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40 Fang-tastic Facts about the History of Vampires

Tim Flight October 24, 2019 26 min

Wiertz Museum - The Premature Burial — The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz, 1854. Wikimedia Commons

14. The word ‘vampire’ first entered the English language around this time

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, Germany, c.1818. English travelers on the continent brought the word ‘vampire’ back with them. Wikimedia Commons

With Visum et Repertum Est, the Slavic vampire crawled from the Habsburg Empire all over Europe. Within 2 years, the pamphlet seems to have taught the English a new word. In 1734, the word ‘vampire’ appeared in English for the first time. Up to that point, texts written in England didn’t have a proper catch-all term for the hungry dead. This first appearance came in The Travels of Three Gentlemen. This narrative described three men’s experiences traveling around Europe. At Laubach, Germany, the men heard tales of ‘the Vampyres, said to infest some Parts of this Country’.

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk