Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly

De Natura Haeretica's Electronic Journal of Vampire Studies ___________________________________________________________

http://www.generation.net/~valmont/ivtq/ Email: valmont@generation.net (514)342-4262

Volume 1 Number 1- Autumn 1996 CONTENTS Foreword by Benjamin H. Leblanc FEATURE The Anathematic vampire Concepts of Matter and Spirit in Orthodoxy, Dualism and Pre-Christian Slavic Mythology by Bruce McClelland Also in this issue: Changing Trends in Vampire Fiction by Beverley Richardson Vampires: the Living Legends by John Beckett NEWSCLIPPINGS Vampire inmate scares away serial killer in Turkey by Kaya Ozkaracalar Contributions Guidelines

FOREWORD
Dear reader, The Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly is a new electronic zine, presented in DOS-ASCII format, and focusing on the vampire theme with a scholarly perspective. Plenty of publications already propose a great amount of creative writings - novels, poetry - related to the vampire; IVTQ wants to bring you something new: the undead and science.

This project has only started; the present issue is a prototype. But why a prototype ? Such a strategy gives us the opportunity to test the viability and possible success of the concept, and to adjust / modify some aspects of the zine to your best convenience. It is therefore very important to us that you send your questions, comments and suggestions. We are always in need of new ideas. When the concept of a free scholarly electronic zine on vampires was first developped, the idea was to accept only very sober articles that could ulteriorly be used as tools by anyone studying the subject. It did't take long before we realized there wouldn't be much to be published. So we decided to keep a very scholarly orientation for feature articles, but also to include texts of a lighter nature, newsclippings from around the world, and a forum for the readers. Please take note the IVTQ is in need of columnists who could regularly contribute to the ezine, and international correspondants who would keep us aware of any happening related to the vampire theme in their country. We are also looking for distributors, who could install the IVTQ on their FTP or/and WEB site(s). If you believe you can help us in any way, you may contact the editor at the email address below. IVTQ should have, within the next twenty days, a regular mail address, a voice phone number and a web site. Subscribers will be kept informed through a read-only mailing list of which they automatically become members; others may find the information on the alt.vampyres newsgroup, the VAMPYRES mailing list, or some web sites already offering IVTQ to the internet community. For this issue, I want to thank all contributors, namely Bruce McClelland, Beverley Richardson, John Beckett and Kaya Ozcaracalar. Special thank goes to our technical editor who worked in an impressive professional manner: Cathy Krusberg. We hope you'll enjoy IVTQ. Your reactions will be decisive in the continuity or cancellation of the project. Best regards, Ad Aeternam, Benjamin Hugo Leblanc <valmont@generation.net> Editor-in-chief

THE ANATHEMATIC VAMPIRE

Concepts of Matter and Spirit in Orthodoxy, Dualism and Pre-Christian Slavic Mythology Bruce McClelland <bam4c@faraday.clas.virginia.edu> University of Virginia, USA "A pagan civilization always presents a more harmonious unity than does a Christian civilization. Christian society is ever the arena of a struggle for domination between Christian and pagan, or secular, forces." -- G. P. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality There seems to be little disagreement that the folkloric character known as the vampire is of Slavic origin: the term itself is almost undoubtedly Slavic, despite ongoing speculation concerning its actual etymology [1], and the existence of folkloric creatures with attributes and behavior that qualify them as members of the vampire family [2] can be traced back at least to the time in Slavic history when Christianity was attempting to supplant the existing local religions. [3] Beyond that, knowledge of the origins of this supernatural entity [4] is scant, due in large part to the scarcity of primary sources. While we may not know a great deal about the infancy of vampire belief among Slavic peoples, it may nevertheless be fruitful to examine more closely that period and geographical region where there is the most reason to believe that the vampire's more basic ontological characteristics were finally stabilized and labelled, namely around Bulgaria sometime between the ninth and eleventh centuries CE. [5] In fact, following in the direction pointed by one recent theory about the origin and etymology of the vampire [6], it is precisely within the syncretistic milieu of at least three distinct religious systems -- Orthodox (and, to a lesser extent, Roman) Christianity, Slavo-Bulgarian pre-Christian animism [7], and medieval versions of a form of Manichaeism or other Gnostic dualism [8] -that we might expect to discern the particular religious forces and tensions that led ultimately to the notion of the vampire, with all the attendant ideas and confusions about such matters as nature, man, death, and the soul. [9] The assumption here is that the vampire's identity depends upon a certain set of religious, i.e., mythological, beliefs. Unlike other sorts of recurrent folkloric characters, such as those that occur, for example, in folktales, the vampire seems

to exist primarily outside the domain of structured narrative [10], and indeed is posited as a real, albeit monstrous or supernatural, being. To the extent that the vampire is real, at least psychologically, and is therefore capable of having an effect upon the fates and behavior of living individuals, it is the product of belief; and to the extent that the vampire is furthermore, as we shall see, linked with notions about death, burial, mortality, and the world of shadows and darkness, it is an object of religious belief. That said, it remains to discover from which portions of which beliefs within the prima materia of pre- and early Christian Bulgaria the earliest belief structure identifiable with the term "vampire" took shape. If such a formula can be obtained, it is likely to yield the key to understanding not only the vampire's structural significance within the worldview of the Slavs (and perhaps Western European cultures as well), but also the relationship of the Slavic vampire, as an end-point, to its mythological precursors. THE HERETIC AND THE VAMPIRE Because of those several obvious aspects of the vampire's nature that seem to embody a concern over the nature of life and death (and the boundary or lack thereof between the two), it may seem fairly simple to assert a relationship between the vampire and some particular set or combination of religious beliefs. However, it is important to justify such an assertion with more concrete evidence if possible. In his essay on heretics as vampires, Felix Oinas presents several pieces of evidence that support such a link in Russia (and elsewhere), where the Orthodox Church's awareness of the vampire is fairly explicit: In northern Russia and Siberia heretics appear after death as evil, bloodthirsty vampires. Efimenko defines the meaning of the word eretik current in the Senkursk district of Karelia as "a person who does not believe in God and who repudiates his laws, or who is not yet an Old Believer." [11] Oinas goes on to cite several more examples of the link between heretics and vampires, and this relation is extended to include witches and sorcerers as well. Unfortunately, the use of such information to support the current argument is not without its problems. The equation heretic = vampire is not necessarily valid for the period and location that have been hypothesized as the point of origin of the vampire. In addition, the reasons Oinas puts forth about why heretics and vampires might have been related in the minds of the folk are somewhat speculative: Since upir' was used as a personal name in the earliest period of Russian history, it could be inferred that the term for "vampire" originally did not denote an extremely bloodthirsty and detestable being. Later, because of its identification with heretics, in the Russian north this revenant acquired

more pronounced negative traits (aggressiveness and cannibalism), and its use as a name was apparently discontinued. [12] Since the "heresy theology" (Ketzertheologie) was discussed and disputed in the inner circles of the church, the common people were not aware of the theoretical basis of the struggle of Orthodoxy against heresy. [13] These speculations pertain more to ecclesiastical issues that arise significantly later than the eleventh century and further north than the Bulgarian empire, and therefore do not directly address the concept of the vampire (if any) held by the Orthodox Church of earlier centuries. Nevertheless, the cultural line from the medieval South Slavs to the later East Slavs is reasonably straight, and in fact in terms of the translation of folkloric materials, in many cases the "Russians retained beliefs identical to the Bulgarians." In addition, at least until the time of the Schism of the Old Believers in the seventeenth century, the differences between the Russian and Bulgarian versions of Orthodoxy do not seem to be sufficiently great to suggest that what was construed as heterodox in one church would not have been so in the other. [14] In any case, what is important here is to be able to supply evidence for a religious aspect of the vampire, and to support the hypothesis that the vampire is an entity of deep concern to organized Christianity, as this assumption is crucial to any speculation about the theological/philosophical views that engender the modern Slavic vampire. [15] THE PROBLEM OF THE VAMPIRE Apparently the early vampire represented some kind of threat to Orthodox teaching. Such a view indicates that it in fact functioned as an object of religious belief. The next task, before considering the tenets of the regional religions whose interaction perhaps generated the vampire, is to isolate those characteristics of the vampire that are relatively stable across (Slavic) history and geography, and can provide folkloric evidence of earlier quasi-religious belief. Unfortunately, because of the enormous diversity in the manifestations and even names of the various vampire-like creatures, even when confined to Slavic-speaking peoples, a comprehensive listing would lie beyond the scope of this paper. For the sake of the present argument, Perkowski's "serviceable definition" will suffice to delimit the range of creatures being considered: the vampire is thus defined as "a reanimated corpse which returns at night to prey on the living" and which, furthermore, at least in the case of the Slavic type of vampire, "derives sustenance from a victim, who is weakened by the experience." [16] The vampire's physical characteristics are especially variable, and depend upon, among other things, region and historical period. In Bulgaria, according to both Perkowski and Georgieva, the most common appearance of the vampire on the basis of contemporary evidence was an amorphous "bag of blood" without a

