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Who was the first person or people to recognize vampires as bloodthirsty undead beings?

Depending on your ideology... specificly the legend of Lilith, an argument could be made that vampires where here first.

As per actual Vampirologists (e.g., Dr.s McClelland, Barber, Ispas, Perkowski), while the Slavic term "Vampire" (originally, "Upir") has been around since the 11th Century CE, yet the notion of vampires as blood drinkers dates back only as far as the early 17th Century. And Dr. Paul Barber minutely details in his studies as a forensic pathologist that it was medical ignorance of the decomposition of corpses that led to the erroneous conclusion by such ignorant townsfolk that those corpses were vampires.

From there, fiction writers blew everything out of proportion and sensationalized only that one now-debunked trait. Then today you have those who, still clinging to that recently created and then more recently discredited trait, continue to misinterpret the actual vampire of history and compound the error by scouring ancient history looking for anything that was claimed to eat flesh or drink blood, despite that trait having already been debunked, and try to call any such a vampire, also.

... the point being that whatever caused the term "Upir" (later, "Vampire") to be coined in or prior to the 11th Century CE and, thus, define the being so described, must have been for unique traits other than drinking blood given that that trait wasn't even thought of as "vampiric" until at least 600 years later.

And if blood drinking wasn't considered vampiric by the actual Slavs when they coined the term, then there's no way any blood-drinking mythological being prior to that could have been thought vampiric...otherwise, vampires from the very start would have also been described as blood drinkers.

Excellent commentary, UpirLikhyj!

I think that all we really have as validation is what archeologists and historians are able to decipher.... many earlier peoples used Oral histories as a way of passing information down from generation to generation. So even though we can narrow down a time period where vampires were first are mentioned in written text, there's no way for sure of knowing when the oral stories were first recited.

Very cool Thread!

I think some of the legends derived from when European colonists visited Mexico and South America and found Vampire Bats, then they probably saw some poor guy on a walk after they witnessed the blood sucking bats and assumed that that person morphed from a bat into a human or that's how some writer reported it.

In current culture they seem to have dropped the fact that vampires could evolve into bats, but it was still popular for the longest time.

Vampire bats are nocturnal and come out to feed on blood during the darkest part of the night, they do attack humans sometimes but they attack from the ground so unless you were laying on the ground and let it come up to you it's highly unlikely that it would attack your neck.

They only live for 9 years on average, so the immortality thing is out. They also are mainly only found in Mexico and South America so that's only where vampires should be unless colonists brought them back on their boats, even then they'd probably die during the harsh winter.

I read UpirLikhyj's profile, and the info there on vampires with keen interest. Very good stuff, and it makes sense.

We have so many legends, folklore, myths, and when cultures come in contact with one another, stuff can also get mixed and stirred into new combinations, I think. This can sometimes make origins a tricky business.

Bobby, as far as cultures go if something exists there are usually commonalities somewhere.

As far as mythical beings go just about every culture does have a variation of a half breed, human animal cross, like the Werewolf and a giant, hairy woodland or mountain creature that walks on 2 legs like big foot and yeti but vampire legends tend to vary more and change over time like how they used to morph into bats but somewhere over time that got dropped.

I have also read that vampires are capable of turning into wolves and mist as well as bats.

But that's for another thread.

A lot of creatures are identified now as vampires merely on the association of blood, although there were many that took life force. The legend of Lilith goes way back but the idea of her being a vampire is modern and I feel is a fictional idea due to extrapolation. The one most are familiar with is connected to Judaism but it is a far older legend than that. Some believe vampires stem from Cain as well and some from Judas Iscariot. There are many legends but that doesn't mean any of them are true and a lot of them stem only from modern times and writers. There is no basis to this idea except that as I said she has been associated to blood just like Erzebet Bathory who was not a vampire either. A lot of these stories came into these Eastern European countries by the migration of various Gypsy tribes and then took on a flavor of the area where they were told or were embellished because of them. Often the blood association had to do with the fact that they didn't understand the death process at all. They weren't embalming everywhere like they do now. Also many Eastern European tribes had blood ceremonies that had to do with warriors. They thought it gave them the power of their vanquished and some to do with honoring their families. Many of these tribes were head hunters like the Celts. Blood was associated strongly with their cultures and they weren't vampires.

Then there were modern writers who wrote books with theories about vampires and origins but that is all they were. I have read numerous studies over the years in the library and online and no two researchers generally agree on this topic and some quite frankly make me laugh. As for Vampirology, it is not an academic term and has been coined in more recent times merely to mean someone very well versed in the folklore and anything in general to do with vampires. You could say Michelle Belanger was a Vampirologist among other things. I take that title with a grain of salt.

...drink my blood, with is the everlasting ...Who said that? Mmm. The First Vampire...

I see your reference markus, Jeasus told his apostles to drink wine as it was his blood and eat bread as it was his body at the last supper and many catholics and christians still follow the tradition of drinking wine and eating bread as if it was the blood and body of their saviour on special ocassions

I'm not going to say much more because I don't know the bible well enough to know the exact reason why but wasn't it something good that would make them a better person? If it was couldn't Jeasus be considered a vampire and one of the very creatures many of his followers believe are the devil made man?

We hear this a lot, here...the notion of the sacrament/communion being vampiric due to the wine being symbolic of Jesus' blood. Yet there are a number of difficulties with this when examined carefully.

First off, If symbolically drinking Jesus' blood makes Christians into a form of vampire, then Christian symbols and rites could hardly be expected to ward off or otherwise defeat vampires. Further, if drinking Jesus' blood makes them vampires...then wouldn't eating his body make them... zombies?

Point is, you can't mix mythologies between cultures and expect to maintain contextual accuracy or cohesion between them...something huge will always get lost in the "translation."

And never is this more self evident than in trying to find Slavic Vampire parallels in ancient Egypt, Sumer and in other world mythologies based on modern Western fictional re-interpretations and re-inventions.

I was raised as a Christian, and attended a Christian church every Sunday for a good many years. I also read the reference with regard to Jesus and vampirism. However I have and am an atheist and have been since my 20's, so I no longer hold that view. :)

I was raised in a roman catholic home but then broke away starting around age 12 when I started to realized the inconsistencies and contradictions

If Jeasus was a vampire then that would suggest that at least in one definition vampires are highly admirable and it's perfectly fine to be one even though the bible suggests otherwise

Jesus was not a vampire, if such is defined as a blood-drinker or energy feeder...or any of the other Westernized fictional forms of such. (And as a caveat to my previous entry, permit me to remind everyone that the Last Supper had the Apostles, not Jesus, symbolically eating flesh and drinking blood...and again, symbolically only.)

the word vampire has so many definitions that it's impossible to say exactly "who let the vamps out" until the creator of the thread gives an exact definition

if it was nocturnal blood drinker than probably who ever first discovered the vampire bat

if they meant scary, evil one that preys on attractive women and goes poof in the light then you might want to look back to the 1922 Nosferatu

if they meant sparkly hottie with super human abilities that every girl wants to fuck then probably when was it, 2008? when Twilight first came out and they put a face to Edward Cullen