Vampires: Fact or Fiction?

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how it is clear from novels and movies, such as "Interview with the Vampire" and Bram Stoker's "Dracula", and long-surviving TV shows, such as "The Musters" and "The Addams family", that there is a genuine folklore fascination with vampires. It analyzes how the vampire genre is a perfectly legitimate theme for horror stories, as legitimate as ghosts, werewolves, and other monsters. It also discusses the lack of empirical evidence as to the genuine existence of vampires, past or present. It shows how myths and folklore about vampires are part of the landscape of history and very easy to come by for researchers, but factual evidence is far more difficult to obtain.

Outline
Vampire Folklore and the Burning of Corpses
Believers, Murderers and Some History of Vampires
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"This phenomenon of burning the corpse of a suspected (or "known") vampire is universally present throughout folklore literature, notably in the richly descriptive vampire book edited by Alan Dundes . There are myriad customs when it comes to the burning, however. In Romania, for example, as recently as 1914 (Dundes, 17), the vampire corpse was "disinterred," undressed and put in a bag; the clothes were put back into the coffin, sprinkled with holy water, and the coffin was returned to the grave. The body was taken to the forest, the heart was cut out, and the body cut up in pieces, and burned, piece by piece, with the heart being burnt last. Those present came near the fire when the heart burned, so the smoking from the burning vampire heart passed over them, to "protect" them."

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