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What is a Vampire? How do you define it? How do you begin to define what is shapeless, and how do you trace that which has a history that leads to the beginning of man? Such questions have vexed the minds of vampirologists and vampire fans alike for decades.
Is Dracula the answer to the question?
Perhaps a better question to ask would be: to which Dracula are you referring?
Dracula is one of the most well loved characters in vampire history. Certainly no other vampire has gained such worldwide acceptance and recognition as he. From cereal boxes to characters in children's television programs, Dracula has become a household name, as synonymous to vampire as Kleenex is to tissue.
Even within the Dracula character, there are anomalies and contradictions. The original character that Bram Stoker created in his novel was described as a "tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache" whose "ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed" and who, Harker notices with a start, sports "hairs in the center of the palm. The nails [of the hand] were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point." The novel also mentioned Dracula's ability to change into a bat, or even mist, at will. Stoker's Dracula was also vulnerable to Christian and pagan symbols including holy wafers and garlic.
The film industry has portrayed Dracula in a far different way, however. In 1931, Universal Pictures hired Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi to portray Dracula on the silver screen. His tuxedoed, aristocratic appearance was a large deviation from the hairy, pointy-eared monster in Stoker's novel. Each Dracula film, in its time, took its own license with the character. Each Dracula looked different from the last, and each had its own physical and vampiric characteristics.
It's difficult, therefore, to define a vampire by its famous brethren, Dracula. Is a vampire an aristocrat? Must a vampire be able to shift shapes into a bat or mist? Can you fend off or even kill a vampire with a cross and some garlic?
What about Lestat, then?
Ah, Lestat, intrepid boy king of the vampire realm. This beloved character created by novelist Anne Rice has taken today's generation of vampire fans by storm in much the same way as Dracula did all those years ago. Lestat is a vampire, truly, for this secular twentieth century, he is impervious to Christian symbols (crosses and holy water) as well as pagan ones (garlic and stakes). The only thing that can kill him is sunlight, and perhaps not even that, in the end, would be enough. Taking the film industry's romanticized view of vampires one step further, Ricean vampires are not just socially acceptable in their physical form; they are stunning. Their androgynous beauty is one thing that defines them as a race and as individuals.
While vampires in Rice's world cannot shift their shapes, they can fly, and leave their bodies. Does that mean, then, that the definition of a vampire must be expanded to include the ability to fly, and the fear of sunlight? What about garlic and crosses? What of their beauty, in sharp contrast to the pointy-eared, hairy-palmed character of Stoker's novel?
The answers, one assumes, must be in the history, when one forgets about fiction and its ideas and concentrates on the truth.
This is not necessarily true, as you will see. History paints the vampire in all sorts of lights, and even those who spend their lives searching for the truth have different opinions.
Mythology and folklore in general make no mention of sunlight, or hairy palms. Some vampire myths that have survived today make no mention of blood drinking. The majority of stories and folk tales about the vampire don't mention their ability to fly. All sorts of pagan methods for dispatching the vampire survive in the history books; everything from garlic to little seeds to ropes with hundreds of knots to sickles and stakes were used hundreds of years ago to ward off, confuse, or kill the vampire. But rarely, if ever, was sunlight mentioned as a means to kill the vampire.
Yet who among us does not recognize best the vampire who cries and desolidifies in the rays of the sun?
The vampire itself takes as many forms in the history books as there are stories to tell; women who kill small children for revenge, dead neighbours who haunt their townspeople, priests and commoners, soldiers and strangers. Some were pale, but more were dark. Many stories tell of vampires that grew new skin, or grew longer fingernails.
So what, then, is a vampire?
In her non-fiction study Vampires Among Us, Rosemary Ellen Guiley uses a term for "real" vampires that could easily be applied to the genre as a whole. That term is "Vampire Reality"; it means that vampires are what people believe them to be. To the peasant of the middle ages, the vampire was a fearful revenant that spread disease and death among small village and large town alike. To the British in the Victorian era, a vampire was a repulsive character to shudder over and from which to take entertainment. To many, the vampire is a sensual, aristocratic image to which they feel strangely compelled. And finally, for most of us, the vampire is what the film and book industries want us to believe: a lot of fun and a good scare.
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