I made some comments about vampires in this space a while back, and a friend lent me a copy of Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality so I could have the real skinny.

I know much more now. I’m not sure I’m happier for it.

And—especially for the sake of those of you with weak stomachs—I’ll pass the gist of it on to you, so you won’t have to read this often entertaining, but generally depressing and unappetizing, book.

We’re all familiar with the vampire of fiction. He’s tall and elegantly slim, probably dressed in stylish black, with pale skin and—if he opens his mouth wide enough for you to see—unusually long canine teeth. He spends his days in a coffin filled with the earth of his homeland, either in his castle or in some other kind of up-market home. At night he prowls—often in the form of a bat—to attack victims and satiate his diabolical thirst for blood.

The original vampires of folklore weren’t like that at all (Barber generally calls them “vampires” for convenience’s sake, but makes it clear that similar creatures of superstition had a variety of names in various cultures). The original vampire was fat. His complexion was ruddy, perhaps even a dark red. He had long fingernails and a stubble of beard, and his garb was the shroud he was buried in. He may have had a bloody foam on his lips, which indicated that he’d been sucking blood (though he generally didn’t bite his victims on the neck, and there was nothing unusual about his teeth), but he might also smother his victims, or just crush them under his weight. Sometimes he caused deaths without leaving his grave at all.

He was, in fact, pretty much a variety of the revenants (I call them “walkers-again” in my novels) that one encounters in Norse sagas.

Barber’s thesis, and it seems pretty reasonable to me, is that vampires were simply the victims of misunderstanding. When a series of unexplained deaths (especially an epidemic) happened in a community, the first reflex of the people was to blame it on someone, and the original victim was the prime suspect. Most particularly if he/she had been unpleasant in life. When this person’s body was dug up, what did the exhumers find but a body greatly distended and enlarged and changed in color (due to the process of decomposition)? Obviously the great size must have come from drinking people’s blood, and the dark color of the corpse was further proof of that. Often, when the corpse was manipulated (as, for instance, when a stake was driven through it), a bloody foam would appear on the lips. More proof. The process of bloating may in fact have moved the corpse from its original position. Proof positive! Certainly the truly dead can’t move!

What we see here is the same logic that produced witch hunts, but in less awful form, because the accused was past feeling pain.

The book was interesting, and Barber can be an amusing author, but I felt I’d learned all I needed to know well before I was finished with it. A shorter monograph would have satisfied me just fine.

Particularly since I tend to read while eating.