Vampire

"I want to suck your blood!"

Famous vampire movies saying, but where did vampires come from, how did it get started?

In the beginning, when some thought of blood drinking entities was demons because they are known eating flesh and drinking the blood of their victims. But for vampire myth it originated in the Medieval period, Walter Map a writer and William of Newburgh a English historian had recorded some accounts they had heard about revenants, this is believed to be a corpse that was revived from death to haunt the living. One story they wrote was about a man who fled from York to avoid being arrested from something and he got married. At some point in his marriage he got jealous of his wife, he thought she was messing with another man, so he decided to hide in the rafters in their bedroom to catch her in the act. But it turned to the worse for him, he fell to the floor and died a couple of days later. He was given a Christian burial but was not worthy of it, the day after his funeral, the wife claimed that he came back and tried to assault her for several nights. So, frightened she went to her family to tell them what was going on, but this started terror for her family as well. The consulted with the bishop of Lincoln and the remedy for this situation what they done was dig up the corpse and cremate it. But to the archbishop it was sacrilegious to do that to the body, so they suggested to order a scroll of absolution to be placed on the dead man's chest, which proved for it to be successful.

These stories started a frenzy of vampire encounters of through Southeastern Europe and Transylvania, there ended up being more staking and digging up of graves of potential subjects. This became so frightful that even the government got involved in the hunting of vampires. This went on for years and years. Which brings me to a story about a family in Exeter, Rhode Island around 1893, when this vampire theory stopped this activity of trying to kill the undead. George Brown was married Mary and they had 2 daughters Mary Olive and Mercy Lena and 1 son Edwin. In 1883, George watched helplessly to a disease known as consumption at the time take an impact on his wife Mary who lost her life, then 6 months after that the disease hit again, this time it was 20-year-old Mary Olive. George was devastated of the loss of his wife and daughter, but life had to continue until January 19, 1892 George's other daughter Mercy passed away from the same disease, she was sick with this for a year. All that George had left was his son Edwin and the winter of 1892, Edwin had come to have the same disease that his girls died from, he was furious at this why would this happen. Edwin tried everything to get better he even went to Colorado Springs, Colorado to find a cure in the rarified air and mineral waters but that did not work he just became weaker and weaker, day by day. One thing you need to understand Tuberculosis was the top killer disease in the 18th and 19th century, many many people were getting it. It was common in the town of Exeter; it wasn't fully understood. Diseases back then were very hard to understand, most thought these diseases were witchery or even the work of the devil. So, whenever any of this came around they had to blame something unnatural instead of the natural, what happened next for this little town sure was something very unnatural.

Friends and neighbors thought it was very unnatural for three members of George's family to die of the same thing, so they came up with one of them must be a vampire. One of the ways that some that have supposedly killed vampires was to cut out the heart and the liver and burn them, then use the ashes to as a tonic and give it to the victim. Could that really work, could Edwin really be healed from a tonic? That is probably what was going through George's head, but the only way that he is to do is give permission to dig up his family. They dug up Mary and Mary Olives body's, they showed the normal levels of decomposition but when they dug up Mercy's, well there wasn't any evidence of decomposition. But again, Mercy just barely passed away, so would she really be showing signs at this time, yet again this time period didn't know what we know now. Her heart still had blood that was enough proof for them, instead of thinking this could happen with her body being in a freezer-like crypt for a few months after she passed until they could bury her in the ground. So, they cut her heart and liver out to burn them, then made the tonic for Edwin to drink thinking that it would take away his sickness. Little did they know 2 months after this incident he would die from the same disease as his sisters and mother.

They did bury what was left of Mercy's body in the cemetery of the Baptist Church in Exeter. Of course, this was put into articles and Bram Stoker, you may know him as the author of Dracula, which this is the thing that gave him inspiration to write this novel. But of course, over the years Vampires became one of the many monsters that stock and prey on humans at night. At first, they started as these long finger, pointy ears, and many sharp teeth to beautiful beings that glitter in the sunlight. What do you believe? Have you come into contact with one?