LibGuides: EvCC Reads!: Staking Your Claim: Vampires in Lore and Fiction

Vampires are not your friends, nor do they glisten in the sunlight. Don't mess around with them. The stakes are too high.

Vampires, and creatures similar to them, appear in the folklore of many cultures going back many centuries. Stories from Mesopotamia, Hebrew culture, Albania, Greece, Romania, Russia, Africa, Asia, and the Americas demonstrate the nearly-universal belief in various forms of blood-sucking creatures.

Vampires capture our imaginations for many reasons, not least of which is our fear of mortality. Despite our devout belief in scientism, based on the false idea that science and religion must exclude each other, belief in the supernatural is still alive and well among us. While only 13% of Americans believe in vampires, that's an impressive statistic for a time in history when materialists claim that the supernatural does not exist at all.

Though essays and dissertations on vampires and related creatures were written in the 16th and 17th centuries, and vampires appear in European poems and stories as early as the 18th century, Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, published in 1897, is the touchstone of vampire stories, particularly for the English-speaking world. It's a brilliant work, even though it's uneven, erratic, and Stoker was a Protestant with a limited understanding of the nature of vampirism. Two delightful modern Catholic novels are suggested in the right column as correctives: Jennifer the Damned and A Bloody Habit, each very different from the other, but both offering keen theological insights into the nature of vampirism as a preternatural phenomenon, and vampires as anti-Christ figures. We are not going to delve into vastly overexposed, vastly overrated vampire stories (sorry, Stephenie Meyer and Anne Rice fans). Also suggested for your reading pleasure are the Ignatius Press Critical Edition of Dracula, and a good biography of Bela Lugosi.

No discussion of vampire stories would be complete without mentioning the motion picture arts, and there are some very fine films out there (sorry, again, Twilight and Interview with the Vampire fans--your vampire films...suck), such as Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931), with the incomparable Bela Lugosi, and the Dracula films by Hammer Films, particularly Terence Fisher's Horror of Dracula (1958) with the magnificent Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

This Hallowe'en season is the perfect time to pick up a book about vampires. Just remember, vampires are not your friends, and they don't glisten in the sunlight. If you meet a vampire, don't invite him home to hang out...give him a stake dinner instead.

Sink your teeth into this poll

13% of Americans believe that vampires are real. Do you?

Yes

I'm not sure

Yes: 6 votes (35.29%)

No: 8 votes (47.06%)

I'm not sure: 3 votes (17.65%)

Total Votes: 17

Critical Essays on Vampires and Horror Fiction

"Cinemanemia or Revenge of the Bloodsucked" by Eleanor Bourg Donlon
"This is symptomatic of a pervasive problem: as we have completely lost the sense of the sacramental nature of reality, we attempt to convey the preternatural through fantasy and costume. The more conspicuous the spectacle and more gaudy the display, the clearer it is that we are dull to its true presence."
"The Catholicity of Monsters" by Karen Ullo
"Bram Stoker may have been baptized in the Church of Ireland, but he respected the specifically Catholic character of the enmity between vampires and humans. The Catholic Dr. Van Helsing serves as the spiritual guide for the novel’s band of vampire-hunting heroes. At every step, he proves the potency of his own Church’s teachings while his Protestant brethren blithely follow. (I have always found it strange that Johnathan, Dr. Seward, et. al. feel no impulse to convert after witnessing the miracles performed by the consecrated Host.) There is no monster more specifically tied to the Holy Roman Church than the vampire."
"Horror and Eternity" by Scott Beauchamp
"The horror of The Thing is a plaintive howl of nihilism. The horror of The Presence is a humbling challenge to our pragmatic, everyday experience of the world. The Thing is disgusting, but The Presence is awful in the traditional sense of the word, as being full of awe. It unsettles and challenges while offering a terrible glimpse of the sublime. A few contemporary cinematic examples of this school of horror can be found in The Sixth Sense, The Others, and perhaps surprisingly The Exorcist."
"Mainstream Gothic" by Robert Grano
"Formerly considered an anti-Christ figure, the vampire is seldom, if ever, portrayed that way nowadays. This is because, in today’s culture, to be 'anti-Christ' does not necessarily signify anything inherently horrific or repellent, as it did in former times. In a certain sense, culturally speaking, there is no longer a Christ to be against."
"The Cross and the Vampire: Religious Themes in Terence Fisher’s Hammer Horrors" by SDG
"Fisher, however, was a high-church Anglican, and famously called his films 'basically morality plays' that reflect his personal belief in 'the ultimate victory of good over evil.' Echoing this, Dracula star Lee cites the ultimate destruction of evil in Fisher’s films as the reason 'the Church doesn’t object to these films, and why they are so popular in Ireland, Spain and Italy.'"
"Vampires, Demons, and the Cross: Catholicism and Horror" by Deacon Steven D. Greydanus
"The devil that might not be there is paradoxically more terrifying than the Devil with wings and horns, because the Devil with wings and horns we meet only in stories, whereas the devil that might not be there is also the devil that really might."

These books about vampires don't suck

Dracula by Bram Stoker; Eleanor Bourg Nicholson (Editor)
Often vacillating wildly between the terrible and the comic, Dracula at the same time brings to life a host of compelling themes: tensions between antiquity and modernity; the powers and limitations of technology; the critical importance of feminine virtue; the difference between superstition and religion; the nature of evil; and, perhaps most compellingly, the complex relationship between ancient faith and scientific enlightenment.
The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi by Arthur Lennig
In the 1931 film Dracula, Bela Lugosi set the standard for horror film villainy. Though many actors have donned the cape since that first production, remnants of Hungarian-born Lugosi’s portrayal continue to surface in popular culture—from highly prized memorabilia to a character on Sesame Street. Offering new insights into the films and personality of an actor who could not overcome Hollywood typecasting, The Immortal Count is the definitive account of Lugosi’s tragic life.
Jennifer the Damned by Karen Ullo
When a sixteen-year-old orphan vampire adopted by an order of nuns matures into her immortal, blood-sucking glory, all hell literally breaks loose. Yet with every rapturous taste of blood, Jennifer Carshaw cannot help but long for something even more exquisite: the capacity to experience true love. As she struggles to balance her murderous secret life with homework, cross-country practice, and her first boyfriend, Jennifer delves into the terrifying questions surrounding her inhuman existence, driven by the unexpectedly human need to understand why she is doomed to a life she never chose.
A Bloody Habit by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
"Although some scant modern writing exists on the mysterious subject of vampires, A Bloody Habit is the first real theological examination of the origins of the vampire state and of the classical battle waged by the Dominican Order against the vampire phenomenon. Eleanor Nicholson's work manages in narrative form both thoroughly to entertain and occasionally to terrify the reader. Her book is an example of magnificent Catholic literature."
—Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Author, The Light of Christ

Still haunting after all these years...

Your Ghost Host for this haunting Hallowe'en edition of EvCC Reads! is Jeffrey D. Pearce, who is the director of logistics operations and a member of the history faculty at EvCC. A companion of the literary society A Ghostly Company, Pearce is the creator and editor of Ghostly Kirk, a web page that collects literary criticism dedicated to the ghost stories of Russell Kirk. In 2017, he and his wife travelled to Michigan, where he gave a talk on Kirk's ghostly tales at The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.