Slavic Studies held a fireside chat entitled “Update on the Undead: Vampires in Slavic and Eastern European Folklore” yesterday in University Hall.
Professor Dan Collins spoke at the chat and focused not just on vampires, but the undead in general.
The discussion, which lasted about an hour, also focused on the connection between Slavic and Eastern European folklore and the transition and integration of the undead into Western culture.
“Vampires are often blamed in Eastern Europe for disease, hunger and pretty much anything unexplainable,” Collins said.
Collins went on to explain that Eastern European culture viewed vampires differently, and less morally damned, than Western culture vampires.
Collins shared an Eastern story in which a family and priest, for the good of a recently deceased elderly relative, performed a vampire prevention practice of stabbing her through the heart because her skin looked similar to a vampire’s.
Toward the latter half of the discussion, Collins identified the differences between Eastern and Western cultures’ views of vampires.
“There are different types of undead beings, but vampires in the United States drink blood for fun and sexual pleasure,” Collins said.
Film humanizes vampires, Collins said. Attractive people portray vampires with more sexual attributes.
“We’ve basically modernized the vampire into a blood sucking, attractive, sexually provocative being,” Collins said.
Teresa Kuruc, a Russian major and a member of the Dean Student Advisory Group for Humanities, said it was a great time to hold the chat with Halloween right around the corner.
“This discussion really gives everyone an opportunity for those interested to nurture their curiosity and find out from where our folklore has come.”
Matt Umland, an Ohio State student who participated in the discussion, said he enjoyed the chat and found it to be very informative.
“It’s amazing when you find out you know so little about a subject you thought you knew so much,” Umland said.
The belief in vampires has existed from the earliest known references at ancient Chaldeans in Mesopotamia, and over time has spawned legends and superstitions.
Vampires were most commonly thought of as spirits or demons that left their graves at night to satisfy their lust for blood by seeking and enslaving victims. Victims of vampires then became vampires themselves.
More often in Eastern cultures, vampires came back to visit widowed husbands or wives and haunt living relatives.
Folklore history says that vampires’ lust for blood to reach immortality stems from Indian, Greek and Christian culture.
In these cultures drinking the blood of another is sometimes thought of as taking the “life-blood” of someone else to increase your own.
Cannibalism, which is the concept of putting someone’s body inside your own to obtain more life, likely fueled conception of vampire folklore regarding the lust for blood.
Vampires can be warded off with items such as garlic, crosses and holy water and killed by driving a stake through its heart or by cremation, among other practices.
Perhaps one of the most unique vampire gift is metamorphosis – the ability to assume non-human shapes, such as that of a bat or wolf.
Recent cultural references to vampires can be found in the movies “Blade” and “Underworld”. One of the most famous literary reference to vampires is Count Dracula in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
