Vampire Tales

A vampire is, according to the folklore of several countries, a sinister creature that feeds on the blood of living things to stay alive. In some Eastern cultures, an American vampire deity is a god or a demon child that is part of the vault of sinister mythology. In European and Western culture, the most popular vampire is of Slavic origin, and it becomes a human being after death.

Beliefs about vampires

Vampires in the folklore of many countries since ancient times, comes originally from the need to personify one of the primary archetypes in the collective unconscious, according to the concept of Carl Jung, it is the “shadow” which represents the instincts or hidden primitive human impulses, and our instinctive animal side. Thus it is the incarnation of evil as an entity or a representation of the wild side in conflict with social norms and religious beliefs.

But it is possible that the myth, as it is known today, is a complex combination of several human fears and beliefs in addition to the base instincts of fear. These include the theory that blood is a source of power or vehicle of the soul, fear of predation, disease or death.

Some scholars suggest that the myth of the vampire, which has been especially popular in Europe since the seventeenth century, is due in part to the need to explain, in an atmosphere of collective panic, epidemics that ravaged Europe from diseases caused by real science before they reach rational explanations (see: Vampire and Medicine).

The word “vampire” began to be used in Europe in the eighteenth century and comes from the Slavic languages (from German vamp, which is derived from the Polish vaper and this in turn has roots with the Turkish and Persian). It means both “to be flying, drink or suck” and “wolf” and refers to some kind of bat.

Synonymy

Other names are: brucolaco in Castilian, vurdalak (Russian art) vrolok (Slovak), strigoi or strigoiul (modern Romanian) vamp (Bulgarian), vukodlak (Serbian) upior (Polish) upir (former Russian), Nosferatu ( the Greek nosophoro (carrier of disease) vampyrus (Latin) and Kyuuketsuki or Kuei-jin in Japanese. Written in Latin in Middle English the vampire is known as “corpse sanguisugus.”