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books, film, history, musings, occult

“To Prevent So Spreading an Evil”: Stakes and Vampires

Scholars pretty much agree that the practice of driving a wooden stake through a suspected vampire’s heart finds its origins in Eastern Europe many hundreds of years ago. But nailing down a date when this belief first emerged is difficult. For millennia, people worldwide have believed in the power of wood to rid themselves of evil. The Chinese have tao, or peach wood, to ward off evil spirits. Native Americans used cedar wood to thwart theirs. And in many parts of Europe, it was believed that white thorn or ash was the best wood to combat evil. But the act of taking a piece of wood, sharpening it to a point, and driving it through (un)dead bodies? To the English-speaking world, word of such horrors came to Britain’s shores by way of a travel log: “The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, being the grand Tour of Germany, in the Year 1734” — published in 1745 in The Harleain Miscellany.*

Having heard tales of vampires from the men’s German landlord — who in turn was paraphrasing Baron Valvasor (the first to perhaps ever document a case of a vampirism (one Jure Grando from Istria) in 1689 — the author of the travel log writes of bodies being exhumed from their graves:

A Vampire Impaled
Illustration by Albert Decaris from Le Vampire. Extrait des mémoires du chevalier de Villevert, illustré de burins originaux par Albert Decaris. 1944.

Their Countenances are fresh and ruddy; and their Nails, as well as Hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer dead than many other Bodies, which are perfectly putrified, not the least Mark of Corruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their Death, become Vampyres, so that, to prevent so spreading an Evil, it is found requisite to drive a Stake through the dead Body, from whence, on this Occasion, the Blood flows as if the Person was alive.

There were several reason why staking was effective. It pinned the vampire to the earth so that it could not rise. It released the excess of blood from the bloated creature, and, if made of wood (sometimes the stake was made of iron), the organic material carries the aforementioned protections against evil.**

THE CASE OF ARNOLD PAOLE

The next significant and detailed account of a real person accused of vampirism was the case of Arnold Paole, a Serbian solider who died in 1725 (some sources say 1726) and soon was suspected of four attacks on villagers in the town of Meduegna in which he was buried. Upon their deaths, bodies were exhumed and found to be vampires. Villagers recalled Paole saying he had been plagued by a vampire in Gossowa (possibly modern-day Kosovo), and that he had killed the creature. But apparently not before being cursed by the vampire himself.

calmet-dissertaion-apparitions
A 1749 copy of Calmet’s influential Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits (photo credit: abebooks.co.uk)

While not mentioned directly in 1728’s De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis by Michael Ranft about vampires in Germany, the Paole story is traceable to the 1732’s Dissertationem De Hominibus Post Mortem Sanguisugis, Vulgo Sic Dictis Vampyren. It is pretty much certain, however, that it’s popularity in spreading across Western Europe is attributable to Dom Augustin Calmet, a Benedictine monk who recounted the tale in his influential Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits, first published in 1746. There, Arnold Paole is Arnold Paul, but the story is pretty much the same. And it ends with Paole being staked.

The book went through multiple editions, and was readily available (in French) in England soon after The Harleain Miscellany travel log was published. All different publications. But all pretty much conclude that the vampire of Eastern Europe migrated to Austria and Germany in the mid eighteenth century and became a big hit among a public fascinated with the tales. No wonder then that in 1748, a German by the name of Heinrich Ossenfelder gave Western civilization its first poem to mention a vampire, the appropriately titled “Der Vampir.” Seems the vampire had crossed over from Eastern Europe, not only to Austria, but also Western literature.

THE VOURDALAK, VARNEY, AND CARMILLA

The intersection of history and literature is where discussions of vampires seemed to dwell for the next twenty to thirty years. Notable thinkers like Rousseau, in a letter to Christophe de Beaumont in 1762, asserted that he wholeheartedly believed in vampires. Others, like Voltaire, did not — even mocking such belief. But any scientific discussion that would quell superstitions from the continent was no match for the writers of the Romantic period who gave new life to the vampire.

