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shyscyberchamber.com
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SUPERSTITIONS
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Superstitions About Vampires |
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LORE & SOURCES |
Vampire is defined as a corpse that can return to life at night
to suck people's blood by biting them on the neck. A Vampire must do this to
keep its strength. The victim eventually losses all strength and will soon die
and become vampires also.
But are vampires real? There are many stories about these creatures from all
over the world. Even today there are many superstitions surrounding vampires in
European countries. In these countries people believe that if a person dies
violently, by suicide or is condemned by their church these pour souls will
become vampires.
The characteristics of a vampire are pale skin and a violent reaction to
sunlight. Graves have been dug up to see if the suspected deceased is one of the
undead. Signs of a corpse having a swollen appearance, lack of rigor mortis, and
no signs of decay many years after burial was often a sign that the deceased was
indeed a vampire and the only way to stop its feeding was to drive a wooden
stake into its heart.
Europe is not the only place that Vampires were thought to reside; The
United States had many outbreaks of Vampirism in the New England area in 1854,
1888, and 1890. One family in particular experienced a large amount of deaths
among their 14 children. After the sixth child had passed a deceased daughter
appeared to the woman in her dreams. Fearing that possibly this child was
possessed by a vampire the family did the gruesome task of exhuming all their
children's bodies. Each body, except the daughter's that appeared in the wife's
dream, was decomposed, the daughter was preserved. The parents and towns people
began the task of taking each dead child's heart and burning it in a fire before
they reburied the body.
In the year 1854 in Connecticut a family came down with tuberculosis and the
dreaded disease took the father and two sons' another became ill. In the year
1800s tuberculosis had no known cause or cure, superstitious family members
began to believe that the deceased were indeed vampires. So once again they dug
up the bodies and burned them before burying them once again.
During the next years there were many reported outbreaks of tuberculosis through
out Vermont, Rhode Island and other New England states. Many townspeople looking
for way to stop the disease exhumed the deceased and burned the hearts before
reburying them.
In the late 1970s a sub-culture among the youth has grown up around vampire and
is called Goth. Goth idolizes the vampire in many ways. Many vampire groups and
clubs have surfaced around this sub-culture. There are many people that have
even taken on the vampire way of life, by sleeping in coffins, sleeping during
the day and only going out at night. Blood sucking has also been incorporated
into their way of life, either drinking their own blood or a willing partner.
Some vampires have even gotten fangs implanted over their own teeth to make
their mouth more authentic looking.
Once thought to be stuff of horror movies, stories and superstitions some people
today are living the vampire lifestyle. |
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