I read a few pages of "Vampires for Dummies" (such a thing really does exist) and it said the origional vampires were rotting corpses that crawled out of their graves at night to feed off the living. Bloated on their own juices, they would use a spiked tounge to lick the chest of their victems and lap up the blood that flowed, sort of like a modified vampire bat.

Dracula and the vampires following have been presented as suave, mysterious creatures, deeply cunning and manipulative. While Dracula himself was never supposed to be physically attractive, a majority of vampires following are.

And, like dragons, vampires seem to appear in many cultures as well, or at least vampire-like creatures. An article i read spoke about a creature that would suck the blood from the stomachs of pregnant women or young children, leading to the death of the child. Each European country seems to have its own version of a basic humanoid vampire. Then there's the modern-day El Chupacabras.

So, like my dragon post before, are there any truth to these legends, or are these stories formed from the imaginations of people who needed a reason for why corpses do things that they do?

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~vampire/vhist.html

Personally I believe that most, if not all legends, have a kernel of truth in them, but over time truth become obscured and fact become exagerated. Add in a general fear of the unknown to begin with and the subsequent need to explain them.. things can get out of hand.

I believe there are medical conditions they have some similarities to the attributes we assing to vampires , adversion to the sun for example would means very visible differences in how people look ( very pale skin ) it would also mean these people would only come out at night, we as humans generally don't trust things that "go bump" in the night.

Sweetblood. In that book, her theory was that vampires were untreated diabetics, and she had a point. Extreme thirst, receding gums (so your teeth look longer), deathlike comas...there's been a few other disorders ive heard about.

First off, LOL @ Csis smokin smilie

Second, isn't there a clinical disease where the person actually requires blood (strictly human Im not sure,) in order to live?? (Obviously I mean blood other than that in their veins )

- Dark

i think lukemia can do that to you, kills off the marrow or something. other than that, i havent heard.

but drinking blood wouldnt help because anything useful gets digested.

Thee are cults who drink their own blood and/or drink others blood by brutily murdering them. But the vampires you are thinking of are basicly old versions of ghosts, not by like being see through and stuff, but if you saw a relative thats suposivly dead back then you would say it's a vampire instead of a ghost. But unlike a ghost which is supposed to be spiret, a vampire is an evil spiret controling a fresh corpse. Kind of like zombies, so screw that dracula crap.

And the only reason they used garlic was because it was probably the only thing that smelled stronger than the bloodthristy zombie!

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~vampire/fictrend.html

Like "csis" said which I totally agree with, almost all legends and myths have small truth in them. But I have to fight with that in a way. Because legends were created when they were created, usually the case - a long time ago! And if it weren't to be written down, the story could be changed, exaggerated, or customized to the way they want it to be. During years and years of memorizing and retelling and rechanging, the original story can have a whole different main idea, setting, and characters from the newest version. So for all we know, they could just have .000001 truth in it.

Well, consuming blood wouldn't technically do anything but make you very ill. Your body simply can't process it. And I believe there was a disease that included severe cramping, and people believed that consuming would blood alleviated the symptoms.

The only thing that I know about taking out blood by creatures is the common leech. The gross black blood suckers in the lakes. But I do know that in hospitals, if you have bad blood (diseased) they put leeches on you to suck the non-good blood out...

They also use them on amputees, to help drain the new wound.

Yes, true - thank you.

Anytime

I found this gross disgusting picture with leeches on it if you carefully look and follow the arrows, check it out:

WARNING: I ADVISE YOU IT MAY HARM YOU AND IS GROSS. WARNING!

http://www.unbc.ca/nlui/wildlife_diseases_...ech_mallard.jpg

That's awesome, and not that bad. I've seen much, much worse.

It is awesome...Its pefectly cut, strange though?

Someone probably cut it open then put the leeches on. But I think we may be getting a tad off topic here.

Yes we are, sorry -

Could vampires exist? Sure. But if they do its in a form most modern people wouldn't recognize. Our modern image of a vampire was invented mostly by Hollywood and a few romantic era authors. Heck more then any thing its the result of Anne Rice who has almost not familiarity with vamprie lore and doesn't want any.

Traditionally vampires were dead people who crawled out of the grave and attacked the living. They looked and smelled exacytly like you'd think some one who just dug themselves out of a grave would. There is in fact a strong implication that vampires in lore are not even physical creatures. They passed through solid objects, induced phantommania and often were believed to go out wandering while there corpse lay beneath the earth. The blood drinking thing is more a product of Stoker then legend. Traditionally vampires fed from the center of the chest leaving a dark bruise shape when they left. The blood was more seen as a way of siphoning off life energy then a staple of diet. Also the whole biting thing is mostly absent from legend(with a single Polish story being a notable exception). Most vampires got that way because they were evil sinful people in life and the earth would not receive them. In fact the ritual of excomunication(which formally curses the person so that the earth will not recieve the body and they will be cast out of Heaven to wander the earth till judgement) was one of the most common causes of vampirism in lore.