skeleton that managed to roam about, and which was able to take on a human shape if it went undetected (or undestroyed) for a period of 40 days. The 40 days, Perkowski points out, may be a "Biblical allusion to the 40 days Christ spent on earth after his crucifixion. There is a general belief among Eastern Orthodox Christians that the soul does not leave its body until forty days after death." [17] According to Oinas, referring to East European vampires, they remain as "undecayed corpses," [18] which is their surest sign. This "refusal of the flesh to rot was a certain sign of heresy," at least according to one source, but the opposing theological interpretation was also maintained, thus complicating the picture. [19] There are other variants of the physical vampire, but those cited above serve at least to underscore the influence of Orthodoxy upon the popular notion of the vampire. Aside from the vampire's physical characteristics, such features as the causes of vampirism, the approach of the vampire to his victims, the apotropaics and amulets used to ward him off, and the methods and implements of destruction also exhibit occasional traces of Christianity. The vampire is, above all, a corpse. According to Burkhart, the vampire is a type of revenant (Wiederganger); seine entscheiden Eigenart ist, dass er dem Grab ensteigt, um Lebende im Schlaf zu ueberfallen, ihnen das warme Blut aus der Kehle oder Brust zusaugen und dadurch zu toeten. [20] This and a great deal of similar observation confirms that the folkloric vampire is associated with the grave (which of course assumes the existence of burial rites within the culture). Among the frequently cited causes of vampirism is improper burial, usually due to a failure to consecrate the body either intentionally (because of the character or actions of the vampire-to-be before death) or unintentionally (because of the anomalous nature of the death itself). So we can claim that the vampire is a result, at least in certain cases, of some transgression of dogma or taboo with respect to burial ritual. This suggests that the vampire emerges from a conflict of belief surrounding the proper disposition of a person following his death. [21] Among the implements and techniques available for reducing or eliminating the threat posed by vampires, those that are noteworthy in the present context are the use of icons to repel, and of a wooden stake or cremation to destroy, these supernatural beings. The icon as an amulet needs no comment; the wooden stake (or: the stake's woodenness) has been suggested to derive from the Cross (so presumably immanence is transferred through the relic), while Perkowski imagines (in discussing testimony regarding the Serbian vampire) that "cremation, proscribed by Christian tradition, brings about the total separation of the spirit from the body in the Iranian dualist system." [22] Less-used methods for disposing of or repelling a vampire that seem to utilize Christian symbols are

crosses, holy water, incense, and mustard seed. A particularly interesting destroyer of a Bulgarian vampire is the wolf, which is supposed to be the vampire's worst enemy. [23] The importance of the fact that the wolf was an emblem of neither Orthodoxy nor its organized opponents will become clearer later in our discussion. It should be pointed out at this juncture that the cures and protections against the vampire by the Slavs do not seem to be wielded in quite the same fashion seen in the Western European (literary) vampire tradition; on the contrary, whereas the intent of Stoker's Dr. Van Helsing is clearly to destroy the forces of evil (personified as Count Dracula and his cohorts) by whatever means necessary, regardless of how violent or militant, in Slavic lore, although the means for destroying the vampire can certainly be thorough (decapitation, cremation), there yet seems to be somewhat less hatred and destructiveness. That is, the purpose of the icon, the holy water, even the stake, is more to restore balance, to lay the vampire (as a member of a class of Slavic demons known as the "unquiet" or "unclean" dead) finally to rest, to eliminate a cause of some social disturbance, than it is to inflict violence upon the accursed being. Perhaps it is not legitimate to make much more of this observation, but it highlights a fundamental difference in the attitudes of the Eastern and Western Churches toward their enemies. To sum up the foregoing and all-too-brief discussion of the nature of the Slavic vampire, we can state the following, hopefully without arousing too many objections: Vampires are human creatures which (who?) have died and returned. They are animated by some force other than the human spirit, however. They thus evolve as contra naturam, but can be exterminated or avoided by readily available means. Their primary existence occupies the regions between night and day, light and dark, life and death. ORTHODOX THEOLOGY Sixteen or so centuries of exegetical and theoretical writings about theological and ecclesiastical matters of concern to the Eastern Orthodox Church are hardly capable of being even briefly summarized here. Nevertheless, Christianity in the formative period of the Slavic nations was without doubt a major force in shaping early beliefs about vampires, not to mention other demons and gods. To understand the dynamics of this force, at least those aspects of Orthodox Christian philosophical speculation that might have been unsubtle enough or important enough politically to have filtered down from the rarefied discussions and contemplative observations of the fathers should be examined for their possible influence upon commonly held beliefs about vampires. It will be necessary, in the discussion of Orthodox theology, to recall Oinas's caution about not reading too much into the common people's access to matters reserved for the inner sanctum; yet at the same time it is not totally implausible that the practical effects of some of the subtlest theological reasoning were manifested in one way or another at the lay level. [24]

Recalling the working definition of the vampire as a reanimated corpse that comes in the night to prey on the living, and remembering that the vampire's well-being can be affected by gestures and objects that seem to be closely linked to the Orthodox Church, the areas of theology that appear to be most worthwhile investigating are: the Incarnation and the nature of the body or humanity of Christ; the Last Things (the Last Judgment) and Redemption (apokatastasis); the veneration of icons and relics; free will and evil; and (for reasons that should become clear later on) the nature of Mary Mother of God (Theotokos). Most of the basic precepts of Orthodox thinking were codified by the last of the seven Ecumenical Councils, which took place in 787. [25] This means that so far as the Bulgarians were concerned, the general theological assumptions manifested in the liturgy had been fixed for almost a century before Bulgaria was "converted." (It is generally accepted that Boris and his retinue converted to Orthodoxy in 865. [26]) This is not to say that theological disputes no longer arose, but simply that the Church had in the Councils what amounted to an authority for resolving all ecclesiastical arguments and for establishing what constituted heresy and heterodoxy. The two major attacks upon the stability of the Church's teaching both involved, in one way or another, the nature of the body of Christ, especially in relation to the concept of the Trinity. These two long-lasting and related controversies, referred to often as the filioque and the Iconoclast controversies, were in large part responsible for the eventual schism between the Roman and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Briefly, the discussions about the latter issue attempted to resolve the paradox of Jesus' divinity and relationship to God, on the one hand, and His incarnation in human flesh on the other. The Iconoclast controversy, which lasted about 120 years (726-843), originated as an attack upon the veneration of icons, the contention on the part of the so-called Iconoclasts being that such veneration constituted "idol worship," which had been proscribed by both Moses and Christ. Byzantine icons, which are by and large depictions of biblical mythological scenes, usually but not always from the New Testament, often portray Christ interacting with his disciples, his parents, or other figures (e.g. Lazarus). The Iconoclasts held that since Christ was by nature divine, any portrayal of him by plastic means was by definition heretical, because man, by his imperfect nature, was incapable of representing Christ's true nature. As Ware points out, The struggle was not merely a conflict between two conceptions of Christian art. Deeper issues were involved: the character of Christ's human nature, the Christian attitude towards matter, the true meaning of Christian redemption. [27] The resolution of this issue, which had deep political implications (regarding the imperial authority of Byzantium) as well as philosophical ones [28], lay in the

