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This spooky season, I thought it might be interesting to look at the three most popular supernatural creatures and explore the similarities they share, as well as the origins of their myths and why they remain popular today. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are all major players in modern popular media. They cross genre lines appearing in horror, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and comedy productions. They seem to feature on all media platforms as well, TV, film, literature, anime, comics, art, games, and even music all feature these creatures or contain references to them.
While the three creatures all seem quite different, they all share one thing. They bite, and from that bite, their condition can be spread, transforming ordinary humans into monsters. Before we get into why this might be, let's talk about these creatures individually. Vampires, in their most basic elements, are creatures that feed on the blood of humans to sustain themselves.
They usually have fangs and prefer darkness and night. Many times they are immortal, immune to weapons, disease, and poison. However, in many stories they can only be killed by very specific things, such as excessive exposure to sunlight, fire, or a stake to the heart. Vampires have been featured in folklore and fiction of various cultures for hundreds of years.
Creatures with vampire characteristics have been noted in ancient Greek writings, attacking people in their sleep and draining their body fluids. Vampire myths were most prevalent in Eastern Europe. Digging up bodies of suspected vampires was practiced in many cultures, and it's thought that the natural processes of decay, such as bloat, receding gums, and growth of hair and fingernails after death, reinforced the belief that the dead were still active after burial. These vampires were usually recently deceased family members, who were thought to then prey on the rest of their family and then the community, weakening them.
In most cases, vampires were born from the corpses of evil beings, or those who had taken their own lives, but they could also be created through the bite of another vampire. If you'd like to know more about vampire fears in this era and what was done to keep suspected vampires in their graves, listen to our Vampire Barials episode from November 2018. The modern version of the vampire has its roots in European Gothic literature from the 18th and 19th century. The most famous literary work of vampire fiction is Dracula by Bram Stoker, which was published in 1897.
In the book, besides appearing to be a living corpse feeding on human blood, Dracula has powers like mind control, shape shifting, and unfaltering charisma. He's also wealthy and sleeps in a coffin that can be transported anywhere in the world. Dracula inspired one of the first vampire films, Nosferatu, which came out in 1922. Nosferatu added the concept of sunlight hurting the vampire.
Later, in the 20th century, vampires changed from being animalistic predatory creatures to ones with more human qualities. Anne Rice's 1976 novel, Interview with a Vampire, solidified the brooding, self-loathing, emotional, and lusty version of the vampire into the public imagination. Rice's vampires also possessed superhuman strength and speed and heightened senses, but were vulnerable to both sunlight and fire. They were also stunningly beautiful.
Vampires as anti-heroes and forbidden lovers grew increasingly popular in the 1990s with films like Blade, Interview with a Vampire, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The vampires are depicted as charming but cold, capable of love and care but generally brooding and aloof, restrained until their bloodlust overcomes them, and most apparent, sexy but also dangerous. Vampires are the most featured creature in the paranormal romance genre, which has steadily gained popularity since the 90s, generating many books, films, and television shows, such as Twilight, True Blood, and Underworld. Werewolves are a close second in popularity after vampires when it comes to media attention.
They are often portrayed as the mortal enemies of vampires in modern folklore. Myths about humans who change into animals go back hundreds of years. One of the oldest known written works, the Epic of Gilgamesh, features a sword of werewolf when the goddess Ishtar turns a shepherd into a wolf as punishment. Ancient Greek myth also contains several stories of humans transforming into wolves.
The most well known is that of Likaeon, a man who is turned into a wolf as punishment for trying to feed the god Zeus human meat. Likaeon's name and the word lycanthropy both come from the Greek word lycos, meaning wolf. For the most part, if wolves inhabit a particular region of the world, that region's folktales include werewolves. In regions without wolves, tales often exist where people turn into other carnivorous animals.
Stories from parts of Africa describe people turning into hyenas or crocodiles. In some Chinese folktales, people become tigers. In some Japanese stories, they become foxes. Some Russian stories describe people who turn into bears.
In the earliest literary mentions of werewolves, the gods use lycanthropy as punishment. Sometimes a person just becomes a werewolf as a result of bad behavior, which usually includes some sort of sexual excess. The culprit is usually male in the older stories, but there are some folktales that involve women transforming as well. In other tales, werewolf transformation is a gift and a source of power.