Coleridge’s Bride of Corinth. Polidori’s Ruthven. Neither of these early English Romantic vampires are staked. But in 1839, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, in the Gothic novella  Family of the Vourdalak, is among the first (if not THE first) to work the folklore directly into a literary work.

Family of the Vourdalak introduces old man Gorcha, and his warning to his family that if he does not come back from fighting the Turks after ten days, he is dead. If he comes after that ten days, he’s one of the undead, and they must destroy him. He tells his family “if this happens, I command you to forget that I was your father, no matter what I say or do, and to impale my heart with an aspen stake, because I will be a cursed Vourdalak returning to suck your blood.”

And what are these creatures? Gorcha explains:

“… vourdalaks, as the Slavic peoples call vampires, are believed in those countries to be dead bodies that come out of their graves to suck the blood of the living… Father Augustin Calmet, in his curious book on ghosts and apparitions, cites many frightening examples. Several times, the Emperors of Germany have appointed commissions to investigate outbreaks of vampirism. The commissioners tell of exhuming bodies engorged with blood, which they stake in the heart and then burn in the village squares. The magistrates who were present at these executions attest — with oaths and signed statements — that they heard the dead howl at the moment that the stake was plunged into their hearts.” (translated from the original French)

While Tolstoy’s vampire may be the first in western literature to be said to die by impaling it, English writers would soon take up the stake a few years after in James Malcolm Rhymer’s and Thomas Peckett Prest’s penny dreadful, Varney The Vampire.

Varney: The Desecrated Corpse
Vampires can definitely be destroyed by stakes in the penny dreadful that is VARNEY THE VAMPIRE (1845-47)

Published in serialized format from 1845 to 1847, Varney The Vampire is the first vampire tale in English literature to makes clear that stakes kill the undead (see especially the 48th chapter). It is also the first work to introduce the trope of a vampire having fangs. And it was all but forgotten as an essential piece of the puzzle that is vampires in literature. Looked down upon as it was the people’s fiction of the penny dreadfuls. Not artful like the vampire to come thirty years later from the penn of a talented Irish writer.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, first widely made available in 1872 (included in the author’s In a Glass Darkly) is considered among the first truly great vampire stories in English literature. Predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 25 years, Carmilla is not only a cornerstone of vampire literature, but also an early example of  lesbianism in the genre.

It is a tale of the close relationship between Laura, the female protagonist, and Carmilla, a mysterious girl invited to live under the same roof with Laura, prone to mood swings and melancholy. When it is revealed that Carmilla is, in fact, a 17th century Countess named Mircalla Karnstein — and a vampire — it is only a matter of time before the men in Laura’s life track down the vampire, stake it, cut off its head, burn the body, and scatter the ashes in a river.

STAKES AND STOKER

Stoker would pick up the practice in Dracula (1897) when Lucy Westenra is staked by her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood. As for Dracula himself? Dispatched with a kukri knife to the throat and a Bowie knife to the chest. Arguably, the more horrendous and gory a death is Lucy’s, and not the vampire who made her.

From Dr. Seward’s Diary (Chapter XVI) comes the account of Lucy’s end:

“The Thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it.”

By the dawn of the twentieth century, the public at large was becoming well aware of this pointy wooden means of destroying the undead. Though Stoker’s novel sold only moderately well upon release, sales of it skyrocketed when Dracula was adapted for Broadway in the 1920s. From there, it is only a short jump to 1931’s DRACULA, Universal studios’ adaptation. There, the Count is staked off-screen with an unceremonious whack of a hammer and moan from Lugosi.

MAKE NO MISTAKE
Actor Michael Gough stakes vampire woman Valerie Gaunt in Hammer’s DRACULA (a.k.a. HORROR OF DRACULA) from 1958.

In the late 1950s, Hammer Studios would not only bring out the stake to destroy the “vampire woman” in HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), but also, in the process, introduce a gush of bright red blood that other filmmakers would go on to repeat again and again. The rise of the hammer. The thrust of the stake. It was all very sexual. Penetration. Release, But let’s leave that for the literary scholars and psychoanalysts to discuss.