distinction between image and likeness: the Icononodules, as they were called, believed that since man was created in the image of God, representation of Christ's human aspect was actually the representation of that image; icons were not intended to in any fashion depict the true "face" of God. Ware claims that the flaw in the thinking of the Iconoclasts amounted to dualism: The Iconoclasts, by repudiating all representations of God, failed to take full account of the Incarnation. They fell, as so many puritans have done, into a kind of dualism. Regarding matter as defilement, they wanted a religion freed from all contact with what is material; for they thought that what is spiritual must be non-material. But this is to betray the Incarnation, by allowing no place to Christ's humanity, to His body; it is to forget that man's body as well as his soul must be saved and transfigured. [29] The actual heresy of the Iconoclasts may exist at a deeper level, however. Pelikan, who also relates the Iconoclasts to the "ancient Gnostics" (presumed forerunners of the neo-Manichaeans we shall discuss presently) on the basis of their spiritualistic claim that the body of Christ was not physical but heavenly, sees the problem thus: Because the iconoclasts did not distinguish between the sacred and the profane, they could not comprehend the difference between icon and idol. [30] The debate over the filioque, which concerned the legitimacy of an insertion into the Nicene Creed, again was a debate over the relationships obtaining among the members of the Trinity, namely the Father, the Son, and the Spirit or Holy Ghost. Briefly, the Eastern Church adamantly rejected the insertion into the Creed by the Roman Church the phrase "and from the Son" (filioque) following "the Spirit proceeds from the Father." The rejection was based in part upon the belief that such changes in the Creed could be legitimized only by an ecumenical council, but the theological basis of the argument is that the physical nature of Christ must be preserved. An emphasis upon the reality of Christ's physical nature of course implies the reality of man's body as well, and the unification in the person of Christ of body and spirit has even stronger implications regarding the nature of Redemption, insofar as the human body is destined, at the time of the Last Judgment, to be reunited with the soul. In fact, this reunification is a prerequisite for redemption, and serves to set Christianity apart from virtually all of its precursors and competitors, especially Hellenistic neo-Platonism, which like Gnosticism maintained a belief in the superiority (divinity) of the soul over the body. The problem of Christ's physical nature was extended to the status of Christ's mother, Mary. The question arose as to whether Mary also was divine, and if not, how an imperfect person could give birth to the divine. Whereas Mary was never

accorded truly divine status, she was given the special appellation "Theotokos," which means "mother of God", and she was venerated in connection with Christ: The appellation Theotokos is of particular importance, for it provides the key to the Orthodox cult of the Virgin. We honour Mary because she is the Mother of our God. We do not venerate her in isolation, but because of her relation to Christ. Thus the reverence shown to Mary, so far from eclipsing the worship of God, has exactly the opposite effect: the more we esteem Mary, the more vivid is our awareness of the majesty of her son. . . . [31] There actually seems to be something of a mild defensiveness concerning Mary's status within Christianity, an apology for her incomplete divinity perhaps, and in fact Fedotov's denial of any link between the worship of Mary's icon and paganism sounds as if he doth protest too much: Since Christ was the natural image of the mother who gave birth to Him, reverence paid to her and her image is paid to Him. . . . Therefore worship of Mary's icon is not a revival of the pagan custom of adoring earth mothers and maternal deities. [32] Further on, again mentioning the hegemony of Orthodoxy over paganism, Fedotov states: The fathers of the church had torn down the temples of the demons and replaced them with temples named for saints; so also they had thrust aside the images of the demons and put in their place the icons of Christ, of Theotokos, of the saints. [33] At this point, it is necessary to briefly discuss the attitude of Orthodoxy toward the nature of evil and the status of free will, inasmuch as they are related in a way that is in direct opposition to a dualistic solution to the problem of evil in the world. Basically, Orthodoxy holds that the universe in its entirety was created by God, who is all-good, and without the capacity for evil. But the question arises: if that is true, how can there be evil in the world? The solution lies in man's capacity for free will: as a gift from God, man possesses the ability to choose. At some point in the history of the universe, man chooses to go against God, to reject grace. It is this "turning away" and nothing else that defines evil; evil does not exist as a substance, but rather as a lack. This definition has consequences for redemption, as even those creatures who are evil, i. e., who have chosen to turn away from God, are not in the final analysis exempt from his Grace, and at the time of Last Things, will also be redeemed. (A paradox ensues: if man cannot ultimately turn away from grace, then in what sense is he given free will?) From the foregoing synopsis of Orthodox Christianity, we derive the impression of a religion that is both charitable and at the same time quick to exterminate any theological position that would undermine two integrally related ideas, namely

that the body and the soul are inseparable, and that this inseparability mandates the redemption of matter along with the soul at the Last Judgment. Regardless of the degree of sophistry that might be invoked by theologians in some cases to preserve the internal logic of the Orthodox position, the Church's attitude toward the closeness of body (matter) and soul would have been visible, at least on its most basic level, to converts and those resisting conversion alike. We can now turn to an equally brief synopsis of Bogomilism and late Manichaean dualism to elucidate why these religions of Iranian heritage were viewed with such hatred by Orthodoxy. BOGOMILISM AND OTHER NEO-MANICHAEAN SECTS Strictly speaking, dualism is a belief structure in which there is a clear-cut opposition between the forces of goodness and light, on the one hand, and evil and darkness on the other. In true dualistic religions, this opposition is a consequence of the dual Creation: the creation of this world, the one inhabited by man, by one godhead, and the creation of a more paradisal universe, by another; the two gods responsible for creation are held to be of equal power, neither being subordinated to the other. In Manichaeism and derivative religions, such as Bogomilism (with which for present purposes we will conflate Paulicianism and Massalianism, bearing in mind that these were in many significant ways quite different sects), the opposition that occurs in the creation myth involves forces that are unequally matched: man's world is created by the Devil, or Satan, who is sometimes believed to be the first-born son of God, while the world of good is created by God Himself, who is necessarily superior to Satan. Consequently, we have what Couliano terms "pseudo-dualism," [34] but what is important is the sharp division between the material world and what amounts to the spiritual world. Mankind, in this system, possesses a body that is fashioned by Satan (although the material from which it is fashioned, clay, is in fact manufactured by God), while his soul, which has been imprisoned in the body through contact with material desire, is eternally divine. In the Bogomil view, redemption consists of separating or freeing that part of the divine soul that is trapped within the individual's body, so that it can return to be united in the kingdom of the true God. Dmitri Obolensky, in his book The Bogomils, cites N. Filipov: The belief that the material world is the creation of the Devil . . . was . . . held by all Balkan dualists. [35] As regards the symbols and precepts of Orthodoxy, the Bogomils considered Christ's incarnation and subsequent crucifixion to be mere illusions (the docetic view), and claimed that the miracles mentioned in the New Testament were to be taken as allegorical. Unfortunately, most of the extant documents pertaining to the beliefs of the Bogomils were produced by their adversaries, the Church Fathers, such as Cosmas, who states outright that these