Like a lot of people, I belive that legends about things like vampires probably started on some truth, but over years and years they have been exaggurated to becom less beliveable. We can't prove things like this don't exist, but we can't prove that they do, either. It's just something we can't really exlain.

I believe the disease most commonly blamed for vampiric appearances is porphyria.

yeh. i think i heard of that.

Interesting facts based on porphria:
http://www.thedoctorsdoctor.com/diseases/porphyria.htm

The porphyria connection is actually complete nonsense. it was invented by a doctor who had seen lots of vampire movies but never actually studied the mythology. To give some examples of the problems:
First porphyria is commonly connected to extreme hair growth some thing never reported in vampires
Second sufferers have a violent allergic reaction to sun light. Contrary to movies vampires are not burned or harmed by sunlight. This notion was invented entirely by the makers of the film Nosferatu who were trying to dodge the copy right laws on the novel Dracula(if you actually read the book Dracula was weaker during the day but not harmed by it)

Ahhhh! I can't find out what this disease is called! Something like hypertrichomia which is a disorder of uncontrollable rapid hair growth...

Poryphr...pory...por-whatever. Thanks for the information on that, guys, do you have any more?

Wow - I can't believe I can't find these disease.

Its not porphyria. I posted it in a thread a while back. Whatever, its not that important.

The diseases most likely to explain vampirism are TB and anemia. As I already showed the porphyria thing is garbage(for that matter porphyria is a genetic disorder thats long been common to nobility most vampires were supposed to be peasants). In so far as diseases explain vampirism its ones like TTB that do it. People saw huge numbers of people die by slowly wasting away and may have thought up the idea of vampires to explain it. Since the vampires usually encountered directly were the corpse laying in the grave its more likely that the natural processes of decomposition explain the appearance credited to them.

I wouldn't understand how someone can make a story up about sucking blood from other creatures and living forever based on a psat event where a corpse was defined by TB?

Actually thats just it. MOst of the lore isn't overly specific on the immortality point. Most stories involve a deceased family member comming back not long dead nobility. THe stories probably began to explain why some people started wasting away for no apparent reason(the blood drinking was assumed because of the pallor accounts of wounds are less common). TO understand vampire lore and its origins you have to start by rejecting almost every thing you think you know. Anne Rice is a mediocre writer and frankly what she knows about vampire lore wouldn't fill a chapter in one of her books. Stoker got things pretty accurately but to see it you need to read the book itself and skip the movies.

There's something about decomposing bodies. i forget what it is, but sometimes blood forms around the mouth. Medeival man, not knowing the workings of the physical world, decided that if a dead body looked bloated and had blood arund the mouth, it must have gotten up and fed on blood, probably human.

you should pick up a copy of 'The Vampire In Europe' a reprinting of the original works of Montague Summers, I believe. Quite a hard slog, but rewarding none-the -less. I had the fortune of visiting a location of a supposed vampire case back in the UK. It happened in a small village in the Lake District called 'Croglin'. Check out this link to get the heads up, a neat little story:

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/legends/croglin.html

Hoagy

Bodies also continue to grow their hair and nails for a short period too, and gases that build up can be expelled through body cavities, making the corpse moan, or maybe even burp or fart.

Hoagy

Vampires... hmm... *shows unnaturally large canine teeth*... And I really do have them... haha now I'm gonna go get some red contacts and freak out my friends...

Hey there's this really neat book called The Science of Vampires by Katherine Ramsland PHD. It's really neat and all, but it does have some mature aspects to it, just so ya know!



Who wants ta be my first victim...

Hey mods... Got something for ya...

*holds up chocolate*

PEACE!!! BE FRIENDS!!!

I heard that's a misconception, the hair and nails. Corpses shrink because they loose water, but hair and nails dont, so they appear longer.

That is probably also true, but there are accounts of graves being exhumed and the body, while swollen in decomposition, had long nails. The same could probably also go for the hair.

Hoagy

that's what i mean. Decomp makes it look like hair and nails continue to grow, they really dont.

Hair and nails do not continue to grow thats an old superstition. They may grow for a very short period of time(but not in any substantial ammount) but once the body dies cellular death follows fairly quickly. The illusion people describe is actually caused by decomposition. The skin around the nails and hair receeds giving the illusion of greater length.

Excellent description well done.

Ty I spent most of my youth studying vampire lore I picked up quite a bit.