by Dasa Suciu

Created on: November 23, 2010   Last Updated: November 25, 2010

Legends say that a vampire is a man whose body is still living without its soul. The first record of a vampire under the name of “upir” was found in a document dated from 1047, with reference to a Russian prince. In other parts of East Europe, creatures resembling genii were known as vampires or “vampyrs”. Probably these were variations of the Russian “upir”. The vampire legend is present in most parts of the world under many variations.

In Moldavia and Walachia (actual Romania) vampires were called genii or zombies. These are human spirits of the deceased who returned to the world in their dead bodies. Genii undergo several steps before coming out of the grave. Initially invisible, they tease their family by visiting them. After becoming visible, they come back to their kind to eat them. In some texts they appear to suck blood from their victims’ heart. Likewise the “upir”, the genii have to go back to the grave regularly during daytime. After seven years they can live anywhere. It is said they could travel long distances to meet their fellow creatures.

Nobody knows in life if a dead person is going to become a genius or zombie. In old times, it was a Romanian tradition to exhume corpses at three up to seven years after burial to see if they decomposed completely. If not, a wooden spear was introduced into the heart to get rid of them or even the heart was taken out to be burned. This way people were sure the genii are dead.

Abraham Bram Stoker  wrote in 1897 the novel Dracula that contributed a great deal to the spread of the vampire legend in the whole world. He gave his negative character the name of Dracula, the nickname of an old prince that lived once in a medieval country that is now a region of Romania. Vlad Dracul (the real name of the prince) was born in a city in Transylvania, Romania, and the region is also the place where the action of the novel takes place. These and other coincidences led to the idea that the vampire Dracula really lived in Romania. More details about Dracula can be found here http://www.helium.com/items/2021670-romanian-vampire -dracula

Most scientists searched to find in folklore and myths the origins of the belief in vampires. But others tried to explain it by the physical symptoms of certain diseases such as porphyria, catalepsy or anemia. Porphyria is considered a strange disease because it makes the man look like a vampire: the nails and the teeth become longer, sun exposure can cause skin irritation and they strangely cannot stand garlic smell. This describes exactly the most important traits of a vampire. Catalepsy is a disease that causes a death like sleep for hours or even days. There were cases when due to cataleptic sleep people were buried before they wake up and their corpse was found upside down at a later exhumation. 

Although these might have fed the fears of people confronted with understanding vampire conduct, the origin of the belief had probably psychological roots. People tried to explain death, one of the most mysterious aspects of life, by creating tangible persons symbolizing it, such as the blood sucking vampire. 

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