Vampirism - origins

[kaylasdad99]

Apologies if this has been dealt with before:

It's fairly well-known vampire-lore that vampirism is contagious; that is, if you get yourself bit by one, you become one yourself.

Any stories about how the first vampire became so afflicted?

[picker]

He bit his own tongue?

[Captain Amazing]

There are all sorts of different legends about how somebody becomes a vampire, and the "you become a vampire if another bites you" is just one of those legends. You could become a vampire if:

You're descended from Cain from the bible
You're a suicide
An animal jumps over your corpse
You're buried in nonconsecrated ground
You've blasphemed against God
You die from an open wound
You're a wizard
You're not baptized
You eat from a sheep killed by a wolf
You're a stillborn child
You're the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son
The shadow of a living man falls over your corpse
You were cursed
You were born with a caul
You're a perjurer

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Any stories about how the first vampire became so afflicted?

Various, depending on the author(s). In the old World of Darkness Cain the first murderer was the first vampire, I understand.

Fred Saberhagen's vampires not only spread by bite, but normal humans can become one by effort of will; a transcendent refusal to die. Presumably the first vampire was some such person.

In Marvel comics, the first vampires were created by ancient Atlantean sorcerers using the Darkhold as magical super-soldiers.

[BrotherCadfael]

As always, Buffy has the answer:

Giles: This world is older than any of you know. Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the Earth. They made it their home, their... their Hell. But in time they lost their purchase on this reality. The way was made for mortal animals, for, for man. All that remains of the old ones are vestiges, certain magicks, certain creatures.

The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul. He bit another, and another, and so they walk the Earth, feeding... Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out, and the old ones to return.

[Petey]

Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat has a section about the first vampires.

[Snickers]

And it involves a demon as well.

[CalMeacham]

Captain Amazing gives most of the "traditional" ways to become a vampire, but I want to add just one more:


In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula didn't become a vampire by being bitten by another vampire, or by any of the methods CA gives. Nor does he becomes condemned for cursing God for the death of his wife, as in the Francis Ford Coppola movie.


in the book, he was one of a set of proto-wizards who attended the "Devil's School" of black arts, it's said. The price of admission was to take the chance of being condemned for it -- one member of the class would become a vampire. Dracula drew the short straw, so to speak.

[Lamia]

Originally Posted by Captain Amazing

There are all sorts of different legends about how somebody becomes a vampire, and the "you become a vampire if another bites you" is just one of those legends. You could become a vampire if:

You're descended from Cain from the bible
You're a suicide
An animal jumps over your corpse
You're buried in nonconsecrated ground
You've blasphemed against God
You die from an open wound
You're a wizard
You're not baptized
You eat from a sheep killed by a wolf
You're a stillborn child
You're the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son
The shadow of a living man falls over your corpse
You were cursed
You were born with a caul
You're a perjurer

Captain Amazing's list covers most of the folklore causes of vampirism that I've heard of. The only other one I remember ever reading about is that in one region (somewhere in Eastern Europe?) blue-eyed redheads were considered likely to become vampires. The Greek island of Santorini was also said to be home to many vampires, perhaps because IRL decomposition of buried corpses is somewhat slower than usual due to the local soil composition. I'm not sure if it was traditionally believed that people from Santorini were particularly susceptible to vampirism, though.

In folklore and early vampire literature vampirism is not commonly described as contagious, it's usually due to the circumstances of a person's birth, death, or burial, or because they did something wicked or sinful in life. The victims of vampires usually just died rather than becoming vampires themselves.

Folk stories about werewolves are pretty similar. Traditionally, werewolves were either born that way or became werewolves through the use of dark magic or a pact with the Devil. The idea that werewolfism is contagious is a recent one (I don't think it predates the mid 20th century) and was apparently borrowed from vampire stories.

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula didn't become a vampire by being bitten by another vampire, or by any of the methods CA gives. Nor does he becomes condemned for cursing God for the death of his wife, as in the Francis Ford Coppola movie.

in the book, he was one of a set of proto-wizards who attended the "Devil's School" of black arts, it's said. The price of admission was to take the chance of being condemned for it -- one member of the class would become a vampire. Dracula drew the short straw, so to speak.

