Vampire Forensics (23 page)

Y
OU WOULD NOT
have this book in which to sink your teeth were it not for the efforts of those individuals who pulled together and produced it under very challenging circumstances. Its attractive design is due to the talents of Cameron Zotter and the magic wand of Melissa Farris. If it reads well it is thanks to the exacting labors of copy editor Heather McElwain—not much escapes her eye—and the ability (as well as acuity) of text editor Allan Fallow to plane rough lumber to a smooth luster. To Bridget English and especially to managing editor Jennifer Thornton, I apologize for wheezing into the station so far behind schedule. By sleight of hand they somehow kept things moving.

Nor could this book have been written without the input of the staff and collections of the National Geographic Society Library. Alyson Foster handled all those tiresome requests for books and articles while covering my occasional derelictions of duty. Suz Eaton, who not only has a complete set of Dark Shadows novels but also has read every subsequent vampire tale ever penned, provided me with newspaper clippings. Maggie Turqman always had a cup of coffee or glass of wine to offer. Alison Ince’s thoughtful suggestions on books to read and places to go were and are always welcome. Thanks especially to Cathy Hunter for occasionally lifting the lid to see how I was faring, and to Renee Braden, who dragged me out from time to time for a little fresh moonlight.

A study of vampires is a fascinating but also a grim business. I am grateful to Jim and Elise Blair for providing such a comfortable haven for me to cogitate on such dreary matters as death and burial. The way, of course, had been dug for me by generations of vampire scholars, and I did but follow their burrowings into the dark. To some who have emerged hale and hearty I owe a special obligation: Dr. Mark Yoffe introduced me to Afanasiev and opened a curtain on the hinterlands of Slavic mythology; Paul Sledzik took time during his vacation to chat about his pioneering work on JB-55; and Matteo Borrini not only reviewed Chapter 5—all remaining errors being mine—he also stands at the beginning of the beginning, for it was his work that inspired our efforts.

Finally, my thanks to Lisa Thomas, longtime editor and friend: I met with things dying; you with things newborn. And on that note this book should end.

Full bibliographic citations may be found in the Selected Bibliography. Readers, of course, will already be aware that many print resources are now available on the Web.

C
HAPTER
O
NE
: T
WILIGHT
Z
ONE

See Thomas,
The Lives of a Cell
, 77.

See Ruth La Ferla, “A Trend With Teeth,”
New York Times,
July 2, 2009; Bell,
Food for the Dead
, 295; and Stephen Dixon, “Why Dracula Never Loses His Bite,”
Irish Times,
March 28, 2009.

See Clute and Nicholls,
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
, 1186. The Yarbro quotes are from
Hotel Transylvania
, 278.

On
nosophorus
as “plague carrier,” see for instance Mamunes,
“So Has a Daisy Vanished”: Emily Dickinson and Tuberculosis
, 131.

For rabies, see Juan Gomez-Alonso, “Rabies: A Possible Explanation for the Vampire Legend.”

For porphyria, see “Rare Disease Proposed as Cause for ‘Vampires,’”
New York Times
, May 31, 1985.

For pellagra, see Hampl and Hampl, “Pellagra and the Origin of a Myth,” 636–38.

Summers,
The Vampire: His Kith and Kin,
vii. For Canon Paul Fenneau, see D’Arch Smith,
The Books of the Beast
, 84.

For the black mass and “strange bat-like figure,” see D’Arch Smith,
The Books of the Beast
, 40–42.

For Father Brocard’s remembrance, see Summers,
The Vampire in Europe
, xvi.

Ibid., xvii–xviii, for Summers’s quotes.

Though information, or at least opinion, on the Highgate Vampire is abundant on the Web, I have generally relied on Matthew Beresford’s account in
From Demons to Dracula
, 175–92. See also Melton,
The Vampire Book
, 333–36. Don’t miss the hilarious few paragraphs that Eric Nuzum devotes to it in
The Dead Travel Fast,
122–27.

For the vampire “gorged and stinking,” see Manchester,
The Highgate Vampire
, 86.

For more on Agron, see George Spiegler, “The Capeman Murders” (http://www.homicidesquad.com/images/capeman_murders.htm). For more on Ferrell and Menzies, see the profiles by Katherine Ramsland at http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/vampires/8.html and http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/vampires/13.html.

For Krafft-Ebing, see
Psychopathia Sexualis,
113, 129.

30–31 For more on Haarmann, Haigh, and Kürten, see Melton,
The Vampire Book,
317–319 and 400–401; there are also many Web resources. For Kürten’s quote, see http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/kurten/trial_5.html.