Stories describe articles of clothing like belts or straps that allow the wearer to become a wolf. If the belt is destroyed, the ability to transform disappears. Such stories are common in several northern European countries, including Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In a 13th century Icelandic work, the Volusunga saga, men wear the skin of wolves to fight as wolves.
Around the same time as the witch panic in Europe, a werewolf panic also occurred. The trials of supposed werewolves occurred throughout French and German-speaking Europe in the 16th century and peaked in the 17th century. Some notable cases of supposed lycanthropy include the 1573 case of Gile Garnier, who was burned at the stake as an alleged werewolf in France. In 1603, a young man named Jean Garnier was declared insane and confined to a monastery after claiming he had a skin that let him become a wolf, which he used for several murders.
A dramatic rise in werewolf lore occurred in the 20th century. The 1941 film, The Wolfman, did for werewolves what Dracula did for vampires. It set the modern rules for how werewolves are supposed to behave. In the original film, werewolf transformation took place in the fall when some species of a wolf-spain plant bloom.
Sequels to the film tied werewolf transformations to the full moon and made it clear that all the chains in the world couldn't keep a werewolf from attacking people, even their loved ones. This was also the first time the condition was transferred to other humans through a bite. The films also set the silver bullet as the only way to kill a werewolf, and that death was the only cure. Many early media depictions don't detail what happens when a person becomes a werewolf.
One minute, a man is human, and the next, he isn't. The man himself, rather than the process of transformation, is the primary focus. In more recent films, however, the transformation is often the highlight of the show. It appears in detail and is often depicted as being painful.
The result is a creature who is part human and part wolf in varying proportions. Also, in more recent books and films, werewolves have become more complicated than hungry, bestial killing machines. Similar to modern vampire stories, werewolves now elicit compassion rather than fear from the audience, largely because the struggle to accept or control their lycanthropy has become central to their stories. Also like the vampire, the sexual component of werewolf stories is now emphasized.
However, while vampires tend to be smooth and sometimes bisexual, the stereotypical werewolf is hypermasculine, exceptionally muscular, hairy and violent. These traits originate from the folkloric history of werewolves, where a man becomes a werewolf as punishment for some sort of sexual excess, or deviance, as judged by the standards of the community. Because of these origins, werewolves have become a popular feature of many paranormal romance stories, usually the more rough and tumble or melodramatic ones. In terms of history, the zombie is the most recent of these creatures to gain widespread popularity.
While corpse-like creatures do exist in older mythology, such as the ghoul or the early vampire, the version of the zombie that's popular now only appeared in the 1830s and was cemented by 20th century cinema. This creature, the cinematic zombie, is very different from the being the word zombie originally referenced. The older original version of the zombie has quite dramatic origins. Tales of zombies, or zombie, first appeared in 17th and 18th century Haiti.
At the time, Haiti was called San Dominga and was ruled by France. Haiti was full of sugar plantations, worked by enslaved African peoples. It's reported that 50% of the enslaved population were worked to death within a few years, which in turn led to the capture, import, and enslavement of more African peoples. The zombie myth developed as a representation of the inhumanity the slaves were subjected to.
Many believed that the only way they would ever be free was through death. Taking their own lives, however, led to an afterlife devoid of hope. Working the plantations for eternity as undead slaves denied agency over their own bodies, yet trapped inside them. Death was preferable, but they couldn't even control their own deaths.
After the Haitian Revolution in 1804, the zombie evolved and melded with the Vodou religion, also known as Vodou, which developed from several traditional religions of West and Central Africa and Roman Catholicism. In this evolution, zombies were still soulless corpses who did the bidding of their masters, but they were now reanimated and controlled by Vodou priests and shamans. Haitian Vodou spread to the United States not long after the Haitian Revolution, via both wealthy colonists and their slaves, and free people of color. The earliest written documentation of zombies in the United States was in the Oxford English Dictionary One of the first books to bring the concept of the Vodou zombie into popular western culture was WB Seabrook's 1929 story, The Magic Island, in which the narrator encounters Vodou cults in Haiti.
