10 interesting facts about vampires

Nowadays, the vampire theme is at the peak of popularity and even a certain “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 such an extent that many young fans and admirers of movie vampires, in all seriousness, want to someday join their ranks). But our ancestors had completely different ideas about all sorts of similar bloodsuckers (ghouls, ghouls, bats, vampires, etc.). In fact, legends about these terrible creatures were found among many peoples of Europe, starting from Ancient Greece (and in medieval Romania, Serbia, Croatia, they were ubiquitous).

So: those vampires were absolutely not pretty and not at all charming. They were represented as terrible and skinny living dead, without the slightest sign of reason, capable only of drinking blood and thereby killing.

Want to know more about vampires? Then here are 10 interesting facts about them:

10 In addition to 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, current fans of these creatures are well acquainted with them): this is the most common garlic, aspen stake (which definitely needs to pierce the bloodsucker through and preferably right into the heart), holy water , crucifix (preferably silver), etc.

But few people know that vampires are also afraid of plants with thorns, such as roses, hawthorn, wild rose (just think what sissies …). And, according to legend, these creatures are very fond of counting everything.

Therefore, if a vampire suddenly chased after you, and you accidentally had a handful of rice, mustard or poppy seeds lying around in your pocket, scatter them behind your back. And then the pursuer will immediately begin to collect and count them. According to legend, sometimes vampires are so addicted to this activity that they do not notice the onset of dawn, burning down to a pile of ashes from the first rays of the sun.

Some peasants deliberately scattered seeds around their house in the evenings so that at night the ghoul could not enter inside, or they hung doors and windows with a fine-mesh net (the meshes of which also “need” to be recalculated). But, in fact, it is also stated that the vampire in any case can not cross the threshold of the house without the invitation of his master.

9. “The family castle of Count Dracula” has survived to this day

Which of the vampires is uniquely 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 XNUMXth 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 “The Impaler” (this was his favorite form of executing enemies). Of course, every medieval ruler must have his own castle. Why should Vlad Tepes be an exception?

And in Romania, they will gladly show you the “same” Bran Castle, 30 km from Brasov. But in fact, it never belonged to Tepes. In this (really impressive and gloomy) fortress of the XIV century, he spent only a few days when he was a prisoner of the Turks.

But the house where Dracula was born really survived 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 today’s fashionable topics were the poem “Vampire”, which was written in 1748 by the German poet Heinrich August Ossenfelder, and a short poem by the Scot John Stagg with the same name, created in 1810.

But officially, it is John William Polidori, the personal physician of George Gordon Byron, who is considered the ancestor 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 ended up with him at Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where Mary Godwin and her fiancé Percy Bysshe Shelley were already resting.

And one day, at the initiative of Byron, the whole young company argued which of them would write the most terrible story. In the end, Mary Shelley won, who invented the monster of Dr. Frankenstein, but Polidori wrote a good story, The Vampire, published in 1819.

7. The first vampire movie came out in 1921.

Now films and series about vampires come out every year (and not just one!), And less than 100 years ago, such stories were still new.

The very first film about vampires is considered to be a Hungarian silent short film called The Death of Dracula, directed by Karoly Laitoy in 1921. Alas, now this film is considered lost, only a few frames have survived from it.

And here is a 1922 painting “Nosferatu. Symphony of Horror” by Friedrich Murnau has come down to us safe and sound.

And yet, the third film on the same topic turned out to be more famous and popular – “Dracula” directed by Tod Browning with the magnificent Bela Lugosi (1931).

Since then, more than 200 films about vampires and their terrible master in a black cloak with bright scarlet lining have been released.

6. The symptoms of porphyria are very similar to the description of vampires.

It is possible that the legends about vampires still have some foundation. The fact is that only in the 1980s, scientists discovered and described in detail a terrible and dangerous disease – porphyria. And it existed, of course, long before that moment (and quite often met in Eastern and Northern Europe).

The external symptoms of porphyria are very similar to many characteristic signs of vampires: due to 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 deadly for vampires comes from!); then the cartilage begins to 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 long vampire fangs!); fingers curl…

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 do not tolerate garlic).

