OK i am postive that there has been alot of talk here about the vampires. my question is why do vampires not like garlic? i mean i personally love the stuff, but why dont vampires?

Hmm...perhaps because the taste of blood is considered sweet, and garlic is extremely bitter. So in this case, maybe opposites don't attract in a vampires point of view.

sweet? weird...i always thoguht blood had a more copperish taste? gee i wonder why

Garlic is used to ward off other things too. Alliumphobia? They have a sensitive nose? Plants have meanings associated with them, they all have properties. I don't think it'd do much to a ticked off one though.

It's probably just an added myth. Who knows really.......

I read a book not too long ago, it's called "Vampire, the complete guide to the world of the undead" by Manuela Dunn Mascetti. In it, it tries to prove their existence and it explains how Holly Wood has made them out to be what they really aren't. I think the Vampires not liking garlic came more from Holly Wood instead of the original myths of them. It's an interesting book actually... still don't believe in them but it tells of historical accounts and medical examinations of people whom they thought were real vamps.

If you tasted enough blood to get that kind of description about it...then gee, i wonder why you know that

i was wondering the same thing yick...blood is nasty..(i know from biting my cheeks by accident)

But i have to agree that that is probably part of the vampire myth by Hollywood. Someone ate a lotta garlic one day and jokingly said it was to keep vampires away and there you have it.


Not that i think vampires (the undead kind) are real anyway

This is so interesting - garlic is a natural mosquito repellent too!

http://www.garlic-central.com/vampires.html

Garlic works with fleas as well. I feed garlic to my dog to get rid of bloodsucking fleas. It works too. Maybe that's where the myth started. If one type of blood sucker hates garlic, then all bloodsuckers must hate garlic.

Garlic was considered holy or purifying. Kinda like how a ring of salt is supposed to keep evil spirits out, or white ash was poisonous to creatures of darkness. It goes waaaaay back farther than Hollywood.

The reason vampires and garlic are associated is because in the 1800's bodies would be dug up to conduct investigations and garlic would be used to cover the awful smell of rotting corpse.

It has no 'magic' power, vampires are nothing more than a myth created from exhumed corpses bleeding from the mouth which sometimes happens after death, and garlic was used because it smells better than rotting corpse.

That takes all the fun out of it, Burnside!

Or perhaps it's because since mosquitos are warded away by it, and they are bloodsuckers, hollywood thought it would be just as fitting to have it ward off vamps.

well Vampires (according to 1800's written works) are very sensitive delicate people, they dislike the dirty and overbarering, they only seek whats best, the finest.

If an oder offends then they will leave, if they are descusted they will leave, a strong oder will also make them unconfortable. That only aply to bloodline vampires, "sub-vampires" are more grotest and will feed off almost anything such as insects and rottens.

My Post: Fact.
Your Post: Fiction.

well it's just what people believed in those years, same as leaches for all ills...I'm not saying it works, i'm not saying they are real I'm just answering a question based on the vampire consept.

Fair enough.
I was answering the question based on the obvious fact that vampires don't exist, and what really happened during the times and why the vampire myth arose.

well the question was about there tastes not if they where real or not, it's like asking: what's the color of santa's pans, and answering: blah blah St-Nick blah blah his not real.

Fictional creatures can have "favorites" or tastes (as Solid Snake likes to smoke and as James hates his martinis strid) and it was in there history and literature that we can figure that out, the question wether or not they were real wasn't engage in the basic question.

Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world. Their variety is almost endless; from red eyed monsters with green or pink hair in China to the Greek Lamia which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a winged serpent; from vampire foxes in Japan to a head with trailing entrails known as the Penanggalang in Malaysia.
However, the vampires we are familiar with today, although mutated by fiction and film, are largely based on Eastern European myths. The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East, and were transported from places like China, Tibet and India with the trade caravans along the silk route to the Mediterranean. Here they spread out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans and of course the Carpathian mountains, including Hungary and Transylvania.
Our modern concept of the vampire still retains threads, such as blood drinking, return from death, preying on humans at night, etc in common with the Eastern European myths. However many things we are familiar with; the wearing of evening clothes, capes with tall collars, turning into bats, etc are much more recent inventions.
On the other hand, many features of the old myths such as the placing of millet or poppy seeds at the gravesite in order to keep the vampire occupied all night counting seeds rather than preying on relatives, have all but disappeared from modern fiction and film.

