Large Fierce Mammal

This 700-year-old skeleton from Sozopol, Bulgaria, was found with its teeth removed and stabbed through the chest with an iron rod. Scholars suspect that townspeople did this to ward off vampires—a very real fear in Europe for hundreds of years. Photograph by Nikolay Doychinov, AFP/Getty Images — Caption and image source https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/vampires-europe-new-england-halloween-history/

Folklore comes from the same place as Human spirituality in that it springs from a need to understand the forces of the Universe by putting their obvious influences into some sort of context. On a human level, it is also crafted to convey time tested lessons of conduct to each succeeding generation. In this effort spirituality and folklore often make use of metaphorical monsters and assorted horrors. This could be everything from being eaten by a witch, abducted, birched, and enslaved by Krampus, to outright burning in Hell to make the point. In the face of the occasional Natural cataclysm, famine, war (a constant in some locales for generations), and plain old hateful people, the citizenry of any age could understand destructive influences, and the very tangible existence of evil incarnate, but then there was the sort of evil that transcended “acts of God” or Gods, and it is here that folklore shines.

“Tales abound with ingredients that torture the imagination of the susceptible, even long after the story has been read, heard, or watched. The effect is the same whether the tale comes from experience or fiction, for the imagination is a wondrous thing if taken in hand by someone who can play it like a harp.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 8 — Day 25: Hags Assorted

From Algonquian tradition, we have the Wendigo — part morality play, part slaughter:

“The Wendigo hunts in the dead of winter when travel through deep snow is taxing, food is scarce, the nights are long, and time is hard. It selects as its host from among the most vulnerable, taking those with weaknesses that are not of the physical kind. It is drawn to greed, ravenous envy, blind hatred, moral decrepitude, and the kind of desperation some would do anything to alleviate.

“Wendigo possession initially presents with delirium, often so violent that the one possessed must be physically restrained. The hunting phase does not, therefore, manifest spontaneously, but the spirit cannot be removed so Algonquian law is decisive in such matters. It falls either to an experienced Shaman or to tribal elders to evaluate the case and decide if, beyond reasonable doubt, there is a Wendigo involved. Sometimes, the decision is aided by the pleas of the victim who, in some cases, has been known to recognize what is happening and beg to be destroyed before the Wendigo asserts its control and all human reason is subdued forever.

“There are varying descriptions of the measures to be taken if it’s decided that there is a Wendigo to be gotten rid of, but all agree that there is no time to waste because, once the feeding frenzy begins the Wendigo’s ravenous strength is at its peak, and many lives will be lost or put needlessly at risk in an attempt to stop it then. Some say to strangle the host and burn the remains, others call for decapitation after strangulation, and burying the head and torso in separate locations. Either way, the Wendigo can no longer make use of the host and must move on. Obviously, it behooves the tribal group to ensure that its members are as morally upright as possible, so in this sense the Wendigo can be said to be the boogy man that threatens the unrighteous with a terrible doom. A community of solid citizens will send the Wendigo to hunt elsewhere.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 1 – Day 21

European traditions bring us the vampire, immortalized in literature and cinema by the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu, but with roots going much further back into folklore with connections, among other things, to visits from things like “The Hag“. And the consumption of human blood isn’t restricted to the realm of food and drink, as exemplified by the case of Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Bathory, of whom I’ve previously spoken, and who allegedly considered it to be primarily for topical use.

It is in the realm of the vampire that we will alight tonight with a heavy dusting of the delightful seasoning that was Vincent Price. Let us join him now in Vincent Price’s Dracula, a jaunt from 1982 that’s part history, part legend, and all entertainment. Not unlike my own Mistress of the Dark, Mrs. LFM who was born that same year.