5. There is a mental illness that “turns” people into vampires

There is another disease, this time a mental one, which is manifested not at all by changes in the patient’s appearance (he looks like the most ordinary person), but by cardinal changes in his behavior.

Roughly speaking, a man (and most often it is male representatives who suffer from the “Renfield 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. In the first, a person drinks only their own blood, inflicting cuts and injuries on themselves. On the second, he 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, at 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 coveted red liquid, or immediately goes into “active action” – that is, to murder and cannibalism (of course, the first thing after killing a person such a psycho drinks his blood).

At the same time, the physiologically ill person does not need any substances that make up the blood at all – these are pure “problems with the head”.

4. New York hosts an annual conference dedicated to vampires.

Do you want to get into an almost real vampire coven? Then try to be in New York before Halloween. Every year (since 2004) the conference “Vampires. Obsession “(” Vampire. Attraction “), the guests of which are the actors who have ever embodied the images of vampires on the screen, as well as many fans of this subject, actively cosplaying their favorite characters.

At this strange party, you can participate in themed contests, listen to concerts of popular gothic bands, visit the vampire museum, etc. (well, in general, look at people – that is, vampires – and show yourself).

3. Graves of “vampires” are found all over Europe

About how seriously the medieval population of virtually all of Europe took the legends about vampires, says a large number of strange graves discovered over the past 30 years, obviously specially “equipped” so that their “inhabitants” could not get out.

For example, in the early 1990s in Slovakia (in the city of Prostejov), in the Czech Republic (in Chelakovitsa) and in Bulgaria (near Sozopol), several dozen burials of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries were discovered, in which the skeletons of people buried in them were girded with iron hoops , and besides, in several cases, they were pierced with iron rods and pressed down with heavy stones.

In Drawsko (Poland), in three graves opened in 2009, a bound skeleton with a large stone around its neck and two skeletons with iron sickles over their throats were found. Contrary to the notion that only Eastern Europeans sincerely believed in vampires, similar graves have been found in Venice (Italy), Southwell (Great Britain) and Kilteshine (Ireland).

And one more feature: the Venetian “vampire” and two Irish “vampires” had large stones in their mouths (apparently so that they could not gnaw their way out of the coffin).

Moreover, in 1994, the skeleton, literally “nailed” to the coffin with iron staples, was found in a 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 about the investigation of “vampire” attacks

In the European archives, there are materials of quite official investigations into the “crimes of vampires”. So, in the protocols of an inquiry from 1721, which took place in East Prussia, it is said that a local resident Peter Blagojevich, 62 years old, after his death, came to his son several times and asked for food.

The very frightened young man also suddenly died a few days later. After that, Peter Blagojevich allegedly attacked several neighbors as well.

And in Serbia, the peasant Arnold Paole complained to his neighbors that he was bitten by a vampire. Shortly thereafter, he very mysteriously died on the mowing (and supposedly there was almost no blood left in his body). A couple of days after the funeral, Arnold first appeared in the village already in the form of a vampire, and since then for 9 years (!), Starting in 1725, he hunted people.

In the end (in both cases), the villagers dug up the “vampires”, burned them and scattered the ashes to the wind.

The officials who came to investigate these terrible stories were never able to get testimonies from local residents that would somehow explain these incidents from a “non-mystical” point of view: people all as one sincerely believed that they got rid of vampires (“I saw it myself, everything I confirm, here are the cross!”).

1. Some people still really believe in vampires.

It would seem that the XNUMXst century is in the yard, civilization has come, science has completely refuted the possibility of the existence of all sorts 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 “collusion” with vampires.

Come on Africa! A completely wild story happened in 1982 in Rhode Island (USA). The father and doctor of the recently deceased 19-year-old Mercy Brown, with some fright, considered that it was she who was to blame for the fact that one of the family members fell ill with tuberculosis (they say, she came at night and infected). So they dug up the corpse, cut out its heart and burned it.

In 2004, the same “procedure” was performed on the body of 76-year-old Tom Petre by his relatives and neighbors. Not only that, they also drank the ashes of the burnt heart, dissolving it in water (so that other vampires could not attack them either). And these are just the facts that have been made public!