For more on Kuno Hoffman, see Perkowski’s
Vampire Lore
, 63–64. For more on Chase, see Katherine Ramsland, “The Making of a Vampire” (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/chase/index_1.html). For the information on Riva, see Jennifer Mann, “Marshfield’s ‘Vampire Killer’ Up for Parole.”

Concise overviews of Báthory are legion; see, for example, Melton,
The Vampire Book
, 34–39. For arguments that political motives
may
have played a role in her trial, see McClelland,
Slayers and Their Vampires,
150–51. For other treatments, see Valentine Penrose’s
The Bloody Countess
and novelist Marguerite Yourcenar’s
That Mighty Sculptor, Time,
100–101.

For Jaffé and DiCataldo’s quote, see their essay, “Clinical Vampirism: Blending Myth and Reality,” in Dundes,
The Vampire: A Casebook,
143.

C
HAPTER
T
WO
: “T
HE
V
ERY
B
EST
S
TORY OF
D
IABLERIE”

On Stoker’s note to Gladstone, see Miller,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
274.

Ibid., 267, for Conan Doyle’s note.

For the 1831–32 cholera epidemic, see Belford’s
Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula,
18–19.

On the literary background, see Twitchell,
The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature
, 32–38. For Croglin Grange, see Summers,
The Vampire in Europe,
111–15.

Emily Gerard’s article is excerpted in the Norton Critical Edition of
Dracula,
332–33.

All quotes are from Klinger,
The New Annotated Dracula.

For Hamilton Deane, see David J. Skal, “‘His Hour Upon the Stage’: Theatrical Adaptations of Dracula,” in Miller,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
300–308.

For a concise look at Florence Stoker versus
Nosferatu,
see Miller,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
, 299.

Ibid., 304–05, for the reference to the cape.

For Béla Lugosi, see Miller,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
, 319–20, and Klinger,
The New Annotated Dracula,
556–59. For his effectiveness in the role, see Douglas,
Horrors!
, 66–67. For a humorous look at Lugosi’s funereal cape, see Nuzum,
The Dead Travel Fast
, 204.

Zoologist David E. Brown has collected fascinating facts and anecdotes in Brown’s
Vampiro: The Vampire Bat in Fact and Fantasy.
See also Ditmars and Greenhall, “The Vampire Bat,” 295–310 in Perkowski’s
Vampire Lore
.

On “Vlad the Impaler,” the standard biography is still Florescu and McNally,
Dracula, Prince of Many Faces
. A concise sketch is Elizabeth Miller’s essay, on pages 209–17 of her sourcebook,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
. Another paper of note is Grigore Nandris, “The Historical Dracula: The Theme of His Legend.”

For a Romanian perspective during the Ceausescu dictatorship, see Nicolae Stoicescu,
Vlad Tepes: Prince of Walachia.

For stories of Vlad’s atrocities, see the comprehensive list neatly tabulated in McNally and Florescu,
In Search of Dracula
, 193–219.

On the “art” of impalement, see the
Tyndale Bible Dictionary,
269. Although hardly objective, “Turkish Culture: The Art of Impalement” (http://www.e-grammes.gr/2004/11/souvlisma_en.htm) is worth a glance. See also http://www.angelfire.com/darkside/forgottendreams/Impalement.html.

On Dracula’s campaign, see Florescu and McNally,
Dracula: Prince of Many Faces,
125–52.

For the Snagov tomb, see Florescu and McNally,
Dracula: Prince of Many Faces,
179–83.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE
: G
ATHERINGS FROM
G
RAVEYARDS

For more on the summer of 1816 at the Villa Diodati, see Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein,
127–50. Details of the conversations—including vampires, galvanism, and of course, the famous ghost story contest—are related there.

On the Byron-Polidori split, see Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Monsters
, 219–30. On Byron’s description and character, see Trelawny,
Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron
, 33–34, 53, 225.

For Charlotte Brontë and the “corsair,” see Heather Glen,
Charlotte Bronte: The Imagination in History
, 109. Quotations from Polidori’s “The Vampyre” came from Morrison and Baldick, eds.,
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre
.

On Byron being credited with “The Vampyre,” see Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Monsters
, 227. For more on Bérard and Nodier, see Melton,
The Vampire Book
, 223. On the success of “The Vampyre,” especially in Paris, see Senf,
The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English Literature
, 40–42; Twitchell,
The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature
, 104–16; and an unsigned article, “On Vampirism,” 140–49.

For more on Planché, see Senf,
The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English Literature,
42. On Polidori’s suicide, see Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Monsters
, 233–35.

On Shelley’s pyre, see Trelawny,
Recollections,
135–37. On the desiccated heart, see Sunstein,
Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality,
384-385.

On the “restless graveyard,” see Newcomb,
The Imagined World of Charles Dickens
, 166–69.

