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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

38. Evidence of vampires often came from plague victims

Theodor Kittlesen, the Norwegian artist, characterizes the Black Death as a ghoulish old woman in this 1896 piece. Wikimedia Commons

A final possible cause of the vampire myth is plague. During plague outbreaks from at least the 16^th century onwards, vampires often got blamed. This, again, stands to reason. Before people understood disease, what else would thousands of people dying slowly, covered with wounds, suggest? Their progressively weaker state perhaps suggested they were being drained of life by someone… or something. The bubonic plague, for example, can also cause delirium, so some people doubtless imagined monsters attacking them. Intriguingly, the Plague of Justinian broke out in the Eastern Roman Empire in 541-42 AD, where the first proper vampire legends developed…

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