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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

1. Vampires are the metaphor that will never die

The Irish Vampire, from Punch Magazine, 1884, depicts the new National League as a monstrous vampire about to bleed Ireland dry. Wikimedia Commons

1500 or so years after the first vampires appeared in Slavic folklore, they show no signs of going away. Ever since the outbreak in the Habsburg Empire, vampires have stalked popular culture and folk belief around the world. Today, vampires are not just monsters but metaphors. The creature’s burning desire for blood has come to represent all manner of things: sexual desire, profound love, substance addiction. The parasitic nature of the vampire also equates to contagious disease and big businesses draining nations of financial resources. One thing’s for sure: vampires may not exist, but they’re certainly immortal.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

Murphy, Eileen M., ed. Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxford: Oxbow, 2008.

Sugg, Richard. The Real Vampires, A Century of Ghost Stories. Stroud: Amberley, 2019.

Summers, Montague. The Vampire. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1995.

Thorne, Tony. Children of the Night: Of Vampires and Vampirism. London: Indigo, 2000.

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