heretics do not venerate the Most Glorious and Pure Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but talk much nonsense concerning Her. Their insolent words cannot be written in this Book. [36] Though Cosmas's unabashed antagonism perhaps obliterates any suggestion that the dualists, who called themselves Christians and in many ways lived more exemplary lives from a rigidly moral point of view, may have subscribed to doctrines that were in many respects similar to those of the Christians except in certain crucial ways, nevertheless his diatribe provides evidence for a hostility toward the Bogomils based upon their denial not of Christ per se, but of Mary's quasi-divinity. That is, Cosmas rails against the heretics because of what they say about his lord's mother, and he is even too ashamed to repeat their taunts. The Bogomil heresy represented a very real threat to the expansion of Christianity, not simply because in some ways its doctrines reflected a worldview that was particularly closer to the beliefs of the common people than that of Christianity, but also because the religion became a haven for those medieval Slavs whose pre-Christian beliefs were being challenged by Christian proselytizing. The earliest link between the Manichaeans (Bogomils) and the agrarian peasants is attributed by Obolensky to John the Exarch: filthy Manichaeans and all Pagan Slavs . . . who are not ashamed to call the Devil the eldest son of [God]. [37] There were economic and political as well as religious reasons for an antagonism between Christianity and Bogomilism: the Bogomils opposed the social inequalities emerging within the Byzantine Empire, especially the concentration of wealth and budding feudalism, which threatened to deprive the masses of their subsistence. Analysis of the very complex political and economic problems in Bulgaria following the ninth century is outside the scope of this paper, but it is important to realize that there were very real and pragmatic reasons for a preChristian Slav to feel more comfortable with Bogomilism. We have looked, now, at a situation in Bulgaria in the ninth century where on the one hand Christianity is waging a "war of defense" [38] against heresy, while on the other, a dualistic sect is attracting perhaps an equal number of converts as Christianity because of its ideological stance against the abuses of monasticism and the social inequalities brought by the Byzantine Empire in the midst of its fight for survival. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the Slavic people themselves, along with some form of autochthonous religion, had been around before the advent of either Christianity or Manichaeism. In all likelihood, the religious beliefs prevalent in Bulgaria right before the incursion of Christianity represented a development of a type of paganism that Fedotov terms "naturalistic monism." Although probably animistic, inasmuch as we have some evidence that the early Slavs believed in the immanence of "lesser" demons within the natural environment, the pagan religion of the Slavs did not constitute the extreme heresy

that dualism did. In fact, this naturalistic monism was "a perpetual temptation to Russian Christianity," [39] insofar as there was a natural sympathy between a view of the earth and matter as being inseparable from the soul (Christianity) and a view of nature as pure and holy. In fact, the concept of redemption of matter as articulated by Eastern Orthodoxy is something of an ultimate communion with nature. Further evidence to support the syncretism between Christianity and paganism in a period referred to as dvoeverie, or dual-faith, lies in the fusion of the cult of Rozhanitsa, a type of female "birth fairy" (to use Gimbutas's nomenclature) and symbol of divine Motherhood, with that of Mary Theotokos. This is not to suggest, by the by, that Orthodoxy had no interest in eliminating paganism: The Church, essentially a Greek church on Russian soil, mercilessly assailed any kind of heathen survival, showing none of the pedagogical condescension of the Western Church. [40] The point here is that the struggle for domination among Orthodoxy, dualistic neo-Manichaeism, and paganism was not a simple three-way battle among groups with mutually exclusive sets of beliefs. Bogomilism shared certain fundamental beliefs with the Christians, while denying others. Pagan believers were swayed by the persuasiveness and perhaps persistence of the Orthodox proselytizers, yet at the same time may have felt a more pragmatic allegiance with the dualists for reasons that had less to do with theology and more to do with social structure. Dualists were considered anathema, while certain pagan beliefs and gods were in fact assumed into the narratives of the Christian teachers, perhaps as a means of increasing the conversion rate among the indigenous Slavs. Both Orthodoxy and dualism must have been seen as invasive to the generally peaceful and sedentary agrarian Slavs who composed the greater part of the population. If any belief seems to have passed through this time of troeverie (to coin a phrase) to emerge unscathed, it is a belief in the earth as the source and mother. As Georgieva puts it, The concept of the earth's purity and sanctity was inherent in the beliefs of the Bulgarians and the other Slavs. It would not put up with dead sinners. A bitter curse was: "Trust the earth not to have you." [41] Perhaps even more germane is the following abbreviated passage from Gimbutas's synopsis of ancient Slavic religion: Life is conceived of as a cycle, with no definite beginning or end, with death simply a major event, a transition, and birth a revival, like the return of spring. But death must come at the right time. . . . If it appears too early or unexpectedly, it is believed to have been caused by evil powers, and is particularly dangerous to all living things. . . . The burial of bodies is a gift to Mother Earth, a sowing of the seed from which she can bring forth new life. The dux ("shade") of the deceased goes on to the after-life; while his

sila ("life force") enters once more into a living being. The forces of death are counteracted by washing [italics mine] or burning of personal effects after death. . . . [42] Summarizing the state of affairs out of which, perhaps, the concept of the vampire emerges as a manifestation of the tensions and similarities between the competing religion, Georgieva writes: In the process of the formation of Bulgarian culture, several systems of world outlook were merged: that of the country's ancient inhabitants, of the proto-Bulgarians and the Slavs. This merger was a fertile soil for anticlerical tendencies. Pagan rites continued to be practised and natural phenomena worshipped, regardless of the heavy penalties imposed. The belief in the forces of good and evil undermined Christian monotheism and encouraged the dualistic viewpoint. [43] We are now in a position to take up the question of how the vampire, as a folkloric character that emerges from just the sort of cultural mix that Georgieva describes, exemplifies the underlying religious attitudes and probable confusions in the minds of the common folk. CONCLUSION Without any real, primary evidence with which to link the term vampir or one of its cognates or euphemisms to a definite and stable set of classificatory features and then transfix the resulting structure to a particular point of origin, it remains especially difficult to prove any assertions about the vampire's more abstract meanings, including those formed within the framework of religion or psychology. What is more, both the term and the category are likely to shift across time as cultural influences change, and when dealing with a milieu where literacy is both nascent and specialized, as it was in ninth century Bulgaria, isolating what is constant or (hopefully) universal poses even greater difficulties. Nevertheless, on the basis of the brief discussion above, we can at least claim that if the vampire does indeed originate or at least take on its modern folkloric form during the period of Christianization of the Slavs, it is not likely to be the offspring simply of the quite visible antagonism between the Orthodox and the Bogomils. Acknowledging that one of the ancestors of the vampire probably lay in the pre-Christian belief structures of many centuries prior, we cannot ignore the essentially Slavic genetics of the vampire (as opposed to the Byzantine and Iranian influences of Orthodoxy and dualism). We are thus left with an image of a pagan deity or demon which was in the middle of a number of contests for religious hegemony, but which somehow managed to resist being absorbed or destroyed by the mighty forces of theological imperialism. It is this ability to resist destruction, I propose, that forms the basis of our fascination with the vampire: the subject itself seems incapable of death.

The vampire is beyond doubt a creature which carries a message about the nature of death and the body that flies in the face of Christian notions about redemption; for if the body is to be redeemed along with the soul, how can that occur if the body is occupied or animated by some other force? (It clearly cannot be the same "soul" as that which was involved with the body before death; otherwise, there would be no basis for claiming that the person had in fact died.) And how can the will that persists in turning away from the good ever submit to grace? Yet the vampire is not merely a metaphor for dualistic thinking, which permits and in fact insists upon the ultimate separation of the body from the soul. Nor is it an outgrowth of Christian theology, where the attitude toward matter is perhaps subtler than that of dualism, but nevertheless is still opposed to the pleasures of materialism. Rather, the unrelenting vampire seems to be a statement, made on a mythological level, about man's relationship to earth, and in fact (it seems to me) represents (in a negative way) an antagonism to a view of the earth as discontinuous from human being. The vampire is, alas, anathema, precisely because he symbolizes a disquiet, a failure to reconcile the apparent opposing tendencies of body and mind that seem to be an issue for most, if not all, religions. As P. F. M. Fontaine puts it in his extensive survey of dualism, The origin of dualism is not to be found in history, or in mythology, in religion or in philosophy, but in the human condition. . . . What people long for is first and foremost harmony, togetherness, a perfectly smooth and unruffled existence . . . we try to comprehend the world not only by combining phenomena but also by opposing them. [44] The vampire's disturbed existence can be quieted, ultimately, not by any simple act of faith in the Redemption promised by Christ, nor by the gesture of suppressing desire in the service of spirit urged by the dualists, but only by symbolically acknowledging that the refusal to die constitutes a true failure to participate in life -- life that mythologically emerges from the union of the sun and the earth. If the vampire emerges as an autonomous creature with obligations to no (organized) religion, the question then arises: is it possible that the acrimony arising between the Orthodox Christians and the heretical dualists was in fact the disguised articulation of an even more fundamental argument between the dualists, whose hatred of matter (Mater) was not sublimated, and the so-called pagans, whose naturalistic devotion to the earth had been overlaid by a Christian cult of Mary Theotokos?

