Vampires–they can take many forms: a wolf, a bat, even a tendril of mist curling through a crack in the window. But those are just the shapes we see. The truth is vampires have always been more than what meets the eye.
Today, we picture the vampire as the refined predator—immortal, elegant, morally conflicted, sinking his teeth into the necks of the innocent… and the willing. But this polished version is just the latest installment in a much older horror story.
Before the vampire became Count Dracula—or for my fellow Twihards, Edward Cullen–this creature haunted the ancient world. He stalked the deserts of Mesopotamia, drained life in the shadowed temples of Egypt, and devoured ‘chi’ in the misty mountains of China.
His face changed from place to place and throughout time–but his hunger never ceased.
For centuries, the vampire has followed us—shifting into fog and fur, yes—but also into something far more chilling. The deeper you sink your teeth into the story of the vampire, the more you realize his true shape is impossible to pin down.
Scholars like Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu traced the vampire’s many transformations—from the wild animals of the Carpathian Mountains to the fine-featured aristocrat stepping off a ship into the heart of London. He slides between definitions just as easily as he slips between the living and the dead.
What is it about the vampire we can’t seem to escape? Why does he keep coming back, century after century, crossing continents, and finding us through the pages of our novels, across our screens, and deep in our collective nightmares and fantasies?
To understand why the vampire endures, we must trace the lineage of its mythos, beginning with the earliest vampiric figures and continuing with the Slavic legends that established the foundation for the archetype we recognize today.
But here's the rub: whose reflection is actually appearing and changing in the mirror? The vampire’s…or our own?
I’m Kate Naglieri. Welcome to The Bygone Society Show.
Vampire legends have wormed their way into the mythologies of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and so many other countries, each culture adding their own twist to this bloody narrative.
In Mesopotamian lore, for instance, we encounter the infamous Lamashtu and Lilith. Lamashtu was an ancient demon who had a particular taste for newborns, and Lilith, depending on who you ask, was either a night demon seducing men or a fierce figure drinking the blood of children.
These early tales introduced the idea of supernatural beings feasting on human vitality.
Greek mythology brought us the Empusa and the Striges—spirits that thrived on the blood of the living. The Empusa was a shapeshifter, often taking the form of a stunning woman to lure men in before showing her true, monstrous colors. Striges, on the other hand, were eerie, bird-like creatures that swooped in on unsuspecting children–talk about the opposite of a newborn-delivering stork.
Rolling over into Roman mythology, we find the Lamia, a fearsome, seductive being with a penchant for consuming the blood of the innocent and luring men to their death.
It's like a twisted game of telephone: each culture takes the same base idea and alters it into something uniquely terrifying.
But the common thread among all of these tales is undeniable: it’s a deep-seated anxiety about death, disease, and what lurks in the afterlife. These universal fears set the stage for the more familiar vampire figure that would rise in Eastern Europe—and, like a plague, spread across the globe.
The first vampire, or ‘upir,’ in Eastern Europe echoes back to at least the 9th century, but it’s likely that the roots run much deeper. The first official written reference appeared in Old Russian in 1047, right around the time Orthodox Christianity was making its mark.
The term 'upiri' translates roughly to 'the thing at the feast of sacrifice.' It serves as a euphemism for a dangerous entity hovering nearby death rituals. This deliberate avoidance of the monster’s true name reflects a cultural belief that speaking its name could invite malevolence–it’s really giving “He-who-must-not-be-named” vibes.
In Slavic culture, the line between life and death was perilously thin. Anyone could become a vampire after death: drunks, thieves, excommunicated souls, or even the first victims of a plague.
Slavic vampires were often depicted as revenants—creatures returning from the dead with an insatiable thirst for blood and the ability to transform into animals. Their pale, ghastly visages were more than mere fright; they functioned as societal safeguards against the chaos of the unknown.
In pre-modern times, death and disease were poorly understood, and plagues devastated communities. In this context, people often attributed the origins of unexplained illnesses to supernatural forces—as we’ve heard many times before, but particularly vampires, especially when the dead appeared unnaturally active.
Bodies that did not decompose as expected—sometimes due to cold climates or burial practices—were interpreted as signs of vampirism. When gravediggers or villagers exhumed a body and found it in a preserved state with blood-like fluids, it reinforced the idea that the deceased had become a vampire.
The Black Death and subsequent pandemics laid much of the groundwork for the vampire mythos, intertwining the fear of contagion with the supernatural. As communities grappled with staggering death tolls and mysterious illnesses left and right, it gave rise to the popularity of our fanged fiends.
Even faith played a significant role in shaping the vampire's narrative. In regions where Orthodox Christianity was merging with older pagan beliefs, the vampire became a figure that symbolized the boundary between good and evil. And rituals were performed to protect against spirits of the dead, reflecting a mix of Christian and pagan customs.
Additionally, individuals on the fringes of society—such as criminals, the unbaptized, or foreigners—were believed to become vampires. These beliefs reinforced social norms and helped communities police behavior, ostracizing those who were seen as threats to the social order.
The vampire myth was also tied to burial customs. Vampires were often thought to arise from improper burial practices, like a violent or sudden death or a lack of appropriate religious rites.
To keep the undead firmly in their graves, these communities devised elaborate rituals—think garlic, holy water, and staking corpses. Rings a bell, doesn’t it?
This archetype of the vampire didn’t stay confined to Eastern Europe; it began to seep into the Western consciousness by way of war.