I didn't remember Stoker being as specific as this about how Dracula became a vampire, but you're correct. Here's Van Helsing, as recorded in Mina Harker's journal entry for September 30:

The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as 'stregoica' witch, 'ordog' and 'pokol' Satan and hell, and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all understand too well.

[Cuckoorex]

To add to the list; being born on Christmas is supposed to be another way to become a vampire, though in some regions a Christmas birth will result in a werewolf instead.

[De La Rue]

Originally Posted by Cuckoorex

To add to the list; being born on Christmas is supposed to be another way to become a vampire, though in some regions a Christmas birth will result in a werewolf instead.

Humphrey Bogart was a vampire?

[Jihi]

Originally Posted by De La Rue

Humphrey Bogart was a vampire?

Or a werewolf. It could have been either one.

[Jihi]

Just to contribute a little bit...

That excerpt from Dracula is fascinating to me. I've never read Stoker's original novel and had no idea that he played with the idea of sorcery and damnation, (however perfunctorily). It looks like something that could have come from an Anne Rice novel or a WoD book.

[Tim R. Mortiss]

My favorite vampire origin story is from an under-appreciated movie called Dracula 2000. In it, the very first vampire turned out to be....

SPOILER:

Judas Iscariot, who became a vampire as a result of his betrayal of Christ.

[MrDibble]

Originally Posted by Petey

Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat has a section about the first vampires.

Originally Posted by Snickers

And it involves a demon as well.

I'd say more of a Small God, in the Pratchett sense.

I also have read of Longinus, the Wandering Jew and Lilith as the first vampire.

[TBG]

Originally Posted by Tim R. Mortiss

My favorite vampire origin story is from an under-appreciated movie called Dracula 2000. In it, the very first vampire turned out to be....

SPOILER:

Judas Iscariot, who became a vampire as a result of his betrayal of Christ.

I hated that origin, but anyway, I think they retconned that in the direct to video sequels. That was just another guise he took on. He changes form every time he dies and comes back, guess he's a timelord or something. His final regeneration? Rutger Hauer, who's played a vampire enough times that people might start wondering if he isn't one himself.

[Walker in Eternity]

Isn't there a legend linking vampirism with Lilith, who was supposedly Adam's first wife? Or is that an invention of Marvel comics too?

[jjimm]

Originally Posted by De La Rue

Humphrey Bogart was a vampire?

Forget Bogart - Jesus was a vampire!

Though that would explain the resurrection, and how he got all those followers so quickly...

[CalMeacham]

Humphrey Bogart was a vampire?

The surprising answer is, Yes, in fact.

Check out the old movie The Return of Dr. X, in which Bogey does, in fact, play a vampire. He hated the role, which he felt more appropriate for Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff, but the studio said to do it, and they owned him.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0031851/

http://movieposters.ha.com/common/vi...4&Lot_No=85022

[CalMeacham]

Isn't there a legend linking vampirism with Lilith, who was supposedly Adam's first wife? Or is that an invention of Marvel comics too?

Not a legend linking her to vampires -- lots of enthusiastic vampire-loving geeks, looking for the old roots of the vampire legend, seized upon her reputation for drinking blood and decided that she was an early vampire. In fact, there's nothing exactly like the vampire in the ancient world, although there are plenty of blood-drinking monsters and Undead Things. Richard Burton titled one of his translations of Indian horror Vikram and the Vampyre, but the titular vampuire is a traditional Indian demon that's not exactly like the modern conception. In fact, as I've frequently pointed out, out modern conception of the vampire is largely a 19th century literary creation. Vampires certainly existed earlier, but in East European folklore they were poor, dirty, shambling creatures who people knew were dead and werre generally peasants. Their activity was usually implied rather than seen, and they were often perceived in the body only when they were dug up and dispatched by fire, stake, or other means. It was in literature that we first had the Vampire who came from somewhere else and could pass for human (since no one knew they were dead), and it's from literature* that we got the aristocratic, titled vampire



*Polidori's The Vampyre and a few earlier cases.

[FriarTed]

Originally Posted by Cuckoorex

To add to the list; being born on Christmas is supposed to be another way to become a vampire, though in some regions a Christmas birth will result in a werewolf instead.

Is that actual lore, though, or cinematic invention? That premise was also used for the Hammer Studios film CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF starring Oliver Reed in the title role.

