Talk:Vampire

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Auric the Rad's Vampire watermelon hoax strikes the right tone... Wetman 07:03, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)I think we've made good progress on this page, but now it needs to be refactored (I am referring to Vampire, not this /Talk page).

Silver

I always thought silver was good against Werewolfs, not vampires? Can anyone explain that?

I think that both this and the daywalker stuff come next to exclusively from the movie Blade, which wasn't a particularly traditional view on vampires, or something close to it. I tried some searching to find any references...vampire with anything like "silver kills" reveals nothing classical, although I might have missed some combination (just silver gives to many false hits to cut down). Definitely daywalker got nothing other than RPGs and movies. Neither of these are listed on Britannica's page or any of the kid's books I can remember.

Supposedly the notion of silver as a bane of evil things comes from Judas having accepted payment of silver in exchange for betraying Christ. In taditional lore there is no connection to vampirism -- silver is a werewolf thing....

The silver bullet is an element of black magic in Der Freischütz. Spooky but nor vampiric. Wetman 19:30, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In the romantic comedy "Love at First Bite" - George Hamilton's Dracula laughs at silver bullets. - Sparky 03:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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Classic vampires are killed by a wooden stake through the heart. Silver as being efficacious against vampires (and in Blade, it was not silver but a concoction of mercury, garlic, blood with vampirism antibodies, etc which was supposed to do the trick) is very recent and poorly supported - hardly part of traditional vampire myth yet.

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The rationale behind the silver thing is that silver is supposed to have properties that make it resistant to evil. Don't ask me to elaborate, I read it in an old book. I do remember it said that silver hurt vampires, particularly silver crosses did the trick. It also of course mentioned the silver bullet killing werewolves. There is nothing special about the bullet, its the silver. Apparently silver could also be used to expose witches. BTW, hazelwood was the preferred wood for killing vapires. It was supposed to have evil-resistant properties as well.

I believe that the silver as dangerous to vampires theory has basis in history. --Alan D

Bram Stoker introduced us to "undead," of course, contemporaneously with the modernized legend of Vlad Drakul - aka "Vlad the Impaler" who was a quite real old-time prince who terrorized local peasants by hanging the heads and bodies of those who displeased him from stakes outside the "castle" or manor house.

Silver is supposed to hurt vampires, but not to kill them. At least in Slavic mythology, where modern concept of vampires originated from Szopen

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Literature about Lycanthropy / werewolf

Silver bullets are supposed to kill werewolves. Until a movie was made on the subject, I wonder if there was any substantial literary classic involving lycanthropy (people turning into wolves) to which we can refer, or if oral tradition is all there is to fall back on. Oral tradition does go back hundreds of years, at least. Szopen

I think there's some instances of lycanthropy amongst the ancient Greeks. There should be a book on my shelves somewhere with a detailed history of this sort of thing...

Dracula, Dracul and Folk Tradition

Getting back to vampires, it's interesting to see how Bram Stoker's Dracula was an assortment of folk traditions, grafted onto a more or less Roman Catholic framework of demonic possession; his Dracula is effectively the corpse of Vlad Dracul possessed by a demon - hence the crucifix & holy water being so effective.

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I have some reservations about the works listed on the previous page: Nosferatu is simply a take on the dracula story; Bram Stoker's widow in fact sued the people involved with the film for copyright violation and won, which does not mean that the work does not deserve mention; but Salem's Lot is also a take on the Dracula legend which has merely been updated and moved to New England. Stephen King has admitted as much himself, and says the novel came about from a comment made when he had a friend over and they were discussing Stoker's novel: Tabitha King said that today Dracula would get run over by a cab at the airport and that would be the end of it. The parallels between the two works are obvious enough to anyone who them both.

How about mentioning vampire legends which do *not* depend so heavily on Stoker's work? e.g. works by Anne Rice, and, um, well that's all I can think of.  :-) I haven't read up on vampires much, which was why I followed this link.  :-)

Certainly, there is a school of vampiric writing which derives more from le Fanu's work than Stoker's. sjc

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There is no evidence that Stoker ever heard of a Vlad Drakul or Vlad the Impaler while doing his research for the book, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. -- corvus13

Also, there is no evidence which suggests that he hadn't. Moreover, the setting in Transylvania indicates that he was probably aware of it. But I have expanded the original author's description of Stoker's sources to cover all bases. sjc

Actually, there is evidence that he didn't. See "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense" by Elizabeth Miller. --corvus13

This is kind of academic. Stoker had a friendship with a Hungarian professor who may well have related the story, but nothing is provable in either direction. Unless Stoker walks again, that is... sjc

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re: the above discussion -- however valuable research into the origins and making of various vampire texts (Stoker versus Rice, for example), it shouldn't be at the expense of what I think is far more important -- what accounts for the popularity of these texts. Has anyone done research on the changing meaning of vampire stories to their audience? It seems to me that what was once a spoof of the Catholic Mass now has rather more to do with AIDS. Slrubenstein

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Talk from Vampire subculture

Cite? Or is this complete bull?

yah its real-but its not like you are gonna find a "credible" source on it-unless you go look around yourself

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Should vampirism be a separate article, or contained in Vampire?