Suffice to say that by the 1960s, stakes and vampires went together like flyswatters and flies. It’s the first thing vampire hunters reach for — next to, maybe, the holy water or crucifix. No wonder it ended up in many a vampire hunting kit (which started “turning up” (read as: were made)) in the twentieth century. But the authenticity of these kits is always questioned. Still cool as hell.

montague-summers-kit-at-vampa-2400px
A 20th century vampire hunting kit that belonged to Montague Summers, author of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. From the Vampa Museum collection.

Make no mistake, however: people like the influential and eccentric Montague Summers (1880-1948) — whose own vampire hunting kit is pictured here in this post — truly believed in vampires. And as much as enlightened twentieth and twenty-first century men and women relegate vampires solely to the world of fiction, there are still those who turn to the stake to destroy suspected vampires. As recently as March of 2024, an Oregon man staked his mother, believing her to be a bloodsucker.

It’s bloody business to impale a person. Just ask Mel Brooks. A brilliant parody of Francis Ford Coppolla’s DRACULA (1992), Mel Brooks’ DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT (1995) has perhaps the bloodiest — and definitely the funniest — destruction of a vampire ever seen on screen. Brooks, along with writers Rudy De Luca and Steve Haberman,*** take staking to a whole new level when Jonathan Harker takes a literal bloodbath dispatching the undead Lucy. It’s a scene embedded below.

Once you watch it — and now, perhaps, having read this blog post — you will never think of staking a vampire in quite the same way again.

*Click here to read a more detailed excerpt from The Travels of Three English Gentlemen.

**Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burial and Death is an excellent resource for those who wish to dig further into the nature of corpses and why many who were disinterred were thought to be vampires.

***In addition screenwriting, Steve Haberman is a film historian. Check out his many great Blu-ray and DVD feature commentaries on many horror films, including 1931’s DRACULA and its recent 4K re-release.

Finally, the photo that server as header for this post is from 1968’s DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. Not one of best of Hammer’s Dracula films, but still a solid enough entry (with interesting color filters) — except for the silly part where Dracula actually removes a stake from his heart. Because the right prayer wasn’t said. Yeesh, so many rules. Give me a good beheading any day.

culture, history, musings

Halloween, Newspapers, and Mid-19th Century America

Pouring over newspapers, and no mention of Halloween? A 1910 illustration by Charles Mills Sheldon shows Edgar Allan Poe at work. Photo: Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images

Among writers associated with Halloween, Edgar Allan Poe is arguably the one whose prose and poems are most often read this time of year. Yet Poe himself was unlikely aware of the holiday. If he were, he certainly would have noted in his letters awareness of the Robert Burns poem of 1785, or reading about Halloween and its traditions in periodicals of his time. Newspapers and magazines, after all, were his bread and butter. But there’s no mention at all of Halloween in his works. Poe died in 1849, and a brief study of American newspapers of the period would support a theory that he didn’t know much if anything about Halloween because observance of the holiday didn’t really take off in America until after 1850.

What, still no mention of Halloween? “An extensively read News paper” by
David Claypoole Johnston, 1834. Source: AAS Archive.

The Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” service is a great resource for finding answers. At first only referenced in stories about the crimes of Burke and Hare occurring on October 31, the words “Halloween,” “Hallowe’en” and even “All Hallow’s Eve,” appear infrequently in American newspapers of the eighteen twenties and thirties. Other than Burns’ poem being referenced in a story about Christmas in Virginia’s Phenix Gazette in late 1832, it’s not until a brief mention in an 1836 issue of “Ladey Book” (aka Godey’s Magazine) that festivities of the day are given more than a passing reference [note: the author mistakenly credits “Ladey’s Book” as the earliest mention, which, as shown previously with Phenix Gazette, is not the case].

But in November of 1848, in a story in New Orleans’ Daily Crescent Gazette, Halloween is finally discussed by a journalist in some detail:

A future husband’s face revealed on Halloween. Postcard from 1904. Wikimedia Commons.