[smiling bandit]

And don't forget that Werewolves who die and aren't properly destroyed or interred will then rise as Vampires. It's a logical extension of the myth anyhow, and was IIRC common in eastern Europe. Both were seen as a somewhat unpleasant form of dark mysticism or Satanic pact, so if you got killed, you'd just rise as a Vampire. Of course, vampires were nothing like our sexy modern ones jsut as CalMeacham says. They were utter monsters and none-too-interesting.

I'm not sure where the idea that werewolf-ism was catching started. It may be related to vampirism, and of course we've gotten increasingly silly movies treating vampires and zombies as people with diseases. How diseases ressurect you from the grave and give you supernatural powers, I don't know. The most reasonable treatment was in something like 28 days later, but even then and there the infected would have quickly died out, being incapable of surviving.

Now, back to werewolves. A friend of mine pointed out the modern werewolf idea may have much to do with puberty. The classical view was someone who turned into a killer wolf. The mdoern, however, is basically that a teenager who begins to get a little aggressive and sexual interested. He starts staying out late and growing hair in funny places. He goes and drags pretty girls into the bushes and if we see her again she's all mussed up. Sure, it's a little simplified, but the concept has a lot to reccomend it as a cheezy movie shorthand.

[CalMeacham]

Now, back to werewolves. A friend of mine pointed out the modern werewolf idea may have much to do with puberty. The classical view was someone who turned into a killer wolf. The modern, however, is basically that a teenager who begins to get a little aggressive and sexual interested. He starts staying out late and growing hair in funny places. He goes and drags pretty girls into the bushes and if we see her again she's all mussed up. Sure, it's a little simplified, but the concept has a lot to recommend it as a cheesy movie shorthand.

As a weird little side note, one of the features of the vampire that appears in Bram Stoker's novel (and it mat be the first time appears, since i haven't seen it elsewhere) has never been used in the films -- it'd be laughed off the screen today. And it ties in neatly with your hormonally-charged werewolf ideas

SPOILER:

According to Dracula, Vampires have hair on their palms

[FriarTed]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

As a weird little side note, one of the features of the vampire that appears in Bram Stoker's novel (and it mat be the first time appears, since i haven't seen it elsewhere) has never been used in the films -- it'd be laughed off the screen today. And it ties in neatly with your hormonally-charged werewolf ideas

SPOILER:

According to Dracula, Vampires have hair on their palms

I'm pretty sure that one scene in Coppola's version showed

SPOILER:

white silky hair on the palms of

elderly Dracula.

That would be pretty cool to have, actually.

Sorry. Just sayin'. Ya know.

[Lamia]

Thinking about it some more this morning, the idea that people bitten by a vampire became vampires themselves may be pretty recent. I'm not sure I've ever seen this recorded as an element of a folktale, although I may just not be remembering. As I said before, the most common fate for victims of vampire bites in folklore and early vampire literature seems to have been death. In Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) the titular vampire's previous victims just died, and IIRC in Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) Lord Ruthven's victims likewise die.

In Dracula Lucy becomes a vampire after being bitten by Dracula repeatedly, but it's not clear to me that this was all that was involved. When Dracula attacks Mina he not only drinks her blood but forces her to drink his. She then begins to develop vampiric traits. It's stated in the book that drinking Dracula's blood formed a psychic connection between Mina and Dracula, but it may also be that this was a necessary step in transforming someone into a vampire. Or it may be that repeated vampire bites are necessary to turn the victim into a vampire.

Dracula's brides drink from a couple of children early in the book, as does Lucy later on, and it doesn't appear than any of them become vampires. In the latter case this may be because Vampire Lucy is destroyed while the children are still alive, but it's strongly suggested that the children fed to Dracula's brides are killed and there's no sign of vampire children roaming around the castle. And when Jonathan Harker is left in the castle with Dracula's brides, it seems that his fate ultimate fate will be death rather than vampirism. Since he escapes it's not clear what would have happened to him if he'd been left to the female vampires, but I doubt Dracula would have wanted Jonathan hanging around his ancestral home forever. The ill-fated crew of the Demeter also do not appear to become vampires, although since their bodies are never found it could be that Dracula destroyed the bodies or tossed them overboard to prevent the men from rising as vampires.

