vampires burial and death folklore and reality

Barber believes that these bodies were likely scapegoats for society’s fears of plague or murder victims, whose bodies were buried in shallow graves (meaning that they decomposed faster). These bodies normally have a little blood at their mouths, they get bloated, they smell, and they bleed when cut. In short, Barber thinks that the idea of the folkloric vampire arose from the exhumation of decomposing bodies. Regarding the origins of the folkloric vamp, Barber puts forth a forensic and socio-political argument. Other telltale signs of folkloric vamps are that people usually kill them with stakes (the act of which causes them to bleed and emanate ‘painful’ sounds) they like to attack cattle they can regenerate and they bite. Paul Barber warns that “if a typical vampire of folklore…were to come to your house this Halloween, you might open the door to encounter a plump Slavic fellow with long fingernails and a stubby beard, his mouth and left eye open, his face ruddy and swollen… nose fallen in somewhat, the hair, beard, and nails grown, and new skin formed under the old” (a lovely phenomenon called ‘skin slippage’). Perhaps the easiest place to start a history of the vampire is the differentiation between the folkloric vampire and the fictional vampire. Chapter heading illustration, from Paul Barber’s Vampires Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality, 1988.

Vampires burial and death folklore and reality