Chapter IV: Daemon Contamination
General vampire- being which derives sustenance from a victim, who is weakened by the experience
Folkloric vampire- a being with imputed supernatural characteristics (can include Indonesian, Chinese, and Philippine vamps)
Slavic vampire (subset of Folkloric vamp) - reanimated corpse which returns at night to prey on the living
Psychotic vampire- someone suffering from mental illness who criminally attacks his victims (22 year old Frankfurt student drugged girls and drank their blood, Mr. Lorca, a German man with a fascination with vampires, lured a homeless man to his home, then attacked the man and bit his neck.
Psychic vampire- someone who feed on others emotionally (“medium”-victim or psychic sponge)
Literary vampire- fictional character with characteristics of Folkloric, Psychotic, or/and Psychic vampires
Vampire characteristics are often contaminated with characteristics of other supernatural beings like werewolf, poltergeists, and mora.
• Poltergeist – a mysterious and undefined spirit which causes the sudden movement fracture, disappearance, or appearance of portable objects; defined by activity pattern
• Vampire – focus is on the malicious, reanimated corpse; wandering corpse of a person, now dead, who was destined to this fate at birth; daemon (corpse) centered phenomenon
• Mora – wandering spirit of a dead or sleeping girl who had not been properly baptized; international in origin; (surviving) victim centered phenomenon
Interesting story about a woman named Mrs. Forbes who claimed to be haunted by a poltergeist. Objects would appear and be thrown around and she had violent nightmares. A few times she had a vampire visitation at night that sounded like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Mrs. Forbes could be described as a psychotic vampire victim.
Three vampire authorities:
1. Summers: vampires used to “keep off the nocturnal visits of Lilith and her sisters”; cure men of their nightly emissions
2. Ronay: the Greeks and Romans saw vampires as “blood-sucking, evil ghosts”; believed to be un-dead corpses who would feed off living souls
3. Wright: a more important feature of vampires is the “satisfaction of the passions by the carnal connection with a living person through the medium of a dead body” rather than actually feeding off of humans; there is a strong resemblance to the Incubi and Succubi of folklore
Lilith, lamia, strix, incubus, succubus:
• Threaten men’s lives
• Generate eroticism
• Attack at night
• All manifestations of the nightmare (mare = mora)
Ernest Jones – disciple of Freud
• Believed that the three main features of the nightmare are: agonizing dread, sense of oppression or weight at the chest which affects respiration, conviction of helpless paralysis
• Believes there is a necessary sexual component to nightmares
• A nightmare is a type of dream
David John Hufford defines the clinical nightmare:
• Wake up during the night
• Hear/see something in the room
• Feels suffocation due to pressure on the chest
• Unable to move or cry out; complete paralysis until woken by somebody else
All findings on the subject of nightmares indicate that the clinical nightmares are a recurring phenomenon and are the basis for the Kashubian mora
SEE CHART ON PAGE 389
*Thanks Anna*
General vampire- being which derives sustenance from a victim, who is weakened by the experience
Folkloric vampire- a being with imputed supernatural characteristics (can include Indonesian, Chinese, and Philippine vamps)
Slavic vampire (subset of Folkloric vamp) - reanimated corpse which returns at night to prey on the living
Psychotic vampire- someone suffering from mental illness who criminally attacks his victims (22 year old Frankfurt student drugged girls and drank their blood, Mr. Lorca, a German man with a fascination with vampires, lured a homeless man to his home, then attacked the man and bit his neck.
Psychic vampire- someone who feed on others emotionally (“medium”-victim or psychic sponge)
Literary vampire- fictional character with characteristics of Folkloric, Psychotic, or/and Psychic vampires
Vampire characteristics are often contaminated with characteristics of other supernatural beings like werewolf, poltergeists, and mora.
• Poltergeist – a mysterious and undefined spirit which causes the sudden movement fracture, disappearance, or appearance of portable objects; defined by activity pattern
• Vampire – focus is on the malicious, reanimated corpse; wandering corpse of a person, now dead, who was destined to this fate at birth; daemon (corpse) centered phenomenon
• Mora – wandering spirit of a dead or sleeping girl who had not been properly baptized; international in origin; (surviving) victim centered phenomenon
Interesting story about a woman named Mrs. Forbes who claimed to be haunted by a poltergeist. Objects would appear and be thrown around and she had violent nightmares. A few times she had a vampire visitation at night that sounded like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Mrs. Forbes could be described as a psychotic vampire victim.
Three vampire authorities:
1. Summers: vampires used to “keep off the nocturnal visits of Lilith and her sisters”; cure men of their nightly emissions
2. Ronay: the Greeks and Romans saw vampires as “blood-sucking, evil ghosts”; believed to be un-dead corpses who would feed off living souls
3. Wright: a more important feature of vampires is the “satisfaction of the passions by the carnal connection with a living person through the medium of a dead body” rather than actually feeding off of humans; there is a strong resemblance to the Incubi and Succubi of folklore
Lilith, lamia, strix, incubus, succubus:
• Threaten men’s lives
• Generate eroticism
• Attack at night
• All manifestations of the nightmare (mare = mora)
Ernest Jones – disciple of Freud
• Believed that the three main features of the nightmare are: agonizing dread, sense of oppression or weight at the chest which affects respiration, conviction of helpless paralysis
• Believes there is a necessary sexual component to nightmares
• A nightmare is a type of dream
David John Hufford defines the clinical nightmare:
• Wake up during the night
• Hear/see something in the room
• Feels suffocation due to pressure on the chest
• Unable to move or cry out; complete paralysis until woken by somebody else
All findings on the subject of nightmares indicate that the clinical nightmares are a recurring phenomenon and are the basis for the Kashubian mora
SEE CHART ON PAGE 389
*Thanks Anna*