It should be noted that early editions contained racist illustrations, as well as racist content, and the representation of Vodou was also quite sensational. Seabrook's book was made into a film in 1932. White Zombie, starring Bella Lugosi, introduced the zombie to horror cinema. The film set some of the lore of modern cinematic zombies, such as people returning from the dead with blank-eyed stares seemingly mindless and violent.
All the main characters were white, and a racist and sensationalized version of Haitian Vodou was also portrayed. Gone was the metaphor for the ills suffered by African slaves. The boom of the cinematic zombie occurred in 1968 with George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, while the creatures are referred to as ghouls in the follow-up film Gone of the Dead, they're called zombies.
While the reason the zombies rise up and go after humans is foggy, their behavior is not. They stop at nothing to taste human flesh, especially the brains. In the 90s, cinematic zombies further evolved in the video game at Resident Evil, with its more scientific and action-oriented approach. Fast-running zombies were introduced, which then led to a surge of zombie films in the 2000s, such as 28 days later and its sequels, the Resident Evil movies, and a remake of Dawn of the Dead.
The Zombie Apocalypse concept, introduced in Night of the Living Dead, where the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has become a modern staple of the horror genre, as seen in such media as The Walking Dead, World War Z, The Last of Us, and the continuous production of Resident Evil games and movies. Just like the Vampire and the Werewolf, the zombie has also been humanized and even romanticized. In the 2010s, zombies were increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans, as seen on screen in warm bodies, the Corpse Bride, Eye Zombie, and Fido. These zombies were used as metaphors for discriminated groups, struggling for equality, and the human-zombie romantic relationship is often interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation.
These three seemingly different creatures share many similarities. Before I delve deeper into these similarities and discuss why these creatures remain so popular, let's pause for a word from our sponsors. Our regular sponsor is Audible.com. Audible can provide you with interesting and engaging audiobooks.
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And now back to the podcast. Before we get into the details, let's summarize the differences and then similarities between vampires, werewolves, and zombies. I'll mostly be sticking to the modern cinematic versions of these creatures for this analysis. Vampires and zombies are transformed dead, or undead, humans, while werewolves are living humans who transform at specific times, such as a full moon, but are human the rest of the time.
Werewolves and zombies are unrestrained and animalistic in their attacks. They're also far less concerned about who they attack, whereas vampires tend to select their victims and spend a little time with them before luring them close for an attack. All three are ravenous, but vampires and zombies prefer humans as their food, whereas werewolves seemingly will eat anything. All three bite their victims, which can transmit their condition to other humans.
All three conditions transform a human into a quote-unquote monster. The bite and spread of the condition are reminiscent of a disease, a contagion that takes over the human body, negatively transforming it. It's for this reason that the origin of all three myths is theorized to be a disease, and the disease that most fits all three conditions is rabies. Rabies is a lysovirus that is transmitted through saliva, and therefore often contracted due to bites from animals like feral dogs and bats.
Once inside the body, the rabies virus travels to the spinal cord and eventually into the brain. There it begins to replicate inside the nerve cells, destroying them in the process. Eventually the virus travels to other parts of the body and causes rabbit behavior, extreme aggression and hypersexuality, slight or partial paralysis, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behaviors such as biting, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, and a fear of water. Bright light seems to aggravate some of the symptoms.
Death usually occurs two to ten days after the first symptoms appear. If you want to know more about rabies, check out our episode on the subject from back in 2017. In his 1998 paper, Spanish neurologist Dr. Juan Gomez Alonzo stated that he was struck by the similarities between vampires and rabies, such as the aggressiveness and hypersexuality.
When looking at reports of rabies outbreaks in Eastern Europe during the 18th century, the outbreaks appeared to coincide with the first reported sightings of vampires. There were also stories of people sucking the blood of their own family members, making them sick and eventually die. The shapeshifting nature of a vampire allowed it to change into a bat or a wolf, mammals well known to carry rabies. According to Ian Woodward in his 1978 book, The Werewolf Delusion, many were wolf behaviors can be explained by rabies as well.
The late stage aggression, confusion, and terror have caused people to think that the infected person was becoming more beastial, especially if they received the bite from a wolf in the first place. Rabies symptoms like mindless aggression and the need to bite are characteristic of cinematic zombies, as are the losses of speech, coherence, and lucidity. The shuffling walk or spasmodic run of the zombie is also reminiscent of the slight or partial paralysis that can occur in rabies. There are some aspects that rabies doesn't cover, especially for vampires and zombies, who must die before they transform.