[CalMeacham]

Thinking about it some more this morning, the idea that people bitten by a vampire became vampires themselves may be pretty recent. I'm not sure I've ever seen this recorded as an element of a folktale, although I may just not be remembering. As I said before, the most common fate for victims of vampire bites in folklore and early vampire literature seems to have been death. In Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) the titular vampire's previous victims just died, and IIRC in Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) Lord Ruthven's victims likewise die.

I had the same thought, so I looked into it.

The vampire-begets-vampire thing really does seem to be part of the folklore. And it's very clearly in Varney the Vampire, which long predates Carmilla and Dracula

[BrotherCadfael]

Originally Posted by Tim R. Mortiss

My favorite vampire origin story is from an under-appreciated movie called Dracula 2000. In it, the very first vampire turned out to be....

SPOILER:

Judas Iscariot, who became a vampire as a result of his betrayal of Christ.

Spike: "If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock! I was actually at Woodstock. That was a weird gig. I fed off a flower person, and spent the next six hours watching my hand move."

[BrotherCadfael]

Originally Posted by Lamia

In Dracula Lucy becomes a vampire after being bitten by Dracula repeatedly, but it's not clear to me that this was all that was involved. When Dracula attacks Mina he not only drinks her blood but forces her to drink his. She then begins to develop vampiric traits.

Buffy: "To make you a vampire, they have to suck your blood and then you have to suck their blood. It's a whole big sucking thing."

[ZPG Zealot]

Originally Posted by FriarTed

Is that actual lore, though, or cinematic invention? That premise was also used for the Hammer Studios film CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF starring Oliver Reed in the title role.

I heard it discussed among Croatia country people who probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to be exposed to Western werewolf films, so I would say likely real folklore. There is a lot of folklore in both Latin and Greek church involving births on saints' days or during Christmas or Easter.

[CalMeacham]

In Dracula Lucy becomes a vampire after being bitten by Dracula repeatedly, but it's not clear to me that this was all that was involved. When Dracula attacks Mina he not only drinks her blood but forces her to drink his. She then begins to develop vampiric traits. It's stated in the book that drinking Dracula's blood formed a psychic connection between Mina and Dracula, but it may also be that this was a necessary step in transforming someone into a vampire. Or it may be that repeated vampire bites are necessary to turn the victim into a vampire.

One thing that was driven home to me when I read Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula was how inconsistent Stoker was with his vampire traits -- they seem to change as needed to fit the situations of the book.


There's no evidence that the area around Castle Dracula is filled with secondary vampires, even though the feeding of his "wives' on a child is strongly implied. The crew of the Vesta don't seem to come back as vampires, despite being killed off by Dracula (he is presumably feeding on their blood -- it'd be an awful waste is he was just pitching them overboard).

Lucy Westenra becomes a vampire after being sucked by Dracula for several nights, but, if there was a "Lucy Sucks Dracula" ceremony, there's nothing said or indicated about it. Mina is sucked by Dracula and herself is forced to drink his blood -- but whether that was necessary for the becoming a vampire or just for the psychic bond isn't clear. There's no implication that the children Vampire Lucy attacks become vampires.


Yet, as I recall, Professor Van Helsing does state that those sucked by vampires become vampires themselves, and he says nothing about other necessary ceremonies, like sucking the vampire's blood.




I suspect that this wasn't really thought out as a well-developed unbiological system. When I took my first course on Differential Equations, we explored the predator-prey relationships of a population of vampires, victims, and Van Helsings, and the vampires would overwhelm the Van Helsings unless they industriously kept at the stake-pounding (which seems to be the background of the upcoming film Daybreakers) Certainly recent fiction, like Christopher Moore's You Suck and Blood-Sucking Fiends suggest that vampires consciously kill their victims so they won't become vampires, and give unwanted competition.

[De La Rue]

Originally Posted by jjimm

Forget Bogart - Jesus was a vampire!

Though that would explain the resurrection, and how he got all those followers so quickly...

Wait, I thought Jesus was a zombie...

Although, really, I've never seen much difference between vampires and zombies (at least in concept, notwithstanding the specifics of different folklore from different places). Both reanimated corpses, essentially, but vampires seem to have better PR.

[CalMeacham]

Nitpicky correction -- the ship was the Demeter in the book. It was the Vesta in the 1931 film.