NOTES

1. For useful discussions of the etymology of the term "vampire," see especially Perkowski 1989, Oinas 1984, Georgieva 1985. 2. The typology and morphology of the vampire are necessarily complex, since the boundaries between various supernatural beings that resemble some common set of features defining the vampire are vague. On the one hand, it is important to be as precise as possible when assigning the term "vampire" to a particular folkloric entity, yet on the other hand, one doesn't want to lose generality by making the requirements for vampirality too strict. For a comprehensive discussion of the wide array of vampire types and the methodologies for categorizing them, see Perkowski 1989, especially chap. 5. 3. Ivanichka Georgieva, Bulgarian Mythology (Sofia: Svyat, 1985), 95 ff. 4. It is not clear whether such a complex figure as the vampire can be said to have an "origin" that is more than some fuzzy point in time at which one set of defining attributes has at last metamorphosed into another, in the same way that one wants to claim that there is a point at which the adult butterfly is ontologically distinct from its pupa. 5. Jan Perkowski, The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1989), 25 ff. 6. Ibid., 32-34. 7. "Pre-Christian animism" is an unsuitable term for discussing the religion of the Slavs before the ninth century. "Paganism" is the historically more common term, but unfortunately possesses overtones which are undesirable. Perhaps if we recall that pagan originally meant someone from a rural district or village, we can use the term legitimately to refer to the religious beliefs held by a largely agrarian population. Such religions are frequently animistic and rarely monotheistic prior to the incursion of the Judaeo-Christian religion. 8. Technically speaking, Bogomilism is more of a pseudo-dualism, considering the inequality between Satan and God in the cosmogony. See Couliano 1990, esp. chap. 8. 9. Yet another terminological clarification. The word "soul" is used as a default, in its commonly understood meaning. Obviously, such eschatological concepts require delimitation and definition, especially in a context where the validity of further argument may hinge upon the reasonableness of the definition. No presumption is made here about the nature of soul v. spirit, etc. 10. Vampires of course exist in folktales as well; several are collected by Afanas'ev, for example. The point being made is that commonly recognized folktale characters such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, or in Slavic tales,

Ivan the Simpleton or Baba Yaga, function at a different level of understanding, and are never imagined to exist in the current world. 11. Felix J. Oinas, "Heretics as Vampires and Demons in Russia," in Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1984), 121. 12. Ibid., 125. 13. Ibid., 126. 14. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1991), 88 passim. 15. Were we to stop here, we might simply have to state that the vampire was probably originally some sort of pre-Christian Slavic animistic daemon that eventually managed to earn a negative label under the auspices of Orthodox theology. And we probably wouldn't be totally wrong; after all, this kind of inversion of local deities and spirits happens often enough. But this conclusion would be erroneous for at least two reasons: first, during the period of so-called late antiquity, in the Byzantine Empire, there were more religions, formal or informal, than just Christianity and "paganism;" secondly, just to state that Christianity has a tendency to invert or reduce the stature of the gods and demons of the religion over which it is attempting to establish hegemony is not enough; it is also necessary to understand the dynamics between Christian theology and local belief systems. 16. Jan Perkowski, op. cit., 54. 17. Ibid., 83. See also Georgieva, op. cit., 97. 18. Oinas, "East European Vampires" in Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1984), 112. 19. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 165. Quoted in Oinas, "Heretics as Vampires and Demons in Russia." 20. Dagmar Burkhart, "Vampirglaube und Vampirsage auf dem Balkan," Beitraege zur Suedosteuropa-Forschung (Muenchen: Rudolf Trofenik, 1966), 250. 21. At this point we can infer nothing more about the eschatology surrounding the vampire as a belief structure. It is simply necessary to point out that the vampire's very nature raises a number of questions about the nature of the afterlife, and his status relative to Orthodox belief suggests that the vampire is per se the embodiment of a conflict about this matter. 22. Perkowski, op. cit., 85. As we shall see, the separability of the soul and the body is one of the problems that Orthodoxy has with neo-Manichaeism, as

Perkowski implies. However, we must not forget at this point that there is a third factor in the equation shaping the beliefs about body and soul, namely preChristian animism. 23. Perkowski, op. cit., 83; Georgieva, op. cit., 97. The relationship between the wolf, perhaps as totemic animal, and the vampire is quite interesting, but unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper. Note, however, that while the wolf was in some cases the bitter enemy of the vampire, in other cases there is what Perkowski terms "daemon contamination" between the (were)wolf and the vampire. 24. This assertion is difficult to demonstrate, but it is not outside the bounds of imagination to conceive of a situation in which fine-tuned theological arguments, such as those that surrounded the nature of icons or the spiritual line of procession within the Holy Trinity, produced very visible consequences at the liturgical level. In fact, it is plausible that those in the congregation who were called upon to perform the rituals that were based on such reasoning might not have understood the subtlety of the theology, and reached their own conclusions. We might term this behavior "folk theology." 25. Timothy Ware, op. cit., 43. 26. Ibid., 63 27. Ibid., 38 28. Jaroslav Pelikan (1971) points out that "the conflict over icons can be interpreted as a 'social movement in disguise' and as a power struggle that used doctrinal vocabulary to rationalize an essentially political conflict." The question arises whether the reemergence of images as objects of veneration (and attributed to the devil by the Iconoclasts) in Orthodoxy represents a breakthrough into Christian consciousness of a substratum of an earlier Slavic mythological system, which as we know, was replete with idols. 29. Ibid., 41 30. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, vol. 3 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971), 122. 31. Ware, op. cit., 262 32. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1966), 126. 33. Ibid., 127.

34. Ioan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992), 198 ff. 35. Dmitri Obolensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan NeoManichaeism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1948), 124. 36. Ibid., 126 37. Ibid., 95. 38. Ibid., 85. 39. Fedotov, op. cit., 357 40. Ibid. 41. Georgieva, op. cit., 30. 42. Marija Gimbutas, "Ancient Slavic Religion: A Synopsis" in To Honor Roman Jakobson (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), 757. 43. Georgieva, op. cit., 16. 44. P. F. M. Fontaine, The Light and the Dark: A Cultural History of Dualism (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1989), 4:2729.

JOURNAL OF THE DARK is a high-quality amateur magazine devoted to vampires in all their many forms. Each issue is packed with book and movie reviews, legends, music, our "Forever Knight" episode summaries, original fiction and poetry, artwork and photography, and much much more. Issue #8 features interviews with authors Roxanne Conrad and Lois Tilton. Single issues are $5 each, and a year's subscription (4 issues) is $18.Outside the US and Canada, add $2 per issue for air mail; please send US funds only. Make checks payable to John Beckett, and mail to Journal of the Dark, PO Box 168, Osceola, IN 46561, USA. For more information, send e-mail tojohnfranc@aol.com, or visit our web page athttp://members.aol.com/johnfranc/vampires.html

