It is quite easy to see how in centuries past the undead—whether zombie, vampire, ghoul, wraith, or restless spirit—may have been confused with one another.
No one can possibly derive an exact date when early humans first began to bury their dead. Controversy continues whether or not certain skeletal remains found in the caves of the Pleistocene epoch Neanderthals indicate that some kind of burial ceremony was conducted for the dead around 200,000 years ago.
Neither can anyone pinpoint for certain when the concept of an afterlife first occurred to primitive humans. It might be conjectured that when early humans had realistic dreams of friends or relatives who were dead, they might have awakened, convinced that the departed somehow still existed in some other world. Such an idea, whenever it first occurred, was undoubtedly taken either as reassuring and comforting or as frightening and threatening. The belief that there was something within each individual that survived physical death was either an exciting promise or a terrifying menace that eventually spread to humans everywhere throughout the planet.
The Draugre are the undead of the Scandinavian sagas. They incorporate aspects of the zombie in that they are animated corpses, and they are occasionally vampiric in their quest for blood. They also possess magical powers (art by Bill Oliver).
Paleolithic humans (c. 250,000 B.C.E.) placed stones and other markings on graves, but we cannot determine for certain whether they did so to distinguish one grave from another for the purpose of mourning or to prevent evil spirits from rising from the burial place.
The fear of evil spirits also gave rise to the universal dread of cemeteries and the belief that burial grounds are haunted. Restless spirits, vengeful ghosts, ghouls, and vampires could lurk behind every grave stone or tomb.
The traditional vampire of legend was a corpse, wrapped in a rotting burial shroud, that has somehow been cursed by man or devil who has clawed free of its grave to satisfy its bloodlust for the living—quite often, family members or local townsfolk. The vampire in folklore appears as a grotesque, nightmarish creature of the undead with twisted fangs and grasping talons.
With each succeeding generation, the dark powers of the vampire grew. He could transform himself into the form of a bat, a rat, an owl, a fox, and a wolf. He was able to see in the dark and to travel on moonbeams and mist.
Mere mortals seemed helpless against the strength of the vampire—which could equal the strength of 10 men. What could the people do if they suspected that a vampire was rising from the grave or crypt at night to seek human blood?
Some homes liberally displayed wolfbane and sprigs of wild garlic at every door and window. Nearly everyone wore the crucifix about one’s neck and placed others prominently on several walls—especially near windows.
And then there were the times when a few brave individuals hunted down the grave or coffin of the nocturnal predator and placed thereon a branch of the wild rose to keep him locked within. If that didn’t work, then the only course of action remaining was to pry open the vampire’s coffin during the daylight hours while he lay slumbering and pound a wooden stake through his heart, behead him, and burn the body—or, much safer, destroy the coffin while he was away and allow the rays of the early morning sun to scorch him into ashes.
Real vampires are still being reported by honest and sober men and women in the twenty-first century. Recently I received a very strange and eerie account from a friend who is a professional journalist whose work appears in major newspapers in the United States. According to her, a friend from eastern Pennsylvania had told her something that she considered really earth-shattering.
Her friend said that he knew of a town in one of the New England states whose residents experienced the attacks of a vampire that was still active until late in the twentieth century. This “thing” had the entire town on edge, but it was the “in” secret of the community. If someone new moved to town (such as a teacher, medical professional, etc.), they were warned about what the townspeople would describe as possible attacks from escapees from a nearby asylum and not to be out late at night.
If someone were bitten, an elaborate chain of command would get the afflicted victims out of the area and to a protected place where they wouldn’t wind up as the undead.
The person who told my friend this account was an art teacher, the son of a minister. “He is a thoroughly honest person, very kind and sympathetic,” she said. “This is one of my few encounters with someone who had experienced the dark side.”
She readily conceded that the experiences of the townspeople seemed like stories right out of a vampire movie or a novel. Horror writer Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot comes quickly to mind as far as plot,” she said. “However in this case, it was only one vampire or creature of the night. They had no idea of how to get rid of it. The creature seemed to strike spontaneously after long intervals of quiet—as if it had been out of town or something—and the entire population of the town was, at least on one level, aware of the situation.
“New people coming to the town usually never stayed long. If a teacher signed a contract, he or she was gone by the end of the year. New doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and lawyers would never buy homes or raise families there. They would commute and be there only on certain days, then usually leave before dark.”
My friend told me that the only way that they finally got rid of this creature was to find its grave and pour several tons of cement on it!
“As far as I can recall,” she said, concluding her account, “this seemed to work (but with vampires, for how long?)”
Real vampires differ from zombies in that they are the ones who enslave their victims, whereas the zombie is a victim who has been enslaved by a Voodoo Priest or Priestess (art by Ricardo Pustanio).
In 1897, Bram Stoker wrote a novel that would forever change the way people regarded vampires. In 1920, F.W. Murnau tried to obtain the rights to film Stoker’s, Dracula. When his offer was refused, Murnau made the decision to film his own version (Nosferatu) with actor Max Schreck portraying Dracula as a loathsome bloodsucker, skittering about in the shadows with dark-ringed, hollowed eyes, pointed devil ears, and hideous fangs. With his long, blood-stained talons, his egg-shaped head and pasty white complexion, Schreck’s Nosferatu seems to embody the creature of the undead as revealed by the collective nightmares of humankind throughout the centuries. One can only wonder if it is just an interesting coincidence that Schreck in German means “terror” or “horror”? E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, released on December 29, 2000, presented the unsettling premise that the monstrous Nosferatu (Willem Dafoe) who assumed the title role in the classic film by F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) was, in reality, actually portrayed by a real vampire, rather than an actor.
Although Nosferatu remains a silent film classic and holds true to the traditional appearance of the vampire, Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula as a sophisticated aristocrat owns the role in the minds of most Dracula aficionados. With a few close rivals—Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman—Lugosi’s is the first image that comes to mind when one discusses the infamous count. Lugosi first put on Dracula’s evening clothes and cape on Broadway in 1927 for the popular stage play based on the novel. In 1931, he won the role for Tod Browning’s motion picture version of Dracula and forever altered the