Action Comics

It's difficult to believe that it's been 50 years since Christopher Lee thrilled horror fans with his portrayals of the Frankenstein monster, Dracula and the Mummy in a memorable series of Hammer Films.

"Unclean, unclean!" Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," Mina's friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. "His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom.

In the early 1730s, a band of Austrian medical officers were summoned to the Serbian village of Medvegia. An investigation was underway concerning the strange deaths of several villagers. The locals claimed the deaths were caused by vampires. The first of these vampires was Arnold Paole, a man who had died several years earlier by falling off a hay wagon.

The European settlers and African slaves brought the vampire mythology of their homelands to the New World. In some cases these myths became intertwined as settlers from many backgrounds melded into a single nation. While Native American mythology has some very fascinating monsters, some of them being flesh-eaters, others being shape-changers, none are true bloodsuckers. Yet, there is a true "American vampire," one born of this young nation, one found only here in America. This vampire is much more than a meld of the beliefs of the Native Americans and those of our forefathers.

This is a brief essay on the origins and causes of vampirism based on my reading in European folklore. The information given is based on common European belief concerning the nature and causes of vampirism. In that culture the witch was an agent of the devil and a being much feared.