CHANGING TRENDS IN VAMPIRE FICTION Beverley Richardson <ssaunder@fox.nstn.ns.ca> (http://www.ccn.cs.dal.ca/~aa680/Profile.html) is on the executive board of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula. She has been lecturing on various aspects of vampires -- fiction, film, myth, and Vlad the Impaler -- for a number of years at science fiction conventions in Canada, including Worldcon. Monsters in numberless quantities haunt the pages of horror novels, but none is more popular than the vampire. Why? Probably the versatility of the vampire. Most other monsters have severe limitations in how they can be portrayed. A thing from a swamp is destined to lurch around isolated farmhouses or in the sewers of some big city. By its very nature, it will be difficult to portray in meaningful relationships with people. In the majority of cases the monster's role will be that of the one dimensional evil character menacing the protagonists, but vanquished in the end. Other fictional creatures of horror suffer from similar problems. The vampire, on the other hand, has almost endless potential for variety in its interactions with people and can vary from the evil one-dimensional monster to the psychic vampire working as a Nazi concentration camp guard, to the otherwise average person struggling to retain what little humanity is left to him as a vampire, to the delightfully charming and romantic Saint-Germain type of vampire. It is this endless variety and, above all, the ability to be human with all the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that humanity, which makes the vampire of fiction so popular. This fascination with the vampire has been with us for centuries, fictional stories having appeared since classical times. But it wasn't until Europeans began writing about vampires that vampire fiction began to have an impact on the current form of our legends. One of the more important early stories to appear in Europe was "The Vampyre" by John Polidori, published in 1819 and based on an idea by Lord Byron. A mysterious nobleman, Ruthven, tours Europe with a wealthy young man named Aubrey. Aubrey eventually realizes that Ruthven is a very unpleasant man, but thinks he has seen the last of him when he is killed by bandits in a mountain pass in Europe. When Aubrey returns to England, he finds that Ruthven is alive and is engaged to Aubrey's sister. The agonizing part of Aubrey's dilemma is that, even though he now realizes what Ruthven is, he cannot stop the wedding plans because Ruthven made Aubrey swear not to reveal "knowledge of my crimes or death" for a year and a day. Now, because of this oath, Aubrey cannot even warn his sister of her imminent doom, with the result that Ruthven kills the sister on the wedding night and then disappears.

Being held to an oath like this even at the expense of a person's life was a concept frequently found in older stories. And while it may seem silly today, the modern equivalent is still with us in the form of the priest or lawyer who is unable to tell the police of the confession of a murderer. The resulting suspense when the hero knows and has proof but cannot tell anyone, can have the reader on the edge of his or her seat. In 1836 Theophile Gauthier wrote "La Morte Amoureuse," which has been translated into English under various titles, including "Clarimonde." A priest becomes obsessed with a beautiful vampire. The story has a rather dreamlike quality in which it becomes difficult for both the priest and the reader to differentiate between reality and the priest's fantasies. Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest or James Malcom Rymer appeared in 1840. This penny dreadful, consisting of romance, mystery, and blood, was almost the nineteenth century equivalent of a soap opera and was as popular as many soaps are today. Then in 1872, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wrote the landmark story "Carmilla." This was one of the first stories to feature a three- dimensional vampire with human emotions and feelings. The plot concerns a young woman named Laura who lives in an isolated castle in Austria. Nearby is a deserted village and a ruined castle whose last owner had died a century before. One day a beautiful stranger called Carmilla comes to stay after a carriage accident. She and Laura become fast friends, with undertones of lesbianism. One can see that even as Laura becomes weaker, Carmilla has a real affection for Laura. Finally the truth comes out: a grave in the chapel near the ruined castle is opened, and it is proven that Carmilla and the long-dead owner of the ruined castle are one and the same. The vampire is destroyed in the traditional manner. However popular some of the these other vampire stories were, the most famous and influential one is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Since its appearance in 1897, countless other books and films have been based on it. Even though many films have diverged considerably from the book, most people are familiar with the plot. To summarize drastically, Dracula hires a solicitor to purchase some property in England prior to his relocating there. Leaving the young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, trapped in his Transylvanian castle, Dracula takes his 50 boxes of earth and moves to England. Shortly after his arrival he attacks Lucy, the best friend of Harker's fiancee, Mina. Dr. Seward, who owns the insane asylum next door to Dracula's new London home, is called in to look after Lucy. He is baffled by her symptoms and calls in Dutch scientist Van Helsing. Van Helsing soon recognizes that a vampire is at work, but he is still unable to save Lucy, and she soon begins her own nightly wanderings as an undead vampire. After dispatching the unfortunate Lucy, the group of young men, led by

Van Helsing, begins to hunt down the Transylvanian count. Meanwhile, Dracula next turns his attention to Mina and exchanges blood with her. The others hound Dracula until they have destroyed all but one box of Transylvanian soil. Pursued by the protagonists, he flees back to his homeland and is killed almost at his castle gates. Why has Stoker's story endured while others have been forgotten? Part of the answer lies in the vivid imagery and suspense. While many nineteenth century stories are wordy and tedious, this book catches the attention of the modern reader with spine-tingling suspense and description. One of the most memorable parts in the book is Harker's description of Dracula's descent headfirst down the outside castle wall. But an even more important part of the answer lies in the fact that Stoker managed to do what no one else had previously done. He created an incredibly evil character who was at the same time proud, noble, and selfconfident in his powers. And yet the reader sees a hint that Dracula may still remember how it felt to be human. There are many loose ends and unanswered questions in Dracula as well. Because it is written in diary form, the characters can only tell what they know, which leaves intriguing questions about the identities of Dracula's three women unanswered because Harker, who wrote the diary entries concerning them, knew nothing about the three vampires. These and other unanswered questions have provided fertile territory for other writers to fill in the gaps as they saw fit. The novel is charged with sexual undercurrents and tension, particularly in such scenes as the one with Harker and the three women, or Mina drinking Dracula's blood. This too holds the reader's interest. Since then, most vampire novels have been strongly influenced by Dracula to a greater or lesser degree, but certain interesting trends have developed in recent years. It would be impossible to describe every book which has appeared -- there are far too many of them. But some representatives of the new trends in vampire fiction stand out above the rest, and it is some of these which are discussed in the remainder of this article. Until a few years ago, the general trend has been to cast the vampire in the role of the evil one-dimensional monster whom one or more protagonists must overcome in order to save themselves and their loved ones. A lot of truly forgettable books have been written in this vein, but some real chillers have appeared as well. One of the best-known of these was 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. A vampire moves to a small town in the U.S. and begins attacking the townspeople. Despite the efforts of a group of people, the vampirism spreads until almost the entire town is undead. King's vampires never really acquire personalities, remaining one- or two-dimensional characters at best. But the protagonists, who include a writer, teacher, priest, schoolboy, and doctor, are beautifully developed. Their

interactions with each other and with the events happening around them make this a difficult book to put down. A similar plot appears in Robert McCammon's They Thirst, which appeared in 1981. Vampires move into Los Angeles and gradually take over the city. McCammon goes one step further than King in a number of ways. First, not only are the protagonists well developed, but even the vampires have personalities to some extent. The vampire girl killing her boyfriend and then tenderly wrapping his body in bedsheets to protect him from the sun until he returns from the dead the next night comes to mind. The backdrop of a large city besieged by vampires along with vivid descriptions of bloodsucking street gangs and radio announcers telling their vampire listeners to go and feed on the humans holed up in the shopping malls all add to the suspense and atmosphere. The 1970s brought a new and fascinating trend in which vampires were portrayed in a much more human and sympathetic way. The first author to really break out of the old mould was Anne Rice with Interview with the Vampire (1976). Told from the viewpoint of Louis, it details how he became a vampire and his "life" with others of his kind. For the first time, the reader sees the hopes, fears, and personality conflicts between vampires portrayed as people rather than as objects of horror. Unlike previous books, Interview with the Vampire almost entirely omits normal humans from the story. The sequel, The Vampire Lestat, is even more interesting. Lestat's personality is more complex and the plot more involved. The second book, narrated by Lestat, paints a very different picture of this charismatic character than the one painted by the resentful Louis in Interview. The series continues with several more books, each of which expands on the lives, hopes, dreams, and fears of Rice's androgynous creatures of the night. While Anne Rice's books marked the beginning of a fresh trend in vampire fiction, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro moved off in her own unique direction, beginning with Hotel Transylvania in 1978. Many of her books chronicle the experiences of her charming and dapper vampire protagonist, Saint-Germain, with a few books featuring vampires Atta Olivia Clemens or Madelaine de Montalia. Each book takes place in richly described cultures ranging from ancient Rome and China to the modern day U.S. The personalities of the vampires combined with the vividly detailed historical background makes these stories unique. In George R. R. Martin's Fever Dream (1982) we see the interaction of vampire and human on equal terms, as a human and vampire team up against a rival group of vampires. The action takes place on the Mississippi River at the height of the riverboat trade. A haunting quality and vibrant characters make this book memorable.