Even among the Eastern European countries there is a large variety of vampires.

SLAVIC VAMPIRES:
The Slavic people including most east Europeans from Russia to Bulgaria, Serbia to Poland, have the richest vampire folklore and legends in the world. The Slavs came from north of the Black Sea and were closely associated with the Iranians. Prior to 8th century AD they migrated north and west to where they are now.
Christianization began almost as soon as they arrived in their new homelands. But through the 9th and 10th centuries the Eastern Orthodox Church and the western Roman Church were struggling with each other for supremacy. They formally broke in 1054 AD, with the Bulgarians, Russians, and Serbians staying Orthodox, while the Poles, Czechs, and Croatians went Roman. This split caused a big difference in the development of vampire lore - the Roman church believed incorrupt bodies were saints, while the Orthodox church believed they were vampires.

The origin of Slavic vampire myths developed during 9th C as a result of conflict between pre-Christian paganism and Christianity. Christianity won out with the vampires and other pagan beliefs surviving in folklore.

Causes of vampirism included: being born with a caul, teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, irregular death, excommunication, improper burial rituals etc. Preventative measures included: placing a crucifix in the coffin, or blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, placing millet or poppy seeds in the grave because vampires had a fascination with counting, or piercing the body with thorns or stakes.

Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighbourhood included: death of cattle, sheep, relatives, neighbours, exhumed bodies being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, or if the body was swelled up like a drum, or there was blood on the mouth and if the corpse had a ruddy complexion.

Vampires could be destroyed by staking, decapitation (the Kashubs placed the head between the feet), burning, repeating the funeral service, holy water on the grave, exorcism.

ROMANIA:
Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising that their vampires are variants of the Slavic vampire. They are called Strigoi based on the Roman term strix for screech owl which also came to mean demon or witch.
There are different types of strigoi: strigoi vii are live witches who will become vampires after death. They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches or with Strigoi mort who are dead vampires. The strigoi mort are the reanimated bodies which return to suck the blood of family, livestock, and neighbours.
A person born with a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. As was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. And naturally, being bitten by vampire, meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.

The Vircolac which is sometimes mentioned in folklore was more closely related to a mythological wolf that could devour the sun and moon and later became connected with werewolves rather than vampires. The person afflicted with lycanthropy could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.

The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St Georges Day is still celebrated in Europe.

A vampire in the grave could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing who didn't eat it.

Graves were often opened three years after death of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.

Measures to prevent a person becoming a vampire included, removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle, especially on St George's & St Andrew's days.

To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and given to family members as a cure.

GYPSIES AND VAMPIRES:
Even today, Gypsies frequently feature in vampire fiction and film, no doubt influenced by Bram Stoker's book "Dracula" in which the Szgany gypsies served Dracula, carrying his boxes of earth and guarding him.
In reality, Gypsies originated as nomadic tribes in northern India, but got their name from the early belief that they came from Egypt. By 1000 AD they started spreading westward and settled in Turkey for a time, incorporating many Turkish words into their Romany language.

By the 14th century they were all through the Balkans and within two more centuries had spread all across Europe. Gypsies arrived in Romania a short time before Vlad Dracula was born in 1431.

Their religion is complex and varies between tribes, but they have a god called O Del, as well as the concept of Good and Evil forces and a strong relationship and loyalty to dead relatives. They believed the dead soul entered a world similar to ours except that there is no death. The soul stayed around the body and sometimes wanted to come back. The Gypsy myths of the living dead added to and enriched the vampire myths of Hungary, Romania, and Slavic lands.

The ancient home of the Gypsies, India has many mythical vampire figures. The Bhuta is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wandered around animating dead bodies at night and attacked the living like a ghoul. In northern India could be found the brahmaparusha, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood.

The most famous Indian vampire is Kali who had fangs, wore a garland of corpses or skulls and had four arms. Her temples were near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby winning the battle and killing Raktabija.

Sara or the Black Goddess is the form in which Kali survived among Gypsies. Gypsies have a belief that the three Marys from the New Testament went to France and baptised a Gypsy called Sara. They still hold a ceremony each May 24th in the French village where this is supposed to have occurred.

One Gypsy vampire was called a mullo (one who is dead). This vampire was believed to return and do malicious things and/or suck the blood of a person (usually a relative who had caused their death, or not properly observed the burial ceremonies, or who kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was proper.)