During the tumultuous period from the 16th to the 19th centuries, conflicts like the Austro-Turkish Wars and the Napoleonic Wars thrust Western European soldiers into close quarters with Eastern European territories.
In the late 17th century, Austrian and German soldiers stationed in the Balkans, Hungary, and other Slavic regions found themselves not just in combat, but enmeshed in local customs and superstitions, including the captivating lore of vampires.
As these soldiers mingled with local populations, they became privy to ancient beliefs about reanimated corpses and the measures taken to prevent the dead from rising. Many of these encounters were documented in personal letters, diaries, and official reports, some of which eventually made their way into published works.
One notable publication was Mercure Galant, a French periodical known for its fascination with mystery. The 1693 and 1694 issues depicted sensational accounts of alleged vampire sightings.
These articles reported strange deaths, exhumed bodies, and local fears surrounding the undead returning to prey upon the living. They also hinted at a growing curiosity about these supernatural creatures from a foreign land.
Mercure Galant played a crucial role in broadcasting these eerie tales far and wide, blending curiosity with skepticism. The reports featured eyewitness testimonies and stories from travelers, providing a mix of real-world grounding and exotic intrigue.
And that intrigue only deepened in the 18th century as reports of vampiric activity surged, especially from Austrian soldiers in Serbia and Wallachia, which is a historical territory in modern-day Romania. One of the most notorious cases involved a Serbian villager named Arnold Paole.
Arnold was a soldier who had encountered a vampire during his service and attempted to rid himself of the curse by consuming dirt from the vampire’s grave. However, fate took a dark turn when Arnold died in a hay-wagon accident. Soon after, villagers also began to die mysteriously, with rumors swirling that Arnold had risen from the dead to exact revenge.
When Austrian army surgeon Johann Flückinger was dispatched to investigate the situation in the village of Medvegia in 1732, he uncovered a scene straight out of a horror tale.
The villagers had exhumed Arnold's body, only to find it remarkably preserved, with fresh blood oozing from his orifices and signs of regeneration. Convinced that this was no longer the man they once knew, the villagers drove a stake through his heart, and Flückinger meticulously chronicled the event in his report, Visum et Repertum, Latin for “seen and discovered.”
The report ignited debates among scholars and theologians, further blurring the lines between reality and superstition in an era increasingly leaning toward reason.
Flückinger’s detailed account lent credibility to the bizarre events, making the story resonate deeply with its readers. For the educated elite, the report spurred discussions about whether these tales of vampirism were real or merely products of fear and misunderstanding.
Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted the weight of first-hand testimonies in his Letter to Beaumont, declaring, “If there is a well-attested history in the world, it is that of Vampires.”
By the time Bram Stoker penned Dracula in 1897, the vampire had evolved once again—this time, embodying the anxieties of a rapidly changing world.
The 19th century was a swirling mix of imperialism, paranoia, and a fear of infection that ran deeper than blood. Dracula reflected these fears head-on.
The Count was no longer a supernatural threat in a distant land; he was the foreign invader, bringing his "otherness" to England’s shores, packing his native soil along with him.
It was a time when fears of the ‘other’ collided with worries about disease, especially with tropical medicine making the rounds, shaping Dracula into the ultimate parasitic figure.
As critic Milly Williamson pointed out, the vampire is a force that infects, beguiles, and drains us—both literally and metaphorically. Dracula tapped into the era's fear of anything that could disrupt social norms: the threat to patriarchy, racial purity, and even chaste, heterosexual relationships.
The Count’s unnatural intimacy and foreign allure were terrifying not just because he killed—but because he challenged the status quo.
And while vampires made for great bedtime horror, they were also used as an intellectual scapegoat. In a century battling plagues like cholera, authorities used vampire lore to discredit folk traditions. This helped strategically position modern medicine as the savior from these “primitive” fears and ancient forms of healing.
Dracula wasn’t just a villain on the page; he was a metaphor for how society needed to trust science over superstition in the face of threat.
But if we look deeper, Dracula also reveals something about human nature.
Stoker’s tight-knit and selfless heroes, better known as vampire slayers, stand in direct contrast to the Count’s dominance and perceived greed. It’s almost as if the novel serves as a warning: cooperation and egalitarianism keep the monster at bay, reinforcing the values of Christian virtue and social cohesion.
At the end of the day, Dracula is a bloodthirsty count—but he’s also a mirror of what society, and more rightly, its leaders, fear the most.
The vampire legend has been reborn with every passing era. But with Dracula, the legend found its sharpest form—a shadow that mirrors us so perfectly, we almost fail to recognize the monster staring back.
Through plagues, paranoia, and societal upheaval, Dracula became the reflection of our darkest truths. He wasn’t just a creature of the night. He was us—twisted, transformed, and terrifying.
If we call the vampire a monster, then what does that make us?
For now, I’ll leave that question hanging in the darkness. But don’t settle in too deeply, because next time, we’ll trace how Dracula carved his place in our collective psyche—and became the blueprint for the modern vampire.
The one who slinks onto our screens and slides into our dreams–inviting us to embrace our most forbidden desires and cast aside our niceties. For his greatest transformation is yet to come.
Thank you for joining The Bygone Society Show, where we chronicle the strange and forgotten corners of history. You can learn more about the society and each episode by following on Instagram @thebygonesocietyshow.
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From your gracious and ghoulish host, thanks for listening.