Some books which, for want of a better term, could be called suspense-horror, have also made their mark. Garfield Reeves-Stevens's Bloodshift is an excellent one concerning a power struggle between two factions of vampires. The book deals nicely with the interaction between a retired hit man and the female vampire he is hired to kill, but instead teams up with against his vampire employers. The plot is further complicated by the CIA and a group of Jesuit priests, each of which have their own reasons for going after the vampires. Lee Killough's Blood Hunt (1987) and the sequel Bloodlinks (1988) concern a policeman who tracks a trail of dead bodies to a woman vampire. She attacks and kills him in the first book, and he revives as a vampire in the morgue. His struggle to adapt to his new "life" while hunting down first the woman, and then someone who is killing both humans and vampires, makes for two fast-paced books. Humour has been sadly lacking in most vampire fiction. Fortunately, P. N. Elrod's "Vampire Files" series helps fill the gap with six very entertaining books. Beginning with Bloodlist, the series takes place in the 1930s and features a hardboiled newspaper reporter who is murdered by gangsters and comes back as a vampire in the first book. A well-balanced blend of suspense and humour combined with a Mickey Spillane atmosphere all make these books delightful. The humour is evident even in the blurb on the back of the first book, in which the protagonist waxes enthusiastic on the advantages of being a vampire, summing it up with ". . . and best of all . . . You can hunt down your own murderer". For wellwritten enjoyable fun, this series is hard to beat. In the late '80s and early '90s a new trend of gritty vampire stories began to appear. These vampires are not at all romantic; many are streetwise, earthy, or corrupt, and in some cases just plain evil. One of the best-known was Dan Simmons's Carrion Comfort, whose psychic vampires are truly hideous, ranging from an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard to murderous corrupt FBI employees. Some of the vampires don't just prey on the humans -- they torture them too. Nancy Collins has also produced down-to-earth vampires in Sunglasses After Dark (1990) (and the sequels, published most recently in the volume Midnight Blue). The book opens with the vampire protagonist heavily sedated in a straitjacket. Reviving from the drugs to some extent, she escapes the insane asylum determined to find out who had her captured. Meanwhile, through flashbacks we learn her past. The daughter of an incredibly rich family, she disappeared without a trace several years before while on a holiday in England. Attacked by a vampire, she revived as a vampire with amnesia and became a hooker. In many ways this vampire is a fairly decent person, but streetwise and tough as nails too, giving a much more realistic picture of what might really happen to someone in her situation. Combined with a good plot and characterization, this and the sequels are excellent.

Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls is aptly named, as it describes in rich gothic detail the lives of a group of people in the small town of Missing Mile. As they drift without purpose through the days and nights, their lives parallel those of a group of equally purposeless nomadic vampires. The reader follows the dark meanderings of the plot as the two groups, human and vampire, come together. A book with a most unusual premise is Lois Tilton's Vampire Winter. The scene is the post nuclear war U.S. Blaine, the vampire protagonist, emerges from his vault in Chicago within hours of the city's destruction in a nuclear attack. As he moves to the countryside, Blaine finds that twilight now lasts 24 hours a day, so he can hunt and move around unhindered. Society has been reduced to a brutal struggle for existence in which bands of radiation-contaminated marauders wander around attacking farmhouses and small towns occupied by people hoping to keep their dwindling supplies of food while avoiding contamination. The comparison of this ruthless vampire with the equally ruthless people around him makes one think. Eventually, realizing that the uncontaminated people must be preserved if he is to survive, Blaine gathers some people together, providing food for them in exchange for blood and protection from the marauders. He eventually ends up in a similar mutually beneficial relationship with some of the nearby towns. The townsdwellers are his food source, and he with his immunity to radiation is able to roam freely and help protect them against marauders. A most unusual book showing a fascinating symbiotic relationship of human and vampire. Kim Newman's Anno-Dracula creates an alternative history in which Van Helsing and his cohorts failed to kill Dracula. Instead Dracula is the official Prince Consort of Queen Victoria, and vampires make up a sizable portion of London's population. The book is filled with historical and fictional characters who become embroiled in the various plotlines. Nancy Kilpatrick's characters in _Near Death_ are streetwise and hard as nails, yet curiously fragile in some ways. Filled with sensuality and violence, the story grabs the reader and won't let go. Over time authors have added new dimensions to the increasingly versatile vampire. What will the future bring? We can only wait and see, but so far there appears to be no lack of innovative takes on this most popular of monsters.

VAMPIRES: THE LIVING LEGENDS John Beckett <JohnFranc@aol.com> (http://members.aol.com/johnfranc/vampires.html) is editor of Journal of the Dark, a quarterly publication devoted to vampires in all their many forms. Known as Vlad, Librarian of the Dark, on bulletin boards and the Internet, John has publishedJournal of the Dark since 1994.

This piece was originally presented at the Undead Poet's Society Gala in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 19, 1996. We are here tonight in celebration of vampires. If our mostly-European ancestors could see us, they'd have us burned at the stake. That one thought illustrates just how dramatically vampires have changed over the last 200 years or so. What was once a hideous, evil monster to be feared and hated is now a beautiful hero to be admired. Tonight we're going to look at how the vampire has changed over the years, and where our favorite living legends may be headed in the future. STEP ONE -- VAMPIRES OF LEGEND The nosferatu of legend were little more than reanimated corpses: hideous monsters with foul breath who returned from the dead to drink the blood of the living. Reverend Montague Summers is perhaps the best-known chronicler of supernatural legends; here's a quote from his book The Vampire in Europe: "a wicked man cannot rest after death . . . the spirit of the deceased wanders about, and 'feeds on his own,' as the expression goes, that is to say, he sucks the blood of his relatives, and thereby derives force for his ghostly wanderings." Also from Summers: "Their countenances are fresh and ruddy; and their nails, as well as hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer dead than many other bodies, which are perfectly putrefied, not the least mark of corruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their death, become vampyres; so that, to prevent so spreading an evil, it is found requisite to drive a stake through the dead body, from whence, on this occasion, the blood flows as if the person was alive." This isn't exactly a condition that most of us would want to be in. There was no romance in the vampires of legend. People were afraid of vampires, and they were afraid of becoming one. The possibility of becoming a vampire after death, and thus by definition being damned and not going to heaven, was a significant deterrent to anyone who was considering straying from behaviors accepted by the church. The vampire represented the deep-seated fear of the dead coming back . . . perhaps coming to take you back with them. STEP TWO -- THE EVIL ARISTOCRAT I think most people here know the story of the summer of 1816, when poets Percy Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron, spent the summer in Switzerland. In a challenge to see who could come up with the best ghost story, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was born. Byron wrote a short story about a vampire, which he never finished. Later, Byron's traveling companion Dr. John Polidori picked up the story fragment and finished it. The result was "The Vampyre," first published in 1819. The title character was Lord Ruthven, who was patterned after none other than Byron himself. Polidori and Byron had had a falling-out, and this