For premature burial in general, see Bondeson’s fascinating
Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear
. On “Bateson’s Belfry,” see http://www.members.tripod.com/DespiteThis/death/prebur.htm.

On Chopin’s heart, see “Home Is Where the Heart’ll Stay” (http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/d9a2b6c0e9a241b392fe947c69380a7a/26-07-2008-10-51/Home_is_where_the_heartll_stay). The
Blackwoods
article is mentioned in Senf,
The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English Literature,
23.

For “burking” in general, see Thomas Frost, “Burkers and Body-Snatchers” in Andrews’s
The Doctor in History,
167–80. On grave robbing methods, see “The Resurrectionists” in Chambers’s
Book of Days
, 251–52.

On William Burke’s remains, see http://www.webcitation.org/5bUW8rrX2. For the “snatching” of John Harrison and the quote from the Zanesville paper, see Schultz,
Body Snatching,
85–90.

The ghoulish Wendish superstition is quoted in Bell’s
Food for the Dead
, 213.

The authorship of
Varney the Vampyre
was once ascribed to Thomas Peckett Prest but is now largely credited to James Malcolm Rymer. Twitchell’s quote is found in Twitchell,
The Living Dead,
123. Anyone not wishing to wade into the daunting original should not miss Twitchell’s hilarious plot synopsis (207–14).

On the “trashy” quote, see Skal,
Vampires: Encounters with the Undead
, 48.

For insightful readings of
Wuthering Heights
and the vampire, see Senf,
The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English Literature
, 75–93, and Twitchell,
The Living Dead
, 116–22.

For the wider significance of Dickens’s graveyard scenes, see Trevor Blount’s “The Graveyard Satire of
Bleak House
in the context of 1850,” 370–78. For the “two million” London dead, see Dr. George Walker,
Gatherings from Grave Yards,
196.

The Spa Fields gravedigger’s testimony originally appeared in March 5, 1845 edition of
The Times;
it is reprinted in the Norton edition of
Bleak House
, 906–09. The “body bugs” are described in Walker,
Gatherings from Grave Yards,
155.

For “mephitic vapors” and their deleterious impact, see Walker,
Gatherings from Grave Yards,
114–44. On the smallpox killing Lady Dedlock, see John Sutherland’s
Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction,
115–27.

See McNeill,
Plagues and Peoples
, 231. James Hogg’s “Some Terrible Letters from Scotland” is found in
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre
, edited by Morrison and Baldick, 99–112.

See “John Snow and the Broad Street Pump,” Ockham’s Razor, September 5, 2004 (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1190540.htm). For the “witch-ridden” quote, see Bell,
Food for the Dead
, 246.

The 1799 description is from Dubos and Dubos,
The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man and Society,
118.

For the information on Lucy Westenra fitting a tuberculosis diagnosis as much as an anemia one, I am indebted to Paul Sledzik, who first pointed that out in his paper, “Vampires, the Dead, and Tuberculosis: Folk Interpretations.” He also pointed out the
Nicholas Nickleby
quote.

For Sheridan Le Fanu, see Alfred Perceval Graves, “A Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu” (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lefanu/graves/), and M. R. James, “The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu,”
Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter
7 (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveLeFanu.html).

On the original Styrian locale, see Miller,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
, 171–73.

The anonymous “Travels of Three English Gentlemen,” originally written in 1734, was not published until 1810, when it appeared in the
Harleian Miscellany
, 218–319. Lord Byron’s quote can be found in Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Monsters
, 228.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR
: T
HE
V
AMPIRE
E
PIDEMICS

For the Browne quote, see Jill Steward, “Central Europe,”
Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia,
220–24. For the distribution of the “Turkey Oak” (
Quercus cerris
) in southeastern Europe, see Polunin and Walters,
A Guide to the Vegetation of Britain and Europe
, 143–55.

For the “orientalizing” of eastern Europe, and for Mozart, see Steward, “Central Europe.”

For landscapes, agriculture, and the shifting zone of desolation, see Thomas Kabdebo, “Pre-World War II Eastern Europe,” in
Literature of Travel and Exploration,
368–373, and Kann and David,
The Peoples of the Eastern Hapsburg Lands 1526-1918
, 10, 78, and 97. For the Durham quote, see Omer Hadziselimovic, “Pre-1914 Balkans,” 67–71. For the establishment of
lazzaretti
, see Steward, “Central Europe.”

For Balkan travel, see Hadziselimovic, “Pre-1914 Balkans.” For the colorful details—the slivovitz, the mosques, the churches, the garb—see De Windt,
Through Savage Europe
, 167–90. On the
zapis
tree, carved with a cross outside Balkan churches, see Traian Stoianovich,
Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe,
38.