In the earliest vampire panics, suspected vampires were often the first person to have died during an epidemic. It was believed that they came back at night to feed on their community. Therefore, the suspected vampire was often exhumed and given anti-vampire mortuary treatments. Upon digging up the corpse, it appeared to confirm that the person was dead but still active, as the stages of normal decay were not well known at the time.
As we now know more about disease transmission and incubation periods, we can see that it was not supernatural creatures but pathogens that caused community-wide illnesses. As for zombies, their association with death comes more from their original form, in which the human soul was made inert, control was lost, and the body mindlessly continued to serve its master. The human had died, yet the body still functioned. As the zombie evolved, the original version could have combined with cases of coma or other illnesses that were mistaken for death, causing a living human to be buried.
In ages past, graves were not as deep, and shrouds instead of coffins were often used. A person thought to be dead may have come out of a catatonic state, a condition of unresponsive stupor, not unlike a zombie, and crawled out of their grave, seemingly returning from death. The sexual aspects of vampires are fairly obvious, and to some degree, werewolves are similar. This aspect has led to the theory that vampire and werewolf legends might have developed due to fear surrounding syphilis, an ancient yet still prevalent sexually transmitted infection.
In the late 17th century, syphilis, no pun intended, was burning throughout Europe. The high prevalence, together with its obvious association with sex, led to widespread fear that European civilizations faced extinction, or biblical apocalypse, due to the disease and the sin associated with it. This, plus anxiety about invasion from Prussia in the late 1800s, created a perfect environment for bronze stoker to twist the vampire of Eastern European folklore to reflect the concerns of cultural decay due to both syphilis and invading hordes from the East. Several other diseases could have contributed to the legends of these creatures, though the connections are far shakier.
Porphyria is a rare medical condition that still affects people today, but before it was well understood, people may have used vampire legends to explain its symptoms. Severe sensitivity to sunlight, fragile thin skin, red brown urine, which might look like the person drank blood, gum recession creating the appearance of fangs, and mental changes like confusion, hallucinations, and disorientation may occur. As Porphyria is extremely rare, it's more likely that the association with vampirism came later, long after the vampire legend was well established. Werewolf legends may have been influenced by hypertrichosis, a genetic disorder linked to the X chromosome that can cause very thick hair growth all over the face and body.
People with this condition often physically resemble the stereotypical werewolf from early Hollywood films, but again, it's an extremely rare condition, so it's more likely the association came later. While these diseases appear to have tenuous connections, rabies seem tied much more securely to the legends of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Rabies is ancient, just like legends of these supernatural creatures. Both rabies and these transformative creatures inspire terror because they challenge the boundaries between human and monster.
A bite, an animalistic act of violence, so obviously transmits the virus, changing a person into something more like an animal. So too do the transformations from human to vampire werewolf or zombie, cause a loss of humanity, a regression to a more animal-like state. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies may have been inspired by a biological entity like rabies, but something far less tangible, though equally powerful, is being expressed through these fear. All three creatures have at their core deep-seeded fears, fears of infection, contagion, and invasion in both historical and modern media.
The creatures are metaphors or embodiments of these fears. In early human societies, the stories of frightening creatures reflected the fears that afflicted the general population. The emerging cultures of medieval Europe proliferated with stories of vampires and werewolves, with their infectious elements because they were dealing with fatal illnesses that they didn't understand. Cinematic zombie stories also became popular at times when new and frightening epidemics were emerging.
Horror fiction, as a modern literary genre, grew out of the industrial age. It emphasized the themes of death and decay which were prominent at the time due to the multitude of epidemics sweeping through the western world as people moved from spread out in the country to overcrowded cities with no understanding of disease transmission or sanitation. Contagion became a theme of many Victorian literary works. One of the most influential works that clearly shows the fear of disease presented in a zombie-like creature was Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 Tale, the Mask of a Red Death.