• separate: User:Ed Poor, Hephaestos
• contained:

I'm going to separate the articles, even though there have only been 2 votes so far. If someone objects, please "vote" and also explain your objection. --Ed Poor

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From the current version: "According to Orthodox Christian belief, the soul does not depart the body until 40 days after it has been buried. " This sounds like nonsense. Does it have any basis in fact? -- Someone else 04:29 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)

None whatsoever. So it fits right in here Wetman 19:30, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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There is also Chinese Vampire, it is completely unrelated to Vampire in this article. However, there were some Hong Kong movies mixing them together. One film even talks about an undead missionary able to change from one type to another, and the only way to defeat him is by combining chinese magic and the Christian cross.......

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I think if we feel the need to include multiple languages, it should be in another section. It isn't a major detail to be included in the introductory paragraph. This is not a dictionary or pronounciation guide. BarkingDoc

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What is missing from this article is: How does one become a vampire? The reproductive strategy of a vampire is quite different than a human. Kingturtle 02:37, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There are quite a fair number of different means that have been professed, and the origin of vampires has changed every bit as much over time as the image of vampires has. The notion of vampires as an infective race (or reproductive) is incredibly new in the history of vampire lore. BarkingDoc

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Shouldn't there be a section on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. These are no firm parts of Western popular culture. Also Anne Rice should receive more attention: ChrisG 11:34, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Buffy and Rice both have their own fairly well developed articles. Despite their current popularity, they are a fairly small part of the scope of informatioon available. BarkingDoc

A page on vampires which does not even mention it's (in current form) origins in Slavic folklor... wonderful. szopen

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This quote is copied from http://www.vampgirl.com/vamp-encmyth.html:

Even inanimate objects and animals were thought to be able to become vampires: pumpkins, watermelons and other fruit that was left out past a certain amount of time, latches that were left unlatched too long, yokes, dogs, horses, sheep and snakes are among the objects with vampiric potential in older superstitions of the Slavic gypsy community.

It should probably be reworded

Proof that there are no vampires

Suppose there was just one vampire. Then, each vampire bites one person a week, and the person being bitten becomes a vampire. After one week, there are 2 vampires. After 2 weeks, there are 4 vampires. After 3 weeks, there are 8 vampires. After 4 weeks, there are 16 vampires. It will take only 33 weeks for the enitre world population to be made out of vampires!

Not all vampiric mythology states that a vampire feeding off you makes you one of them. Falcon

You're also assuming that there are no vampire predators. Auric The Rad 22:57, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

For comparison, consider this article, which proves statistically that the world should have been chin-deep in houseflies decades ago. --Paul A 02:32, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Vampire bats

There's an article at Vampire bat. Why not just link to that and remove the section here? RickK | Talk 05:30, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

what happened to Vlad the Impaler ?

what happened to Vlad the Impaler ?

The pages Vlad the Impaler and Vlad III and Vlad Drakul are now blank, , except for a redirect to a non-existent page Vlad III Dracula.

Should I restore the Vlad the Impaler article ? Was the Vlad the Impaler article accidentally deleted ? Or am I just going to start a delete war if I restore it and then it gets deleted again ?

There's still a snapshot at http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:mQcq1YDRZS8J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_Drakul+vlad+the+impaler&hl=en if someone wants to restore it.

-- anonymous

I have restored the text from the snapshot. Deadstar not logged on

Meaning of vampire orginally

It is to my understanding that vampire orginally meant... one who we have reason to fear... werewolf... bloodsucker... witch... seventh son of a seventh son... criminal... ect... Bram is not to blame for the change... he specifically stated in the novel that that vampire was a nosferatu...

~Vampirate_Mace

Merriam-Webster lists it as coming from French, from German Vampir, from Serbo-Croation vampir. No original meanings are listed, so I assume all of these words shared the same meaning as the current English "vampire." I don't have access to an OED right now, but does someone want to check etymology there? At any rate, I don't see anything to support the "one who we have reason to fear" possibility; seems more likely that it came from a Serbo-Croatian myth. Hah, didn't notice the etymology section. Still an unattributed opinion there, though. Mariko

"Missionaries

"It is also widely theorized that missionaries and other new elements of the population brought new strains of disease, resulting in a greatly increased number of "mysterious" deaths during the period." The passive voice of non-attribution again: the individual who made this up thought that Romania was an isolated outback. Romania has been the main passage between the steppes, Greece and the Balkans for 3 millennia. A main traffic artery for plague too. Can we remove this assertion? Wetman 07:15, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How about adding the name of this individual? I don't think there's any reason to remove the assertion, but it ought to be attributed. Mariko

Possible rewrite?

I'm thinking this article needs a major organizational rewrite, so we can specify which magical properties listd apply to vampires in each specific listed book or movie in which they apear. For example, vampires from Blade, vampires from books by Anne Rice, and vampires from White Wolf games differ greatly in thier attributes. I'm thinking we should perhaps create subheadings for each story/book/movie/gaming environment and explain the unique attributes of the vampires from those specific stories, as compared with the original or earliest recorded vampire story (whether it is the bit about Homer's Odyssey mentioned in the article, or stories based on Prince Vladimir, or whatever gets decided upon.) I think that specifying these things would make the article a lot better. For example, someone who playsWhite Wolf games would conjure up a completely different definition of the word "vampire" in thier head than, say, someone who had just read Salem's Lot. I don't know if I'm alonein this opinion or not, so I'm thinking that mabye wecan get a few votes on whether or not to do the rewrite? (I wanted to get an opinion before I went ahead and did such a major change myself.) DryGrain 09:23, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)