Vampire Fakelore Trivia Quiz

Answer: Transylvania

The word "vampire" comes from eighteenth-century Austrian reports out of Serbia (which I've covered in a another quiz). Perhaps the most well-known Greek case was documented by the great botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who witnessed a wild Greek vampire hunt on New Year's Day 1701. Bulgarian instances are also well-documented, but Transylvania, popular concepts to the contrary, wasn't a hotbed of vampirism, largely because the region was a longtime possession of the Catholic Habsburg Empire, whose Inquisition took a dim view of that sort of thing.

Answer: Bat

The vampiric association with bats did not come about until the discovery of bloodsucking varieties in South America; bluntly speaking, Slavic peasants weren't usually all that clear on their New World zoology. On the other hand, Juliette du Boulay has documented Greek beliefs of vampires going forth as moths or butterflies, and a common Serbian term for vampire, "vukodlak", is derived from the term for "werewolf".

The transformation to mist in escaping the grave is part and parcel of many vampire stories.

Answer: The lack of a reflection in mirrors

The folkloric vampire was a very erotic creature - much of Serbian folklorist Vuk Karadzic's writing on the subject probably would not have made it past Victorian censors had he published in English. Likewise, the stake is not uncommon in vampire folklore. Conversely, Stoker's vampire does move in daylight - he makes the bed in the morning, and he visits the zoo in London, presumably in broad daylight.

The first usage of the Sun to disintegrate the vampire did not some until the 1922 film classic "Nosferatu".

The ubiquitous mirror is Stoker's creation, however; it is never referred to in folklore. Stoker also introduced Transylvania as the home of the vampire, and can be given a good bit of the credit for the "vampire changing into a bat" motif, though this got a head start in the interminable epic "Varney the Vampire" from the 1840s.

Answer: Lord Byron

Polidori was Byron's personal physician on an 1816 holiday in Geneva with Percy Shelly and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. As creative folk will do, all four began fantastic stories on this retreat. Mary's effort would eventually become the classic novel "Frankenstein". Polidori's story had a more circuitous route - Byron began a vampire story, and after a falling out between the poet and the doctor, Polidori took up Byron's idea and created the character of Lord Ruthven, fiction's first vampire, named for another Byronic character in Lady Caroline Lamb's novel "Glenarvon". Thus, the aristocratic vampire began as an attempt at literary revenge.

Answer: No

Stoker did indeed take his iconic character's name from Prince Vlad. "Dracula" literally means "scion of the dragon", and it refers to Vlad and his father's membership in the anti-Ottoman Order of the Dragon. There are no vampiric legends around Vlad III, however, or at least there were none before Stoker came along.

He is reputed to have been a sadistic sociopath (the Ottoman Turks nicknamed him "Tsepesh" - "The Impaler"), but no vampire. The novel "Dracula" was well underway before Stoker chose the name, and there is nothing in his copious notes that suggests he knew the more lurid stories about the historical Dracula. For more information, see "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense" by Elizabeth Miller.

Answer: All of these

I won't argue with Dolphin on the metabolic actions of the disease, since he has written the definitive work on porphyrins. What is very apparent, however, is that the porphyria hypothesis, which has unfortunately become rather pervasive in popular culture, is based on the depiction of vampires in literature and film (who often pass themselves off as living people) as opposed to vampires of folklore, who are almost always recognized as someone who has died.

Indeed, the keystone of most vampire stories is the body's disinterment, often accompanied by wonder at how little the "vampire" has decomposed. I could go on about this at some length, but in sum, vampires do not resemble porphyria victims, and the association is downright cruel considering the stigma that has subsequently been pinned on modern sufferers from this disease.

Answer: Rabies

Like Dolphin, Gomez-Alonzo based his conception of vampirism on that found in novels and movies, not historical folklore. For example, he presents a case of a sufferer whose dementia did not allow him to recognize himself in a mirror; as noted above, the lack of a reflection comes from literature, not folklore. Gomez-Alonzo's article did appear in a reputable journal, "Neurology". However, neurologists generally do not have folklore training, and, like Dolphin's, Gomez-Alonzo's work is very brief and does not appear to have undergone thorough peer review.

Answer: No

Examination of primary sources reveals that Báthory's trial focused on what would today be called sadistic killings, both of peasant girls and aristocratic maidens sent to learn etiquette. Specific accusations included beatings, freezing, cutting, starving, and burning her victims, which have been enumerated anywhere between 36 and 600. Reports of bloodletting do not appear until accounts from over a century later.

Some historians seek to exonerate Báthory altogether, noting that her family was the object of many politically-motivated witchcraft charges aimed at stealing the family's estates. Regardless, contemporary accounts do not paint Báthory as a blood-drinker. Whether the stories of her sanguinary exploits qualify as folklore or not is another story.

Answer: Not very old - they are usually destroyed in the months after their death

One of the most appealing aspects of the vampire motif to modern enthusiasts is their immortality. However, this is not in evidence in most folklore. The role of the vampire before Gothic literature was, almost without exception, that of a scapegoat - something tangible to strike against when ill fortune rears its head.

As such, vampires are the recent dead, who must be dispatched for the plague (or drought, or what have you) to go away. For a deeper examination of this, see Paul Barber, "Vampires, Burial, and Death" (Yale University Press).

Answer: All of these are correct

What will and will not ward off a vampire in Balkan folklore is, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. The icon in the Bulgarian story above certainly seems to have done the trick, and an anthropologist colleague of mine has documented Muslim Gypsies wearing crosses on their clothing to repel vampires. (Yes, you read that right.) On the other hand, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort's account of the Mykonos vampire does indeed include an "experienced" Bulgarian vampire hunter chiding the Greeks for piercing the "vrykolakas" with Christian, cross-shaped swords, as they will not allow the demon to leave, and most traditional ways of warding off vampires involve semi-magical means like dropping a handful of mustard seeds, since the vampire will have to pick up every one before pursuing.

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