Female vampires could return, lead a normal life and even marry but would exhaust the husband. Anyone who had a hideous appearance, was missing a finger, or had animal appendages, etc. was believed to be a vampire.

Even plants or dogs, cats, or farm animals could become vampires. Pumpkins or melons kept in the house too long would start to move, make noises or show blood.

To get rid of a vampire people would hire a dhampire (the son of a vampire and his widow) to detect the vampire. To ward off vampires, gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. Further measures included driving stakes into the grave, pouring boiling water over it, decapitating the corpse, or burning it.

In spite of the disruption of Gypsy lives by the various eastern European communist regimes, they still retain much of their culture. In 1992 a new king of the Gypsies was chosen in Bistritz, Romania.

BATS:
No discussion of vampires is even thinkable without talking about bats. They are integral to the modern day concept of the vampire, but this was not always the case.
Many cultures have various myths about bats. In South America, Camazotz was a bat god of the caves living in the Bathouse of the Underworld. In Europe, bats and owls were long associated with the supernatural, mainly because they were night creatures. On the other hand, the Gypsies thought them lucky - they wore charms made of bat bones. And in England the Wakefield crest and those of some others have bats on them.

So how did bats end up becoming associated with vampires? There are only three species of vampires bats in the entire world, all of which occur in Central and South America. During the 16th century the Spanish conquistadors first came into contact with them and recognized the similarity between the feeding habits of the bats and those of their mythical vampires. It wasn't long before they began to associate bats with their vampire legends. Over the following centuries the association became stronger and was used by various people, including James Malcom Rhymer who wrote "Varney the Vampyre" in the 1840's. Stoker cemented the linkage of bats and vampires in the minds of the general public.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VAMPIRE CONTROVERSY:
Today everyone is familiar with vampires, but in Britain very little was known of vampires prior to the 18th century. What brought the vampire to the attention of the general public? During the 18th century there was a major vampire scare in Eastern Europe. Even government officials frequently got dragged into the hunting and staking of vampires.
This controversy was directly responsible for England's current vampire myths. In fact, the word Vampire only came into English language in 1732 via an English translation of a German report of the much publicized Arnold Paole vampire staking in Serbia.

Western scholars seriously considered the existence of vampires for the first time rather than just brushing them off as superstition. It all started with an outbreak of vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1725-1734.

Two famous cases involved Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole. Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of times after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the next day. Soon Plogojowitz returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.

In the other famous case Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who had been attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After death people began to die and it was believed by everyone that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours.

These two incidents were extremely well documented. Government officials examined the cases and the bodies, wrote them up in reports, and books were published afterwards of the Paole case and distributed around Europe. The controversy raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural people having an epidemic of vampire attacks and digging up bodies all over the place. Many scholars said vampires didn't exist - they attributed reports to premature burial, or rabies which causes thirst.

However, Dom Augustine Calmet, a well respected French theologian and scholar, put together a carefully thought out treatise in 1746 which said vampires did exist. This had considerable influence on other scholars at the time.

Eventually, Austrian Empress Marie Theresa sent her personal physician to investigate. He said vampires didn't exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies. This was the end of the vampire epidemics. But by then everyone knew about vampires and it was only a matter of time before authors would preserve and mould the vampire into something new and much more accessible to the general public.

well that theme sure inspired you, pretty cool.

Yes it did and thank you.

Garlic in history is well documented:

European folklore also gives garlic the ability to ward off the "evil eye".

Dreaming that there is "garlic in the house" is supposedly lucky; to dream about eating garlic means you will discover hidden secrets.

Herbalist Culpepper linked garlic with the planet Mars, a fiery planet also connected with blood.

Roman soldiers ate garlic to inspire them and give them courage; Egyptian slaves were fed garlic to keep their strength up.

Homer reported that Ulysses owed his escape from Circe to "yellow garlic".

There is a Mohammedan story that when Satan left the Garden of Eden, garlic appeared where his left foot rested and onion under his right. The Christian Bible also mentions garlic - [Numbers 11: 4-6] and the Talmud recommends it to be eaten on a Friday night.

Indian legends tell of battles between the devas and the asuras with garlic being a source of argument. The Laws of Manu forbade eating garlic - along with leeks, onions and mushrooms - as unclean. Garlic was forbidden from certain sacred places.

Tibetan monks were forbidden from entering the monastries if they had eaten garlic.

