretty and not at all charming. They were presented in the form of terrible and skinny living dead, without the slightest sign of reason, capable of only drinking blood and thereby killing.
Want to learn more about vampires? Then here are 10 interesting facts about them:
10. Besides holy water, garlic, silver and aspen stake, there are other ways to deal with a vampire
The main means of protection against vampires have been known since antiquity (and, of course, the current fans of these creatures are also very familiar with them): this is the most common garlic, aspen stake (which must be pierced through the bloodsucker, and preferably right in the heart), holy water , crucifixion (silver is better), etc.
But few people know that vampires are also afraid of plants with thorns, for example, roses, hawthorn, dog rose (just think what sissies ...). And yet, according to legend, these creatures are very fond of counting everything.
Therefore, if suddenly a vampire chases after you, and in your pocket a handful of rice, seeds of mustard or poppy are accidentally littered, sprinkle them behind your back. And then the pursuer will immediately begin to collect and count them. According to legend, sometimes vampires are so keen on this activity that they do not notice the onset of dawn, burning up to a heap of ash from the very first rays of the sun.
Some peasants specially scattered seeds around their house in the evenings, so that at night the ghoul could not get inside, or hung doors and windows with a fine-mesh network (whose cells also "need" to be counted). But, in fact, it is also argued that a vampire in any case cannot cross the threshold of a house without inviting his master.
9. "The ancestral castle of Count Dracula" has survived to this day
Which vampire is unambiguously known to everyone and everyone? Of course, the famous Count Dracula! At the moment, a huge number of films, books and even cartoons are dedicated to him.
The real prototype of Dracula is most often called the Wallachian ruler Vlad III Tepes, who lived in the 15th century and became famous for his inhuman cruelty, for which, in fact, he received the nickname Dracul - “Dragon” (according to another version, he inherited the nickname from his father - a knight of the Hungarian Order Dragon).
Tepes is also not a surname, but another nickname, meaning literally "Gingerbread Man" (this was his favorite type of execution of enemies). Of course, every medieval ruler must have his own castle. Why should Vlad the Impaler be an exception?
And in Romania, they will gladly show you the “same” Bran Castle, 30 km from Brasov. But in reality, he never belonged to Tepes. In this (really impressive and gloomy) fortress of the XIV century, he spent only a few days when he was captured by the Turks.
But the house where Dracula was born was really preserved in the city of Sighisoara.
8. The first vampire story was written by John Polidori in 1819
In fact, the very first literary works on fashionable topics today were the poem "Vampire", which was written in 1748 by the German poet Heinrich August Ossenfelder, and the little Scottish poem John Stagg with the same name, created in 1810.
But it is John William Polidori, the personal physician of George Gordon Byron, who is officially considered the founder of the vampire genre. How did it happen that the doctor suddenly became a writer?
It was like this: in 1816, accompanying Byron on his trip to Europe, Polidori was with him at Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where Mary Godwin and her fiancé Percy Bysshe Shelley were already resting.
And once, at Byron's initiative, the entire young company argued which of them would write the worst story. Mary Shelley, who came up with the monster of Dr. Frankenstein, won, and Polidori wrote a good story, The Vampire, published in 1819.
7. The first vampire film was released in 1921
This is now movies and TV shows about vampires come out every year (and not one at a time!), And less than 100 years ago such stories were still new.
The very first film about vampires is considered to be a Hungarian dumb short film called "Death of Dracula", shot by director Karoy Laitoy in 1921. Alas, now this film is considered lost, only a few shots have survived from it.
And here is the picture of 1922 “Nosferatu. Symphony of horror ”Friedrich Murnau came to us safe and sound.
And yet, the third film on the same topic, Dracula, directed by Tod Browning with the magnificent White Lugosi (1931), turned out to be more famous and popular.
Since then, more than 200 films about vampires and their terrible overlord in a black cloak with a bright scarlet lining have been released.
6. Symptoms of porphyria are very similar to the description of vampires
It is possible that the legends of vampires still have some basis. The fact is that only in the 1980s, scientists discovered and described in detail the terrible and dangerous disease - porphyria. And it existed, of course, long before this moment (and quite often met in Eastern and Northern Europe).
The external symptoms of porphyria are very reminiscent of many characteristic signs of vampires: due to an impaired metabolism, the patient's skin becomes thinner, acquiring a brownish tint, until it begins to burst, forming ulcers and scars (by the way, under the influence of sunlight, this process is significantly accelerated, thereby causing the patient unbearable suffering - this is where the belief that the sun is mortally dangerous for vampires!); then cartilages become inflamed and damaged, as a result of which the ears and nose are deformed; the mucous surface of the gums and lips stretches and bursts, bleeding and exposing the roots of the teeth (here you have the long vampire fangs!); fingers twist ...
All this, of course, greatly disfigures a person. From enormous physical and moral suffering, many patients with porphyria die very quickly or go crazy. (And, by the way, carriers of porphyria also cannot tolerate garlic).
