The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Three books about vampires in the old days
13:11 Dec 30 2009
Times Read: 1,227

I submitted three books to the database and I hope that they will be approved by the procurators even if they are in Italian and German.

They are great for those interested in Dark Romanticism`s vampires!

Stori di vampiri - a complete collection from vampire literature between 1819 - 1950, containing rare pieces like Hoffmann`s vampire tale written in 1821!

















Storie di vampiri dall'Inghilterra dell'Ottocento





It`s about XVIIIth century English vampires.Odd enough but it was not yet translated in English language even if it is a great study.

















Poetische Wiedergänger: deutschsprachige Vampirismus-Diskurse vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart - a book that mentions the German beliefs about vampires from the Middle Ages before Ossenfelder`s poem wruitten in 1748!

Jürgen Barkhoff`s article
13:03 Dec 30 2009
Times Read: 1,229








I think this is a presentation of an article wrote by J. Barkhoff and it`s about Hoffmann`s short novel "Vampirismus"





Women vampires, victimhood and vengeance: E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Gräßliche Geschichte"



by Jürgen Barkhoff, Senior Lecturer in German, Trinity College Dublin







"Famous vampires from Byron and Polidori to Bram Stoker typically represent a very masculine, phallic sexuality. When, however, the vampire entered the German literary scene around 1800, the undead changed gender and appeared predominantly as threatening and aggressive, but equally threatened and traumatised female figures. Texts like Goethe's ballad Die Braut von Korinth (1797) and Hoffmann's tale [Vampirismus] "Gräßliche Geschichte" (1820) position the liminal figure of the destructive, deadly female clearly within gendered discourses of religion, power, sexuality, the body and the family. The latter text also establishes numerous links to the gendered anthropology of mesmerist aura-vampirism in theory and literature. Overall these texts present a multi-facetted dialectic between victimhood and vengance which the paper seeks to analyze in its psychological and aesthetic dimensions."

The "Forest Of The Impaled" was alive or dead?
20:34 Dec 29 2009
Times Read: 1,231






The Bysantine historian Chalkokondyles in "Historiarum demonstrationes" says that the impaled from the forest of the stakes the sultan saw in June 1462 were Turks:

"The Emperor(the Sultan), passing by the city and seeing noone on the walls besides the cannon men who were shooting without pause, didn`t lay the siege . He walked on about 27 stadii(about 5 km) and saw his own men impaled. The army of the Emperor arrived at the impaled ones who were placed on 17 stadii (about 3 km.) length and 7 stadii (a little more then 1 km.) wide.And there were big stakes where were impaled men, women, children, about 20 000 they say. "

To impale 20 000 Vallachians in 6 years (1456 - 1461 his reign) is almost impossible; just count how many living people he should impale by day.And I am sure this was a torture who took a long time.The head of the stake was rounded carefully in order not to touch the heart and lungs, so the impaled to suffer for days before his death.

So the impaled ones were not Vallachians! But who could they be?



In my opinion the 20 000 bodies impaled 5 km away from the main court of Vlad from Targoviste(that measured after the Bysantine chronicle of Chalkokondyles 3km/1,2 km) was not formed of his own population but mainly by Turk`s corpses.











In august 1458 Vlad was attacked by the great-councilor(great vijirey I think is called in eng.) Mehmed-pasha who was just retreating from a surprise attack over Serbia.

Mehmed had an army of 30 000 Turks and he supposed to guard the Turkish border from an eventual attack from Hungary. Instead of that he attacked Serbia and conquered a large part of it. Enjoying the success he entered in Vallachia and attacked a "castello"(fortress) and plundered it taking 5 000 slaves. Wanting to cross back the Danube, his army was surprised and decimated by the army of Vlad who liberated the prisoners.



This is why Vlad stops in 1459 to pay tribute to the Sultan and starts to build fortresses all over Vallachia. As he needed money for the constructions, he limits the commercial privieldges of the Saxons(who were always shelthered his enemies and rivals at the throne) and after the Saxon`s revenge and impalements, Vlad punishes makes a few expeditions against them and burned some of their villages and applied them the harsh punishments fro their own codes of laws.



In the end of 1461 the Matias Corvinus, the king of Hungary received money fro the Pope to join the Crusade with other European countries.Vlad was still refusing to pay tribute, motivating it by the conflict with the Saxons from Transilvania. Matias planned to marry one of his relatives with Vlad and this motivated the Sultan to ask Vlad the tribute once again on all the three years and to come at Constantinople to bring it personally.



Vlad responded that he fears that Hungarians will attack him and he asked the Sultan to bring someone in his place and then he will go to Constantinople to present the money in person.The Sultan send one of his emissaries with the secret mission to catch Vlad and take him prisoner.



Vlad found out about that, he took the emissary prisoner, disguised himself as the emissary and using this trick he conquered the main Danube fortress, Giurgiu from the Turks.He crossed Danube and he attacked the Turks in Bulgaria. He assured a no mans land of 800 km. by killing minimum 23 883 Turks and retreated then because of the cold weather.

He sent a letter mentioning this amount to Matias hoping that the King would help him.The letter was joined by carriages containing sacks with the cut noses of all the people decapitated, as a proof of the number.









HERE IS WHERE I WANT TO ARRIVE! My supposition is that the people impaled near Targoviste were just the bodies of the Turks Vlad killed in the Bulgarian Campaign.

In my opinion just a few people on that wood of stakes were impaled alive (maybe Turkish prisoners, murderers and thieves and maybe their wives and children) and the huge majority were the decapitated bodies of those killed in the fights in the South of Danube 5 months earlier.

Vlad used to kill the children and close relatives of the impaled ones because they might wish to revenge their fathers.