Its amazing how ignorant some people are. If you are not educated don’t pretend to know the answers to the questions. I didn’t read all the replies but the first few disappointed me.
Vampires are said to carry a strong scent, garlic as well carries an unmistakably vile sent. It is said that similar things cure similar things? Being that vampires will be warded off by garlic because it has a strong odder, much likes itself. This theory is really quite simple although I don’t know the exact quote they used. If some one does know tell me and correct me, id like to educate my ignorance. I watched a documentary on this, The unexplained: werewolves, witches and vampires, IF you want to know where I am getting this information from.

I was referring to the beginning of this forum; I didn’t realize it had escalated.

I am not sure why this old thread is even in history but, I really don't see what it matter's, If there where real vampire's today, I doubt they care about garlic. It has become one of the main spice's in all food today, so if they didn't like it for what ever reason they would be in trouble. Since 85 to 90 % of people in the world eat it.

look, vampires have more advanced sences than humans do, garlic has a very strong smell and even to humans it can result in sicknes if inhailed in bigger doses.
It causes sicknes and vampires dont fear it, it just stinks that's all. :yes:

Actually Garlic goes way back to medieval times and was an old superstition that if worn it would repel all evil and such things like that. But then "HollyWood" came around and instilled this into the vampires. Even though reeds of garlic was I believe (tell me if I am wrong my memory sucks >.<) used to be hung above a baby's bed to ward away fairies. Or above the door I can't remember. But anyways if it is true they probably just don't like the smell because they have a heightened sense of smell. So if you whipped out a bunch of garlic balls at them they would probably react the same way as your date if you ate garlic then tried to make a move, they'd flinch and almost hurl! lol But that's probably about it! Then they'd smack you in the back of the head and attack the crap out of you and I wouldn't blame them Because I mean I come on wouldn't you be pretty pissed if somebody just tried to beat you with a bunch of NASTY garlic!

I hope I was a help... and sorry I had to add some humor.... but then I got carried away!

I say vampires hate the very healthy contents of garlic
And I believe it was related to people crying when garlic is cut or being cut.
It may have not been completely based on that but maybe partially.

Um that would be onions that make people cry, garlic just gives you bad breath!

Im going to take this from a medical aspect. Since most of us here will agree that one cause of vampirism is porphryia, Ill take it from that angle. Porphryia is the inability to make a crucial enzyme needed for the production of haemoglobin. Garlic is supposedly known for its ability to step up the bodies production of haemoglobin. If you have prophryia and you care exposed to garlic, I can guarantee you it would not be a pleasant sensation.

One other thing I just thought of, could garlic have gotten its power because if stored incorrectly it can cause botulism which often leads to death?

I thought vampires were people back in the early days who had deseases and died or whatever and the superstitious people thought if they werent buried properly they would come back! I mean i've just heard stories upon stories about this topic!
It just seems to me that vampires was just a name given to people for all the wrong reasons because people did'nt have a term for the illness or disease back then!

But who knows i'm only speculating on a few things i have read not a subject that i have delved in to deeply!

lmfao. anyone who thinks they are a vampire are just metal its not real. Vampires don't exist or ever did. Just live withwhats real don't make up fake stuff like vampires, giants, alien autospies, and other stuff. Vampires aren't real, just hope you were serious

So you think they are completly fake Baal?

Vampires are generally viewed as being part of legends not unlike elfs, werewolves, and giants. But all legends start from some sort of truths.

Everyone can agree that vampires where at one point human or derived from humans, so the question we must ask is if it is possible for a human to mutate or evolve into a vampire.

So the question is this: Can a human's body be transformed into being able to digest and thrawl nutrients from blood?

Everything else seems to be superstition like the cross', stakes, reflections, bats, etc. unless you bring mystic and magical things into the picture...but thats a whole nother thing.

Very good thought on it!

With all respect, that's the position I maintained for years until I performed some in-depth research into the series of "vampire plagues" which rolled back and forth across Central and Eastern Europe during the first half of the 18th Century (and which can be traced back into the final decades of the 17th).

(It was, in fact, that pestilence which introduced the word "vampire" into the English language.)

And as for the odors of decaying corpses, people living three centuries ago were quite steeled to those. That was a time when bodies fell into decay right in the middle of their obsequies. It is we moderns who are unfamiliar with the stench of death. Save for those of us who have had extensive combat experience, the only people today likely to encounter human decay are homicide cops, forensic pathologists and occasionally embalmers.