I happen to like vampires more than zombies. Martin Scorsese

Greetings from my house—where both pictures are from—I’m getting into my favorite season. Great weekend–Drinks with friends on Friday night, Sat just roaming about and eating a Chili’s always fun https://sbmenus.com/restaurants/chilis-bar-and-grill-goleta/takeout yesterday had the most fun–Shakespeare Theater at Lock Haven http://www.orlandoshakes.org/ where we saw Spam-A-Lot http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/arts-and-theater/os-spamalot-review-orlando-matthew-j-palm-20150911-column.html which was loads of fun. HONORABLE MENTION: Walk in the Woods www.shopwalkinthewoods.com

Persians were one of the first civilizations thought to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region

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Check out these real visits to Outlander Sights

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Finding a vampire is not always easy: according to one Romanian legend you’ll need a 7-year-old boy and a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a graveyard at midday. Watch the horse wander around, and whichever grave is nearest the horse when it finally stops is a vampire’s grave — or it might just have something edible nearby; take your pick. http://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.html

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Today we’re getting into the Halloween Spirit and all this week we’re doing Vampire and other legends that make it better.

This practice of digging up, burning, or otherwise attempting to restrain the deceased was a widespread practice in many Western countries until the early 20th century, and it was intended to prevent what people at the time thought of as vampires: Dead victims of disease that literally sucked the life out of the living from beyond the grave. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/what-vampire-graves-tell-us-about-ancient-superstitions/280879/

What better reminds of us of Halloween than the things and creatures that go bump in the night and what better example than the VAMPIRE. THE VAMPIRE, a dead person who has returned to life or a strange resemblance of it — rather not alive but “undead”. Not a ghost or animated spirit but a full bodied thinking creature of the night that; except for the eating habits and a few other things like nocturnal vs. day time habitation; is in most aspects the dearly departed. Unlike other animated creatures: for instance the mindless ghoul or the revolting (not to mention rotting) zombie this is the person you knew–just a lot more evil (well maybe not that much more than some of my old friends).

The association of bats with the legend of human vampires has an uncertain origin, but since the time of Cortez and his Conquistadors, peoples of western civilization have linked vampire bats with the legendary “human” vampires of Transylvania. The writings of William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others have contributed to legends that cast a veil of fear on people, as they associate bats with graveyards, death, ghosts, and goblins. http://www.bu.edu/cecb/bat-lab-update/bats/bat-facts-and-folklore/

MODERN VAMPIRES:

Don’t age

Have better hearing and sight and smell.

They can hypnotize mere mortals and sometimes animals–if the Creatures allow them to get that close.

They have bad reaction to sun (this varies in modern stories) and sleep–or even in actuality return to death or a death like suspension during the day—and sleeping in their home soil is usually a part of the resting ritual.

In Greece they have eyebrows that meet in the middle–the evil uni-brow.

Historically, vampirism was most often associated with those who had sinned. Individuals who had committed suicide or who had led an immoral life were strongly suspect (Bunson, p. 20). Until 1823, English law required that all bodies of suicides must be staked before burial to ensure that the victim would not rise from the grave (Florescu & McNally, p. 121). Likewise, individuals who had been excommunicated or who had committed other mortal sins, like murder, were believed to have the ability to turn into vampires (Wright, p. 20). http://www.dartmouth.edu/~elektra/thesis.html

To keep them away try: Garlic

Mirrors they don’t have reflections

so why this is I’m not sure

Crosses —I don’t know what you’d do with

Moslem, Jewish or pagan

creatures of the night

Home The best thing to remember, even

if they look like Brad Pitt or Tom

Cruise don’t invite them into your

dwelling—if you don’t ask, they

won’t come.

Iron Fences are believed by some to keep the

undead in their graves.

Reciting the Lord’s Prayer is suppose to be

helpful

Although well-known and feared worldwide, it appears that the most highly developed vampire mythology originates from Eastern Europe and the Balkans – including the word “vampire” itself – where traditional beliefs held that the body of an evil person will remain uncorrupt after death and as such ready to rise from its grave on certain nights to haunt and terrorise his familiar neighbourhood and its inhabitants until “helped” to find the final rest of his body and soul like any “normal” deceased by drastic methods such as impaling the corpse with wooden stakes, decapitating or burning it. http://web.stanford.edu/group/rsa/_content/_public/_htm/dracula.shtml

Though they can live forever they are not really immortal as they can be killed by: Being left out in the sun (though some have good

results with really good sun screen—-say 2000

Stakes through the heart—it is not recommended

to be tried while the Vampire is awake since they

also have superior strength (forgot to mention that

earlier–sorry)

Holy water is also good for Christian vampires it

burns them–or put in it’s soil (it rests in) will also

results in its demise.

A more modern tool is ultraviolet light which

like sunlight burns them up.

Vampire-like spirits called the Lilu are mentioned in early Babylonian demonology, and the even more ancient bloodsucking Akhkharu is discussed in Sumerian mythology. These female demons were said to roam during the hours of darkness, hunting and killing newborn babies and pregnant women. One of the demons, named Lilitu, was later adapted into Jewish demonology as Lilith http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vampire

In the modern world we have the (politically correct) Living Impaired–not only do we have the bad vampire, but the good one who only fights the bad and just sips from his or her victims. Actually associating the vampire with Halloween is very modern with the two being very separate things for hundreds perhaps thousands of years.

More than 120 skeletons, dating between the 7^th and 14^th century have been found in a cemetery in Western Ireland. What all the ‘deviant burials’ had in common, was that they were found with large stones placed in their mouths. Researchers believe this indicates a widespread and longstanding fear of revenants, and the stones were a practice to prevent the dead from returning as zombies or vampires. As similar find of deviant burials in 2009, included the remains of a 60-year-old woman with a rock thrust in her from the 1500s on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. http://goldenroom.presspublisher.org/issue/october-2014/article/vampires-zombies-and-jinn-they-re-everywhere

Tomorrow we’ll look at Bram Stoker, whose classic Dracula revived a flagging interest among Victorians for elegant hosts with curious appetites.

IN all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest. Even to-day in certain quarters of the world, in remoter districts of Europe itself, Transylvania, Slavonia, the isles and mountains of Greece, the peasant will take the law into his own bands and utterly destroy the carrion who–as it is yet firmly believed–at night will issue from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside. http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vkk/vkk02.htm