You asked for vampire lore, and we’ve got the bloody goods for y’all. But first….we need to talk.
We know you know tales of vampirism stretch back centuries. We totally understand why visions of Jacques St. Germain draining nubile young women erotically on Royal Street, or an ancient-but-ageless Lestat strolling toned and shirtless through the mists that cling to live oaks at night, get your motor going. We want nothing more than to deliver great, homegrown vampire stories pulled right off the pages of reeeeeally old Acadian settler swamp diaries to your door.
But we can’t.
Reality is that for the first 200 years folks were here in Louisiana we were so busy worrying about the winged blood-suckers spreading yellow fever and malaria that we didn’t have much reserve energy for stressing bout fanged boogeymen. This isn’t to say we were too cool to be scared of boogeymen and shadows. The rougarou/loupgarou legend is just one of many out of wild and ruthless Cajun country, and nearly every community of every caste and color in New Orleans has feared their own demons and devils.
But between the pirates, white-hot pissed indigenous tribes killing settlers, gators, feral animals, plagues, and OH YES THE WARS, we were too busy trying not to die for a while there to sit and tell vampire stories.
Until the early 1900s.
As The Washington Post noted in 1902, America finally starting catching Europe’s vampire fever around the time British artist Philip Burne-Jones’s piece “The Vampire” made its stateside debut. (The painting is often misattributed to Burne-Jones’ famous father, Sir Edward, but it’s def Philip’s work.) Inspired by and often displayed with the poem of the same title by Rudyard Kipling, it depicts a pale-skinned woman, neck and shoulders tantalizingly exposed, straddled with a satisfied look on her face the body of a helpless, limp, mustachioed man drained of blood...an image which downright stimulated Americans.
Fun Fact: This painting was a spiteful troll job by Burne-Jones against his ex-lover. The married actress who modeled for several of his paintings dumped him to stay with her husband, so he immortalized her as a ruthless predator sucking a man (who looked like him) dry. Super mature, Phil.
The poem and haterade painting were first released in the UK in 1897, and between Kipling’s words—the poem is about how heterosexual relationships are the worst, PS—and Burne-Jones’ gothically erotic depiction sparked wide interest among upper crust art fans who otherwise wouldn’t have cared much about poor peoples’ ghost stories.
All of a sudden little-known books from the late-1800s, like historian Lucy M.J. Garnett’s “The Women of Turkey and Their Folk-Lore,” were being read by educated men and quoted in American newspapers. Garnett’s book, published in 1890, was cited widely, helping lay the foundation for eventual local vampires stars like Bill Compton and Edward Cullen.
Garnett had spent two decades living among “the peasantry and common folk of Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia, among others,” and was therefore considered a leading expert on vampire lore at the turn of the century. The Los Angeles Times used her as an expert in an article titled “Myth of the Vampire Revived by Painting,” printed July 12, 1902, which was about the public reaction to Burne-Jones’ painting and Kiplings’ poem:
“Perhaps the most ghastly of Greek and Turkish superstitions is that of the vampire,” Garnett explained, “generally known in the Balkan Peninsula by the Slavonic name of ‘Vrykolakas.’ It is customary among the Greeks and other peoples of the peninsula to exhume the body of a deceased relative at the end of three years, in order to ascertain if it is properly decomposed. Should this not be the case, the Vrykolakas (‘the restless one’) is supposed to be possessed of the power of rising from the grave and roaming abroad, reveling in the blood of his or her victims.”
Garret went on to list the assumed “causes” of vampirism, which included:
Having perpetrated or having been the victim of a crime
Having wronged someone who then died mad about that wrong
Having been cursed by someone powerful enough to effectively curse you
She even specified that #3 was perpetrated primarily by members of the clergy, though technically anyone could curse you with vampirism if they were heated enough. “‘May the earth not eat you’ is a common expression in the mouth of an angry Greek; the a vampire is not, as some authorities have contended, a disembodied soul, but an undissolved body,” she explained.
This last detail was particularly mind-blowing at the time, a deviation from Britain and France’s depictions of vampires as parasitic ghouls in search of human vessels.
Garnett’s time interviewing the “Balkan peasantry” added layers of humanity to our public perception of vampires, including the burden of vampirism on communities as a whole:
“Vampirism is believed to be hereditary in certain families, the members of which are regarded with aversion by their neighbors and shunned as much as possible,” she wrote. “Their services are, however, called into requisition when there is a vampire to be laid, as they have the reputation of possessing special powers in that direction.”
She also noted that those “services” were something used to manipulate entire towns:
“Many vampire panics are no doubt attributable to rumors set on foot by persons who profit by such superstitions. In 1872, the whole population of Adrianople was thrown into a state of commotion by the reported nightly appearance of a specter in an elevated part of the town known as Kyik, inhabited both by Greeks and Tyrks. The specter was represented as a Vrykolakas by persons who affirmed they had seen it lurking in the shadows of the house—a long, lank, female with a cadaverous face, and clad in a winding sheet. The Christian priests and Moslem hanjas, who were equally appealed to in this emergency, strove in vain during a fortnight to exorcise the wanderer by their prayers and incantations. Finally, a rumor began to be circulated that the only person possessing the power of freeing the town from this haunting specter was a turkish djinji, or magician, famous for his power over evil spirits, who lived in another town, and who would consequently require a large fee for his services.”
They did end up hiring the magician and he did indeed vanquish the “vampire,’ who was probably a girlfriend he sent out to terrorize towns when cash got low.
So yeah, point is, because America’s relationship with vampirism is still relatively new compared to the rest of the world, we don’t have many pieces of LOCAL lore that aren’t contemporary creations. It would be cool to say we had evidence of a 250-year-old vamp riding a gator down Bayou St. John with a lithe Creole limp in his arms, but all we really have are police reports of goth kids falling in the water after Voodoo Fest.
Miss Lucy M.J. Garnett had a bunch of old-ass vampire stories, however…so we’ll be sharing one of those with y’all this weekend. In the meantime, checkout Kipling’s vampire poem for a glimpse into how much that man did NOT love dating.