|
All over the world there are legends about bloodsucking vampires, legends that can be traced through history as far back as the ancient Egyptians and Romans, and are a result of man's preoccupation with death and the supernatural. But in Central and South America, many thousands of miles from Dracula's castle in Transylvania, there are bats that turn grisly legend into cold fact. In parts of the West Indies, country folk believe that they can protect themselves against a supernatural being that drinks blood by sprinkling grains of rice close to windows and doors. The legend goes that before the creature can attack it must pick up every grain - by that time it should be dawn and, as everybody knows, by cock-crow, all vampires must return to the safety of their lair. The legendary West Indian vampire is usually an old woman who, at night, turns into a bat. The very meaning of the word 'vamp' is a woman: an adventuress who exploits men. According to a New York psychiatrist who studies fears and phobias, the evil image shared universally by bats can be linked to old women who try to dominate their men; the kind of woman, one supposes, often referred to as an 'old bat'. Strange, then, that Count Dracula was a chap.
It is curious that the vampire myth, even today, continues to hold public imagination. Count Dracula has appeared in over two hundred films from at least ten countries, as well as in plays, books, comics and on television. Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" has never been out of print, and commercial merchandising includes package holidays to Dracula's castle in Rumania led by an "occult"guide. The story source for Stoker's novel was said to be Vlad Dracul, a 15th century ruler of the Transylvanian province of Wallachia. He apparently had over 23,000 people impaled on wooden stakes, and used to eat his meals while watching their agony. He was a sadist, and a mass murderer, yes, but no vampire.
There was a vampire woman, however: an Austrian Countess - Elizabeth Bathory, a society beauty of the Imperial Court. As her looks faded with age, she imagined that the blood of young girls might keep her youthful and, over a period of 15 years, murdered some 600 of them in torture chambers of remote Carpathian castles, draining them of their blood for the sake of her vanity. Her accomplices were sent to the stake in 1611 but because of her high birth she was walled up in her chambers with a hole for air and food. She died three years later.
At the cost of our little South American vampire friends, the Dracula business is bound to live on as long as people's superstitions carry it. People, it seems, love to believe in things that go bump in the night .
|