[MacTech]

Originally Posted by jjimm

Forget Bogart - Jesus was a vampire!

Though that would explain the resurrection, and how he got all those followers so quickly...

Naah, I thought the "Big J" was actually an unusually articulate Zombie...

[CalMeacham]

Hmmmm....

Have you fellows seen this book?

the Last Days of Christ the Vampire

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Chri.../dp/188662500X

[TWDuke]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

One thing that was driven home to me when I read Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula was how inconsistent Stoker was with his vampire traits -- they seem to change as needed to fit the situations of the book.


There's no evidence that the area around Castle Dracula is filled with secondary vampires, even though the feeding of his "wives' on a child is strongly implied. The crew of the Vesta don't seem to come back as vampires, despite being killed off by Dracula (he is presumably feeding on their blood -- it'd be an awful waste is he was just pitching them overboard).

Lucy Westenra becomes a vampire after being sucked by Dracula for several nights, but, if there was a "Lucy Sucks Dracula" ceremony, there's nothing said or indicated about it. Mina is sucked by Dracula and herself is forced to drink his blood -- but whether that was necessary for the becoming a vampire or just for the psychic bond isn't clear. There's no implication that the children Vampire Lucy attacks become vampires.


Yet, as I recall, Professor Van Helsing does state that those sucked by vampires become vampires themselves, and he says nothing about other necessary ceremonies, like sucking the vampire's blood.

It's been years since I read Dracula, but I thought the sire (not a word Stoker used) had a choice in the matter. Most of his victims were merely disposable food sources, but turning Lucy and Mina was a deliberate act of spite and malice toward the Scooby gang (also not a Stoker term).

Lucy's interactions with Dracula are left to the imagination, as appropriate given the form of the novel. If there was an initiation ritual, neither Lucy nor Dracula would have recorded it, and to have someone else witness it would have robbed the scene with Mina of its impact.

Whether other vampires had the ability to create new vampires was left undefined, although neither Lucy nor the Transylvanian brides evidenced much independent planning.

[Lamia]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

One thing that was driven home to me when I read Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula was how inconsistent Stoker was with his vampire traits -- they seem to change as needed to fit the situations of the book.

I don't know that this was deliberate on Stoker's part, but I think some degree of inconsistency or uncertainty as to the vampire's characteristics make for better horror. The more the vampire hunters know about Dracula's powers the better prepared they are to defeat him. He's scarier if he's not fully understood.

Lucy Westenra becomes a vampire after being sucked by Dracula for several nights, but, if there was a "Lucy Sucks Dracula" ceremony, there's nothing said or indicated about it. Mina is sucked by Dracula and herself is forced to drink his blood -- but whether that was necessary for the becoming a vampire or just for the psychic bond isn't clear. There's no implication that the children Vampire Lucy attacks become vampires.

Looking at the relevant passage now, I learn more toward the idea that the blood-drinking was just to form the psychic bond. I'd forgotten that Dracula's own words (as recounted by Mina to Dr. Seward, diary entry of October 3) suggest this is the case:

"You have aided in thwarting me. Now you shall come to my call. When my brain says 'Come!' to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding. And to that end this!" With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow...

Dracula also makes a point of telling Mina during this encounter that it is "not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!" Since we know he also drank from Lucy several times over a period of time, I'd consider it more likely that this is the method Dracula uses to create a vampire. This isn't actually stated in the text, but it would explain why Lucy became a vampire and why Mina was in danger of becoming one, but the other people bitten by vampires in the novel apparently do not become vampires.

Yet, as I recall, Professor Van Helsing does state that those sucked by vampires become vampires themselves, and he says nothing about other necessary ceremonies, like sucking the vampire's blood.

Do you remember where this is in the book? I don't doubt you (you remembered Dracula's origin story better than I did), but I can't find this in the book myself.

Certainly recent fiction, like Christopher Moore's You Suck and Blood-Sucking Fiends suggest that vampires consciously kill their victims so they won't become vampires, and give unwanted competition.