was his revenge. That started a hundred year trend of the vampire as an evil aristocrat. This was a rather popular view for the lower and middle classes, who viewed nobility in general and Byron in particular as decadent bloodsuckers. By the middle of the nineteenth century, horror stories were finding their way to the masses through serialized fiction called "penny dreadfuls." In 1840, James Malcolm Rymer began Varney the Vampyre, or The Feast of Blood. The title character, Sir Francis Varney, became a vampire after he killed his son. He was able to pass as human, but still had much of the cadaverous appearance of the vampires of legend. Varney the Vampyre was hardly great literature. There were many inconsistencies in the stories, and Varney was killed and brought back more times than Christopher Lee in the Hammer films of the '60s and '70s. But Varney brought fictional vampires to the masses for the first time, helping to promote their evolutionary steps forward. Then there's the ultimate Evil Aristocrat -- Count Dracula. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel built on the works of Polidori, Rymer, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, who wrote "Carmilla" in 1872. Stoker's novel led to a stage play by Hamilton Deane, and the play led to Tod Browning's 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi. Just as the penny dreadfuls brought vampires to the masses of the nineteenth century, Hollywood brought vampires to the masses of the twentieth century. Perhaps more importantly, Bela Lugosi's performance gave Dracula a soul and started the vampire on his next evolutionary step. STEP THREE -- A MONSTER WITH A CONSCIENCE Five years after the movie with Lugosi, Universal Pictures decided to do a sequel. The result was Dracula's Daughter, which some people believe to be the best of the classic horror films of the '30s and '40s. Anne Rice has listed this movie as having a tremendous effect on her early interest in vampires. This was the first time in popular fiction that a vampire wanted to be "cured." Dracula's daughter attempted to free herself of vampirism by burning the body of Count Dracula, and then attempted to get a psychiatrist to help her with her "addiction." It didn't work, of course, and she was properly killed in the end. As with many people in their 30s, my first introduction to vampires was through television. Dark Shadows had us rushing home from school each day to see what would happen with Victoria, Angelique, and, of course, Barnabas Collins. The show was a weak gothic soap opera on the verge of cancellation when producer Dan Curtis decided to introduce a vampire. Almost overnight, Dark Shadows became a hit, and Barnabas Collins became a cult icon and a sex symbol. He was far from a monster, telling Dr. Julia Hoffman he was "compelled by desires I cannot control to perform acts which sadden and repulse me." During the run of the show, Barnabas was "cured" on several occasions, only to revert to

vampirism when his treatments wore off, or when the show needed a new plotline. Barnabas Collins killed a few people from hunger, but for the most part he was a very sympathetic, very popular character -- very far advanced from Count Dracula, much less the nosferatu of legends. STEP FOUR -- "I WANNA BE A VAMPIRE" And now we find ourselves in an era where vampires are no longer monsters, no longer evil, no longer bad guys. Vampires are our heroes, and we want to be like them. Perhaps no other work has had more of an impact on the current image of vampires than Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. Lestat was beautiful, powerful, rich, a rock star -- how could you not want to be like him? People read The Vampire Lestat who had never heard of Varney or Carmilla or Christopher Lee, and all of a sudden the popular definition of a vampire changed again. Despite his rather sinister portrayal in Interview with the Vampire, and despite his own protests to the contrary, Lestat was definitely not evil. He didn't kill innocent people, and he had no sinister schemes to take over the world. Lestat's only vice was a performer's need for attention. Anne Rice is far from the only writer to create heroic vampires. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain, P. N. Elrod's Jack Fleming, Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy, and Elaine Bergstrom's Austra family are all examples of vampires we love and admire and imitate rather than fear and hate and avoid. The latest step in the evolution of the undead is the roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade. Here, as though any of you didn't already know, the whole purpose is to be a vampire. Vampires used to be evil killers, and who would want to roleplay a real serial killer like, say, Jeffrey Dahmer (except for maybe Poppy Brite)? But that's how far vampires have come. Not everyone is happy with this. When asked about it in an interview for Journal of the Dark 8 (Winter 1996/97), author Lois Tilton responded, "What ever happened to good old-fashioned Evil? What happened to Damnation? I know this view isn't popular these days, but I think the vampire has been ruined by its own popularity: watered down, diluted with sugar until you can't even taste the blood any more." But here we are, all dressed in black, and we buy the books and see the movies and play the games, and we wonder "wouldn't it be great to be a vampire?" As Armand told Louis, we want to be "beautiful and powerful and without regret" -not to mention immortal, in a world that has serious doubts about the hereafter. Through our own desires, we have reworked the image of the vampire until he is what we want him to be.

The TRANSYLVANIAN JOURNAL is published by theTransylvanian Society of Dracula (American and Canadian chapters). Although only available in printed version, it contains articles of very high quality, including papers previously delivered in various congresses and symposiums. For more information, please write to TSD American Chapter, Box 91611, Santa Barbara, CA 931901611; TSD Canadian Chapter, P.O. Box 23240, Churchill Square P.O., St. John's, NF Canada A1B 4J9.

NEWSCLIPPINGS
Vampire Inmate Scares Away Serial Killer in Turkey Kaya Ozkaracalar <ozkaraca@bilkent.edu.tr> was born in 1968 in Istanbul and is currently a Ph.D. student and research assistant at the Political Science Department of Bilkent University in Ankara. Contributed an article (in Turkish) on "the vampire theme from folklore to literature to cinema" to Patika magazine (no. 19, summer 1996). Working on a booklet on the same topic. A serial killer confined to a mental asylum rejected sharing the same cell with a "vampire" inmate in Turkey. Turkish private television stations played footage showing the killer standing at the door of the cell with a terrifying look on his face staring at the "vampire" Omer Soganci, who was inside. The vampire looked very calm by contrast. Soganci was dubbed a vampire by the Turkish media for biting and drinking the blood of several people, including his relatives. His would-be companion has confessed to killing five people and nailing large pins to their heads. When Soganci was initially released from custody in August, people of Denizli, his hometown, had reportedly panicked. Soganci was later confined to the asylum in neighboring Manisa. Several months ago two "vampires" were almost lynched in another part of Turkey for allegedly cutting the heads off livestock and drinking their blood.

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Submissions are examined by an advisory board before publication. This means some texts - articles, reviews or advertisement - can be edited, or refused. No paper will be modified without the approbation of its author. It is preferable to submit your paper through EMail, but you can also use regular mail service, including in your envelope an IBM-formatted disk 1.44 with your file in WordPerfect, Microsoft Word or ASCII format, plus a printed copy of the text. You will be informed whether your contribution has been selected or not before its publication. EMail submissions: <valmont@generation.net> Postal submissions: Internet Vampire Tribune Comptoir postal du Musee 5122 Cote des Neiges C.P. 49515 Montreal PQ H3T 2A5 CANADA For more information, please look for our Calls for Papers. They are mailed to subscribers, to the mailing list VAMPYRES and on alt.vampyres (newsgroup). It is also available on some web sites. Articles and reviews The IVTQ is interested in non-fiction articles about the vampire theme. We definitely prefer scholarly papers, but lighter texts can also be accepted. Contributions must be informative and innovative. Previously published material is accepted, but new and recent texts are given more attention. Our main criterias are : (1) pertinence of the topic; (2) reliability and accuracy of information; (3) originality. Advertisements The maintenance of IVTQ is made possible with the efforts of those who give their free time without remuneration. We accept to include a restricted amount of advertisements without any charge. This service is, nevertheless, only available to non-profit organizations, publications and projects of all sort - as long as they are directly related to the vampire theme. Technical support We are in need of IVTQ providers, that is FTP sites interested to make the ezine available to the Internet community. The same proposition is directed at web sites

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Benjamin H. Leblanc, editor-in-chief M.Sc. student in Sociology of Religion University of Montreal <valmont@generation.net> Cathy Krusberg, technical editor M.A. English 1992 University of Georgia <ckberg@ix.netcom.com> For this issue, texts from: Bruce McClelland, Beverley Richardson, John Beckett, Kaya Ozkaracalar. Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly Advisory Board, November 2, 1996: ELIZABETH MILLER, Department of English, Memorial University, St. John's, Canada; ROB BRAUTIGAM, The International Vampire, Amsterdam, Holland; CATHY KRUSBERG, M.A. English, 1992, University of Georgia; CAROL DAVIDSON, English Literature, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. International correspondants (in alphabetical order): Rob Brautigam (HOLLAND); Kaya Ozkaracalar (TURKEY).

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