Vampires: History and Facts

Have you ever wondered where the belief in vampires originated? When I was young I used to think that the idea of the vampire was something that was made up for the movies, but oh! How I was wrong! Once I started researching vampires' history and facts, I was quite surprised to discover how far back in time the belief actually goes. I soaked up every fact on vampires I could, and now I am prepared to share the vampires' history and facts with you.

Put your safety belts on, grab a crucifix, and wrap a garlic necklace around that pretty neck and let's take a trip through time to uncover the secrets and mysteris surrounding vampires. You might just learn that vampires' history and facts brings you to a new level of intrigue with the creatures of the night.

Vampires' history most likely goes back to ancient times, before even the Bible was written. Many cultures all around the world believed in spirits - both good and bad. The Bible calls these good and bad spirits "angels" and "demons". But again, before the Bible was in existence, many people believed in evil spirits...some of these evil spirits were believed to even suck the lifeforce out of humans...and sometimes blood.

This belief in evil spirits who sucked the blood or lifeforce from humans was mainly prevalent in what we now call the "Middle East". Back then, there were two particular countries known as Assyria and Babylon. We can say with close to one-hundred-percent confidence that the vampires' history starts in one of these ancient countries.

One of the most well-known evil spirits of Babylon that was said to prey upon children and other women was known as the Lilitu and has been associated in modern times to the legend of Lilith. If you've never heard the legends of Lilith, she was said to have been the first wife of Adam but rebelled and was kicked out of the Garden of Eden...forever cursed. She then was said to mate with the fallen angels, creating a race of evil spirits that some believe came to be vampires.

Other evil spirits (or demons) that can be related to the vampires history are the succubi and incubi. The succubus (singular) is a female evil spirit that forces sexual acts on an unsuspecting, sleeping man at night; the incubus is a male evil spirit that forces sexual acts on an unsuspecting, sleeping woman at night. They have been said to also drink the lifeforce or blood of their victims.

Could the Lilitu or Incubus/Succubus be the very beginning of the vampires' history?

We'll move quickly into the Medieval Times (Middle Ages) and Renaissance time periods of Europe. This is where the vampires' history and facts takes a wicked turn. The evolution of the vampire is estimated to have begun in Medieval Times (the 15th century to be exact), when a man named Vlad reeks his vengeance against the Ottoman Empire by slaughtering tens of thousands of Turks.

It has never been proven that Vlad was actually a "vampire" by standard modern accounts; however, the author Bram Stoker did take inspiration from Vlad in order to write the popular classic Bram Stoker's Dracula. Vlad came to be known as Vlad the Impaler, due to the fact that he would impale his enemies on stakes and display them outside of his home on many occasions. The name "Dracula" is derived from Vlad's father's association with the "order of the dragon". Dragon being a translation of the word Dracul. Vlad Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) had a nasty reputation for being extremely and unusually cruel to his victims. Not only did he impale his victims, he was also said to have partaken in sadistic torture methods of amputation and more.

But in some opinions, the vampires' history and facts really took a turn during the sixteenth century, during the infamous European witch hunts (or what many modern people have come to call the "Burning Times"). Beginning in what is presumed to have been the sixteenth century and lasting until the eighteenth century, the whole of Europe engaged in a global "witch hunt" of sorts...tracking down mainly women and children that they believed to have been evil witches. These women and children were tried, tortured, and killed. But how does the vampires' history and facts relate to the European witch hunts? These witches were also accused of being shape-shifters...with the ability to transform into werewolves...and also, you guessed it, vampires.

Another pretty noteworthy event for our vampires' history and facts lesson is the life and terrible reign of a lady that has come to be known as the "Blood Countess". Elizabeth Bathory lived in Hungary and was indeed a Countess that tortured and killed an assumed six-hundred-and-some young women in an attempt to drink their blood and become young forever. She was tried and convicted of about thirty murders when someone discovered a ditch filled with female bodies on her castle's premises. In a set of journals that were found in her home after her death, accounts of hundreds of women being drained of their blood and tortured in cruel ways became unveiled. Elizabeth Bathory is now known as the world's most cruel and outrageous serial killer in history. She has also been called Countess Dracula (as some believe Bram Stoker's book was actually based on her life and not Vlad the Impaler's) and the Queen of Vampires.

Coming into the Victorian times in the United States specifically, various states of New England engaged in a panicked uproar of vampire hunting, which has now been mainly attributed to silly superstitions and misdiagnosis of disease. The most famous case of vampire panic is the case of Mercy Brown. Mercy Brown was a young lady who died of tuberculosis, but her father was convinced that she indeed was a vampire and was coming back from the grave to suck his young son's blood. The father of Mercy Brown and the townsfolk in a town in Rhode Island dug up Mercy Brown's body, cut out her heart, and then the father burnt the heart and made his young son drink it...as he believed that it would bring his son's lifeforce back. It didn't...his son also died of consumption (tuberculosis) only a few months later.

Other accounts of bodies being dug up and decimated throughout New England have been recorded, and traces of evidence have been studied concerning these vampire hunts. You can read more about the New England Vampire Scare by clicking here.

Since the demonic Lilitu in Ancient Babylonian times and through the New England vampire scare in Victorian times, the vampire has evolved into something today that people from times passed might not even recognize.

The movies and novels of modern times depict vampires in many different ways - everything from romantic, handsome young men seducing women to ravenous, rabid monsters tearing at peoples' throats. But is this even what a vampire truly is? There is a community of people on the internet and all over the world who claim to be real vampires...and not "undead" like the mainstream pop culture would have us believe or fantasize. These real vampires are of two kinds - Sang and Psi. Sang vampires are people who believe they have a physical and energetic necessity to drink other humans' blood. Psi vampires believe they have a spiritual and physical necessity to feed on the energy or lifeforce of other humans.

Did vampires actually exist in ancient times as evil blood-sucking demons or were the merely a figment of a superstitious peoples' imagination? Do vampires exist today or are they a simple mutation of the vampires from times passed? We may never know the real answers to these questions, but at least we've learned much of the vampires' history and facts along the way.