I'm reminded of the vampire character Vlad in Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum, who tells Agnes that while it's possible for vampires to change humans into vampires, they don't generally like to do so. It isn't a very appealing idea for them -- he asks Agnes how she'd feel about taking something she liked to eat, like chocolate, and turning it into a person. Discworld vampires seem to reproduce sexually. This isn't explicit in the text, but Carpe Jugulum features an all-vampire family with a mother, father, and two kids. Pratchett doesn't give an origin story for vampires, but I think that they're just another magical species native to the Discworld the same as trolls, dwarves, and werewolves.

In Whitley Streiber's The Hunger and The Last Vampire (both of which feature some interesting ideas but are IMHO pretty bad), vampires are described as being a humanoid species that is distinct from Homo sapiens. In The Hunger it's strongly suggested that the vampire race evolved on Earth alongside humans, but The Last Vampire is inconsistent with this and makes it clear that vampires came to Earth from another planet. The vampires in this series normally reproduce sexually, but they have a low birth rate as vampire women only ovulate three times in their entire lengthy lives. Their human victims don't become vampires, they just die. The main vampire character, Miriam, is the only one to ever transform humans into vampire-like beings. She accomplishes this by performing a blood transfusion on the humans, injecting them with her own blood. In The Last Vampire we learn that other vampires think she's a freak and something of a pervert for doing this.

Originally Posted by TWDuke

It's been years since I read Dracula, but I thought the sire (not a word Stoker used) had a choice in the matter. Most of his victims were merely disposable food sources, but turning Lucy and Mina was a deliberate act of spite and malice toward the Scooby gang (also not a Stoker term).

Lucy's interactions with Dracula are left to the imagination, as appropriate given the form of the novel. If there was an initiation ritual, neither Lucy nor Dracula would have recorded it, and to have someone else witness it would have robbed the scene with Mina of its impact.

I'm quoting this because I was going to say something similar. Browsing through Dracula for the relevant passages, I do get the impression that Dracula had some discretion when it came to whether or not his victims would become vampires. This isn't made explicit, but he's presumably fed on more than five people over the years and yet there are at most five people who he turns (or attempts to turn) into vampires: the three female vampires at Castle Dracula, Lucy, and Mina.

Right now I'm inclined to favor the idea that it's repeated vampire bites that turn a human into a vampire in Dracula, but it could instead be that the victim has to actually die of the vampire bite. This does appear elsewhere in vampire fiction. The F.G. Loring short story "The Tomb of Sarah" (1900) closes with the narrator saying that a child bitten by the vampire recovered once the vampire was destroyed, and says he's not worried about the child's future safety because "It is only those who die of the vampire's embrace that become vampires at death in their turn."

[Lamia]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

I had the same thought, so I looked into it.

The vampire-begets-vampire thing really does seem to be part of the folklore. And it's very clearly in Varney the Vampire, which long predates Carmilla and Dracula

I re-read Polidori's The Vampyre this evening (which predates Varney, a book I confess I've never read), and I was right in remembering that there's no indication that Lord Ruthven's victims become vampires. However, the introduction tells a story about a man who was preyed upon by a vampire and became a vampire himself once he died, and has a footnote reading "The universal belief is, that a person sucked by a vampyre becomes a vampyre himself, and sucks in his turn." It's an obvious exaggeration to call this a universal belief, but this does indicate that such a belief was pretty well-known by the early 19th century.

Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla" (1887) and Eric Stenbock's "The Sad Story of a Vampire" (1894) are two other pre-Dracula (but post-Varney) stories in which the vampire's victim does not become a vampire. However, in both cases it seems that the vampire doesn't actually bite the victims or drink their blood at all, but preys upon them psychically or perhaps sucks the breath from their mouths.

Getting back to the OP, none of these stories provide a clear explanation of the vampire's origins, but the narrator of "The Horla" believes that the invisible vampiric being is a member of a new non-human species. It may have evolved on Earth (its immediate origins are in the jungles of Brazil), but there's some suggestion that it might have come from elsewhere in the universe. Or it may be that the narrator is just crazy and there is no vampire at all -- he expresses this fear himself in the story.

[BrotherCadfael]

Originally Posted by TWDuke

It's been years since I read Dracula, but I thought the sire (not a word Stoker used) had a choice in the matter. Most of his victims were merely disposable food sources, but turning Lucy and Mina was a deliberate act of spite and malice toward the Scooby gang (also not a Stoker term).

OK, I'm goggling over considering Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, William Seward (Lord Godalming), and Quincy Morris the Scoobies...