BLOGPOST 3: Vampires Myths

It doesn't mean that myths and legends are all true they called it myths just because it is a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary or in the common use of the word, unnatural. That’s why it is not confirmed to be 100% true. There is no single known source of the vampire myth, although variations have been around for centuries. These myths manifested themselves in many different ways depending on their environment and culture.

I've learn many things from reading the article of Sasha Ingber, "The Bloody Truth About Serbia's Vampire" from the site news.nationalgeographic. People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else to live. People believed in vampires especially between 16th and 18th centuries, little was known about what happens to the body after death. During plagues and epidemics, mass graves were continually reopened to bury new dead. Mostly, garlic is the one that people are using to avoid vampires to come and kill them because of the strong smell of the garlic. Apotropaic, meaning able to ward off evil spirits. But the specific garlic-vampire connection was popularized by 19th and 20th century novels and movies.

People are also looking for proofs that do vampires really existed, but there's nothing. All the old reports about vampires talk about real events and real exhumation of bodies of suspected vampires. But they are misinterpretations of the transformed phenomena of corpses. People are just afraid of vampires because they're afraid of the dead. The same reason why people are afraid of ghosts. A vampire is a dead body brought back to life, so to speak, perhaps by the devil or an evil spirit.

According to the Author  Sasha Ingber, "Following a recent scare, experts shed light on the enduring myth of the undead."  Throughout history, society has created monsters to explain the mysteries of the world. Mysteries that science had not yet made clear to them. Ghosts, sea monsters, aliens, zombies, and of course, no monster has experienced as much fame as the vampire. Early belief in vampires has been blamed on ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people rationalized it. When a community was plagued by a mysterious illness or unexplained livestock deaths, a vampire explained the mystery without the necessity of science. 



I read another article written by  Lesa Whyte, "Vampire"  from the site pantheon.org. That vampires are related to the death which rises to drink the blood of the living coming out of cultures all around the world, from Africa to Japan to Sapina and to UK. The vampire has humans enthralled for centuries. The victims of a vampire either dies or becomes a vampire. Vampires could also be made in a variety of ways: a child born under certain omens, a cat or other animal jumping over a dead body, someone who committed suicide, and practising witchcraft are some activities thought to be the cause of vampirism. Even inanimate objects and animals were thought to be able to become vampires: pumpkins, watermelons and other fruit that was left out past a certain amount of time, latches that were left unlatched too long, dogs, horses, sheep and snakes are among the objects with vampiric potential in older superstitions of the Slavic gypsy community.

Vampires can be able to take the form of a bat. They can also control creatures like rats and wolves, and the elements were at their command. In order to protect yourself from a vampire, the cross or crucifix was thought to be very powerful in the Christian countries. Little is known of how holy symbols were used as vampire protection before the Christian era, however, folk-cures were often employed. Garlic was the most popular vampire repellent. It could be destroyed by cremation, cutting off its head, exposing it to sunlight or by driving a stake through its heart. 

According to Lesa Whyte, "An undead that rises from the grave during the night to drink the blood of the living in order to stay "alive". Generally the word "undead" refers to a creature that should be dead but is still active within the realm of the living." Although vampire’s are generally viewed to be fictitious, vampire-like creatures still persist all over the world. Supernatural beings drinking blood or flesh can be found in nearly every culture. Many scholars of the period reported that vampires did not exist. As time passes, everything changes, and the vampire legend was affected by the modernization of the world and its transforming perspectives accordingly.