5. There is a mental illness that turns people into vampires.
There is another disease, this time a mental one, which manifests itself not at all with changes in the patient’s appearance (he looks like an ordinary person), but with cardinal changes in his behavior.
Roughly speaking, a man (and most often it’s the male Renfield’s syndrome) begins to behave like a vampire: he feels an irresistible desire to drink blood and tries to get it by all means, including criminal ones.
It is said that this disease has several stages. On the first one, he drinks only his own blood, causing himself cuts and injuries. On the second, it begins to catch and kill birds and animals in order to “take away their life force” in the form of fresh and warm blood.
Well, in the third stage, the patient already needs human blood. And then he either gets a job, for example, in a hospital or at a transfusion station, in order to gain access to the desired red fluid, or immediately switches to “active actions”, that is, to murders and cannibalism (of course, the first thing after killing a person such a psycho drinks his blood).
At the same time, the physiologically ill patient does not at all need any substances that make up the blood - these are pure “head problems”.
4. New York City announces vampire conference
Do you want to get on an almost real vampire coven? Then try to be in New York before Halloween. Every year (since 2004), the conference “Vampires. Obsession ”(“ Vampire. Attraction ”), whose guests are actors who have ever embodied images of vampires on the screen as well as many fans of this theme who are actively cosplaying their favorite characters.
At this strange party you can participate in thematic contests, listen to concerts of popular gothic groups, visit the museum of vampires, etc. (well, in general, on people - that is, vampires - to look, and to show themselves).
3. The graves of "vampires" are found throughout Europe
The seriousness of the medieval population of virtually all of Europe regarding the legends of vampires is evidenced by the large number of strange graves discovered over the past 30 years, clearly specially equipped so that their “inhabitants” could not get out.
For example, in the early 1990s in Slovakia (in the city of Prostyov), in the Czech Republic (in Chelakovitsa) and in Bulgaria (in the Sozopol region), several dozens of graves of the 11th-16th centuries were discovered in which the skeletons of people buried in them were encircled with iron hoops and, in addition, in several cases, they are pierced by iron rods and crushed by heavy stones.
In Dravsko (Poland), in three graves, opened in 2009, a connected skeleton with a large stone on its neck and two skeletons were found, over whose throat there were iron sickles. Contrary to the belief that only residents of Eastern Europe truly believed in vampires, similar graves were found in Venice (Italy), Southwell (Great Britain) and Kiltheshine (Ireland).
And another feature: the Venetian “vampire” and two Irish “vampires” had large stones in their mouths (apparently, so that they could not bite their way out of the coffin out).
Moreover, in 1994, the skeleton, literally “nailed” to the coffin with iron brackets, was found in the Turkish cemetery on the Greek island of Lesbos. It turns out that Muslims also believed in vampires and were afraid of them?
2. There are historical documents on the investigation of "vampire" attacks
In the European archives there are materials from quite official investigations into the "vampire atrocities." So, in the records of the inquiry of 1721, which happened in East Prussia, it is said that the local resident Peter Blagojevich, 62 years old, after his death came to his son several times and asked for food.
A very frightened young man died a few days later, too. Allegedly, after this, Peter Blagojevich also attacked several neighbors.
And in Serbia, the peasant Arnold Paole complained to his neighbors that he was bitten by a vampire. Soon after, he died mysteriously on a mowing (and supposedly there was almost no blood left in his body). A few days after the funeral, Arnold first appeared in the village as a vampire, and since then 9 years (!), Starting from 1725, he hunted people.
In the end (in both cases) the villagers dug up the "vampires", burned them and scattered the ashes in the wind.
The officials who came to investigate these terrible stories could not obtain evidence from the locals who at least somehow explained these incidents from a “non-mystical” point of view: all of them sincerely believed that they had gotten rid of vampires (“I saw everything I confirm, these are the cross! ”).
1. Some people really believe in vampires so far
It would seem that the 21st century in the yard, civilization has come, science has completely refuted the possibility of the existence of all kinds of “walking corpses” and other entities of the same kind ... But no! And today there are easily people who firmly believe that they are threatened by vampires.
So, in 2002-2003. the whole country of Malawi (Africa) “moved” on vampires: the crowd lynched several people suspected of vampirism, and when the police intervened, the authorities were immediately accused of “conspiring” with vampires.
Come on Africa! A completely wild story happened in 1982 in Rhode Island (USA). Father and doctor of the recently deceased 19-year-old Mercy Brown, for some reason, felt that she was to blame for the fact that one of the family members fell ill with tuberculosis (supposedly, she came at night and infected). So they dug up a corpse, cut out his heart and burned it.
In 2004, the same “procedure” was performed with the body of 76-year-old Tom Petre by his relatives and neighbors. Not only that, they also drank the ashes of a burnt heart, dissolving it in water (so that other vampires could not attack them either). And these are just the facts that have received publicity!