Product Description

In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers the first scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends. From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires, his book is fascinating reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234807 in Books
• Published on: 1990-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

Review
An armchair Dr. Van Helsing tracks down the real origins of the vampire legend. According to Barber - who skips right over the Vlad the Impaler hypothesis - stories of vampires rising from the dead are "an elaborate folk hypothesis" evolved to explain mysterious phenomena associated with death, especially the grisly facts of bodily decomposition. He begins by recounting vampiric folk tales from Serbia, Greece, and other haunted regions, and extracting their recurrent motifs. Vampirism can result, he finds, from suicide, sorcery, inauspicious birth, having a sleep-walking brother, and other rips in the social fabric. Unlike screen Draculas, folklore vampires are usually ruddy, bloated, lightly bearded peasants. To keep a vampire from leaving his grave, try mutilating the corpse, filling the burial site with food or knots (vampires can spend centuries happily untying knots), burying the corpse face-down (the vampire will chew his way to the center of the earth), etc. If the vampire escapes, recommended steps include staking, cutting out the heart, or cremation. After delivering this fascinating Baedeker of the living dead, Barber turns to an examination of human decomposition, explaining how each stage contributes to the vampire legend (bloating of the corpse, for instance, leading to reports of disturbances of the earth over a vampire's grave). In short, a "series of cognitive filters" turns a natural event into a tale of blood-seeking monsters. Learned, energetic, creepily absorbing study - definitely not for children. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Very useful for my Social Anthropology paper!
I used this book as one of the main sources for my module on 'explaining' vampires in Social Anthropology for my Dual Honours Degree. I found it fascinating to read and much lighter reading than the academic texts which were commonplace in the other modules. It made writing an essay almost fun! Apart from that, it covers the subject in depth without making it dry and unpalatable for the lay reader. I would recommend it heartily.

A bit heavy going
I started to read this book as I was intrigued by the title. It was interesting, but it was a bit too heavy going for me, I couldn't seem to keep track of what the author was saying. There are many accounts of 'real' vampires and theories and distinctions between 'real' and fictional vampires. The author has done huge amounts of research and done a very good job of detailing documented events of vampirism. Very useful if you are writing a paper on folklore or enjoy something that is more like a detailed essay. I'm afraid I enjoy the more romantic fictional view of vampires. Sorry!