The creature, and the mysterious unknowable disease behind it, aroused dread in Victorian audiences and still does so today. Vampire, werewolf, and zombie stories also embody fears of moral contagion. Vampires and werewolves are shown as hypersexual, a characteristic that has historically been seen as negative, while zombies excessively give in to another base urge, hunger. Excess, rage, and murder are all qualities that define vampires, werewolves, and zombies, and are all frowned upon by both historical and modern society.
If a person participated in any of these deviances, they might be rejected from greater society. In this way, the creatures reflect fears of immorality, but also of being rejected. Being transformed into the other. Most vampire werewolf and zombie narratives include distinct lines between the self and the other.
The self is the victim, innocent, while the other is the perpetrator, deviant. This is an example of the fear of contagion and invasion, corruption of the quote-unquote pure human by a monstrous contagion, be it disease, so-called sin, or another form of behavior that isn't socially acceptable by the powers of society. Another aspect of the fear of invasion represented by these creatures comes as a fear of loss of control. What is an invasion but a loss of control by one power system at the hands of another?
According to Dr. Anna Frela of East Carolina University, the zombie reflects fear of something far worse than death. They function as an allegory for expendable lives and for a loss of control, both at the individual level and a societal one. Zombies contain the plain-site secret of how empires are built on the backs of the disenfranchised.
These allegories have expanded exponentially in our era of endless wars, food insecurity, climate change, drone warfare and surveillance, global financial crises, privatization of public resources, and the erosion of social institutions. We fear that we could be invaded, transformed, made expendable, the same thing that occurred to create the original zombie legend. Surprisingly, hope for humanity is hidden in the rise of the paranormal romance genre. In this genre, vampires, werewolves, or zombies are the focus of affection by human characters.
The monster is embraced by an individual, causing tension and sometimes acceptance by the greater community. Several series such as True Blood, Twilight, Underworld, and Warm Bodies focus on the relationships between the subculture of the infected, vampires, werewolves, or zombies, and their uninfected human counterparts. There are several popular infected heroes such as Blade, Remus Lupin from Harry Potter, or Live from Eye Zombie. These more recent stories show that even an infected human can be a help to society, can be accepted and loved.
The previously distinct lines of self and other have become more blurred. In some cases, fear has also changed to desire. As we now have a better understanding of disease, we can recognize things about vampires, werewolves, and zombies that are positive instead of terrifying, such as the vampires' immortality and beauty, the werewolves' strength and resilience, and the cinematic zombies' lack of pain and concern. They have gone from monsters that human characters want to avoid to fantastic creatures they want to become.
So why are tales of vampires, werewolves, and zombies still popular? Humans mostly no longer believe in the supernatural, so why do these stories keep being told? It's possible we watch horror fiction due to a psychological need to control chaos and overcome fear. Horror stories generally show order breaking down due to forces that are, at least initially, beyond human control.
The enjoyment of reading or watching comes from the vicarious experience of the human struggle to manage the chaos. In addition, as horror reflects the age in which it was created, it serves as a metaphorical tool for writers and artists to come to terms with dark forces and cataclysmic events. This is particularly true of modern horror stories due to the realization that cultural change was and is accelerating. Whether by industrialization, external pressure from potential invaders, or internal pressure from now more visible and accepted subcultures and hidden epidemics, such as HIV-AIDS and the more current mental health crisis.
Our knowledge of threats like contagious disease has become more informed, but our means to deal with them hasn't quite kept up. We've realized, especially recently, that unexpected events, ones we could have prevented through preparation, can easily get out of hand despite our modern technology and civilization. The systems for control have proven inadequate to the challenges of the modern era, a pivotal anxiety that overshadows our daily lives. Horror will continue to be written, with vampires, werewolves, and zombies likely staying at the forefront of popularity.
Infectious elements will almost certainly be prominent for a long time to come thanks to the current pandemic. The monsters themselves have changed very little over the centuries, but their meanings have significantly. Fear of death, disease, societal change, and outside invasion are still central themes, but our reactions have changed. So-called monsters can now be accepted, even cared for, once they are better understood.
Hopefully, confronting our contagious fears in fiction will help us manage those fears better, in reality. That is why vampires, werewolves, and zombies continue to ignite our curiosity. Thank you to everyone who liked, commented, followed, and shared the MCP on social media. A huge thank you to Dr.
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