In a gloriously detailed and often unsettling new work, historian John Blair tackles one of culture's most enduring and macabre fascinations: the vampire. His book, Killing the Dead: A Cultural History of Vampires, published by Allen Lane, digs deep into the soil of history to unearth the real beliefs and brutal practices that gave rise to the bloodsucking myth.
From Folklore Fear to Literary Legend
Blair's study begins long before Bram Stoker's Dracula cast its long shadow. He meticulously traces the vampire's origins to a specific and terrifying form of pre-modern European folklore. This was not the romanticised figure of later fiction, but a horrifying concept: a reanimated corpse that would literally rise from the grave to sicken and kill the living, often targeting its own family and community.
The book reveals that the core vampire belief was not a vague superstition but a detailed and logical system within its own context. It served as a desperate explanation for sudden, unexplained deaths, particularly from diseases like tuberculosis, where victims seemed to waste away. The vampire was a tangible, if ghastly, culprit for community tragedy.
The Gruesome Reality of Anti-Vampire Rituals
Where Blair's history becomes particularly gripping is in its examination of the extreme measures taken to stop these perceived monsters. The book documents the shocking archaeological and historical evidence for "anti-vampire" burials.
These rituals were far from symbolic. Communities would disinter suspected vampires and subject the corpses to brutal mutilation to prevent them from rising again. Common practices included:
- Staking the body, often through the heart or abdomen.
- Decapitation, sometimes placing the head between the legs or away from the body.
- Weighing the corpse down with heavy stones.
- Burning the remains to ashes.
Blair powerfully argues that these acts were not mindless violence. They were a sincere, communal effort at healing, a physical surgery performed on the body politic to sever a perceived source of contagion and restore order. The book notes that the practice was widespread, with evidence found from Scotland to the Balkans.
The Scholarly War on Superstition
A fascinating thread running through Killing the Dead is the 18th-century Enlightenment's confrontation with vampire hysteria. Blair details how reports of vampirism in Central Europe became a cause célèbre, puzzling and disturbing intellectuals who championed reason.
Figures like Voltaire used the phenomenon to mock religious superstition, while Empress Maria Theresa of Austria dispatched her personal physician to investigate. The official conclusion? The outbreaks were the result of ignorance and imagination. This top-down suppression, Blair suggests, was a key factor in driving the belief from public practice into the safer realm of folklore and, eventually, Gothic fiction.
The book concludes by examining the vampire's metamorphosis in the 19th century. Shedding its peasant corpse identity, it was reinvented in literature as the aristocratic, seductive, and complex figure epitomised by Dracula—a transformation that has captivated audiences ever since.
John Blair's Killing the Dead is more than a history of a monster. It is a profound exploration of how humans have grappled with the fundamental mysteries of death, disease, and fear. By grounding his study in solid historical evidence, he reveals that the true horror often lies not in the fantasy, but in the very real, desperate measures people have taken to feel safe from the darkness.
