Vampyres

Where did they come from, the Vampyrs? Were they only figments of the imagination, born out of fear of the unknown, Pagan memories and the dark, mysterious forests of Europe? Or were they real; an "elder" race, created and then discarded by Evolution, but holding onto life through the blood of their usurpers? Wherever they originated, the legend of the vampyr spread. Virtually every nation has its own stories to tell on cold winter nights beside the comforting fire. But, no matter how wide-spread they were, the legend of the Vampyr would have eventually died away with the coming of the modern world, had it not been for a certain Victorian writer, Bram Stoker. Mr Stoker did what no one else had done before, to bring the Vampyr out into the light of day and into everyday life. He wrote "Dracula" in 1897 after, according to Mr Stoker himself, suffering from the effects of having eaten bad prawns at dinnertime. What is more likely that he wrote the story with an eye to having it performed on stage by his employer, the eminent actor-director of the day, Henry Irving. The basic ideas are all there: the dislike of garlic, the crosses, the stake hammered into the vampyr's chest, the gloomy eastern European castle and the ladies in diaphanous nightgowns. Everything we expect to see in the average vampyr novel or film today originated in Bram Stoker's imagination.

The Victorian age was a time like no other. It was an era of mass colonisation; industrialisation and a move away from rural areas; great prosperity and great poverty went hand-in-glove and all the perversions, depredations and beauty that went with that. On the one hand, the upper classes were rich, articulate, cultured and restricted, while the poor were poorer still, disenfranchised, ignorant and, seemingly, free. A gentleman of middle-to-upper-class could get sexual partners of any age or gender whenever he wanted. The poverty of the lower class made them ideal prey, while they still respected their "betters". Sex and death were everywhere. The little street walker who let you do whatever you wanted to her one night might easily be dead the next. The victim of some disease, starvation or casual violence. Remember, the Ripper was abroad at this time. The pallor of death lay everywhere and not even the rich were exempt from diseases such as tuberculosis or syphilis.

Horror was the fashion. From the eerily atmospheric stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to castle-bound gothic novels being devoured by the genteel ladies of the cities. The incredible story of "Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde", followed by "Frankenstein", "The Monk", Edgar Allen Poe's stories of premature burial and strange, ethereal paintings of equally ethereal women. We may think we have the monopoly on horror but they loved their thrills and chills in the Victorian age. The Vampyr fitted in perfectly at home.

Why did the story of Dracula persist for so long? For one thing, Mr Stoker's timing was excellent. The story was first given on the stage, but was soon followed with the first horror movie, "Nosferatu", made in Germany. The vampyr is an excellent metaphor for any age with it's themes of the outsider, outcast from his rightful home. The conflict between the undead and the living for, aha, living space. The drain on resources as the vampyr creates more of its kind to feed on the few living left. And so the story has changed, slightly, for our time and has escalated into war. Our young feel isolated from society and they find comfort and sympathy in the story of the lonely, yearning vampyr who needs and yet hates the thing it feeds from.

Does the vampyr actually exist? It is my opinion that it probably did, though whether it still lives today is another question and one I feel unqualified to answer. For I cannot believe that something which has existed in our folk-lore for so long and been so widely recognised (even the Inuit have their vampyr legends), cannot have been the stuff of legends alone. I believe that, as I said at the beginning, the vampyr was an evolutionary prototype. A template for the human race that was not quite right. While not a Christian believer myself (being a Pagan), I am interested in the story of the creation of humankind, in which "Adams"s first wife was "Lilith", a vampyr-like woman. Perhaps this was a reference to an earlier race. Its need for blood having led to its sad downfall. We humans are not the most generous of races. We are more than happy to feed off other creatures, but if we are needed for food, then that needy species will starve. We are not about to share anything of ourselves with anyone.

I feel sad about that, that if they did exist, we may have been the reason why they died out. Every day, we allow thousands of species of plants, insects and animals to die and it is heart-breaking to think that we may have allowed a race much like ourselves to fade into legend. How much richer our lives would have been, had we allowed them to live beside us.