“The Eve of All Hallows, or Hallow E’en, is a memorable day throughout all Scotland ; but it is regarded more as a festival, which is consecrated to the interests of lads and lassies, and the revelation of the future destinies of loves, than a commemoration of the virtues of the saints. Many a foolish rite is performed more for amusement than from any real expectations of lifting up the veil of futurity and discovering things to come.”

There’s no mention of ghosts and witches, however. Nothing of the supernatural we have come to associate with Halloween. More in line with Burns’ poem, really.

It wouldn’t be until 1850 that one negative aspect of the holiday — as Americans have come to know it at least — is mentioned: mischief. One writer in The New York Daily Tribune of November first that year, makes it clear his or her disdain for the day.

“HALLOWE’EN — Last night, the closing night of the month, was an anniversary which is now almost entirely disregarded in these parts — the old festival of Hallowe’en or All Hallow’s Eve, still duly reverenced in England and Scotland, as well as in some portions of our own country. Its celebration here, however, has regenerated into the practice of all sorts of mischief; the only spirits abroad are imps of fun and fancy…”

It’s the first reference (that I could find at least) that mentions “spirits” of any kind (human as they are). The article ends:

“The sober sense of our community, however, is making way against these relics of ancestral customs and the Eve, with all its more innocent rites of maids that practice mysterious spells to get sight of their future husbands faces, will soon pass out of all memory except such as lives forever in the hale, warm and homely fireside pictures of Burns.”

Oh, was this author wrong.

By 1852, references to Halloween pick up in periodicals. Virginia’s Staunton Spectator of October 27 that year has a whole article devoted to “Rites of the Scottish Halloween.”

By the time of Civil War, was Halloween known to most? Here, President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis is depicted as a reaper with all of the trappings of Halloween. Harper’s Weekly magazine, October 26, 1861.

In 1853, The Washington Sentinel on November 2nd notes vandalism on the day. A handful of other papers through 1859 make note of the holiday (mostly in passing). Then comes 1860, and an explosion of mentions.

Dozens of publications start to make note of the holiday in 1860, most notably a work of fiction called “Not a Spectre” by Mary Kyle Dallas in California’s Mountain Democrat of August 11 of that year. It could very well be the first true American Halloween-related ghost story… or is it? While the answer may be obvious from the title, the story nonetheless cements the association of the holiday with the supernatural.

A starving boy and girl rake the ground for potatoes during the Irish Potato Famine, which began in the 1840s. Illustration by James Mahoney, 1847.

But why did it take until the 1850s and (more so) the 1860s before Halloween became a more pervasive topic for mid-19th century journalists? Many posit the theory that the potato famine in Ireland (and later, Scotland) from roughly 1845 to 1852, saw Irish immigrants bring with them Celtic holidays and traditions, including Halloween. It would make sense that, as these immigrants settled into their communities — and made their way East to West across the United States — that periodicals of the time reflected the influence of this immigrant wave.

The timing is certainly right.

To be clear, Halloween is mentioned in many a work of fiction in the British Isles prior to the mid-19th century. An excellent overview is provided by Halloween expert Lesley Bannatyne. And Bannatyne also points out that what may be the first American Opera, “The Disappointment” of 1767, features a conjurer claiming possession of a diving rod cut on Halloween. Yet it’s a quick reference and not a major plot device; it is doubtful it made much of an impression on audiences of the time

Even Bannatyne — having done extensive research (for which she deserves so much recognition) — doesn’t seem to mention another instance of Halloween and American fiction until the publication of “By Cupid’s Trick” in 1885; in another article, however, she cites periodicals of the 1870s as referencing Halloween. She’s right, but as has been seen in this article, those mentions actually start as early as 1850.

Regardless, it’s clear from a search of 19th-century American periodicals that the 1850s and 1860s were the years that awareness of Halloween gained momentum.

Into the 1870s and up until the close of the century, more and more papers cover the events of October 31 — even making it all the way to The Hawaiian Gazette in 1895, where a journalist noted that

“A Scotch writer who contributed an article to an American newspaper about Halloween last year declared himself ‘very much impressed by the almost universal observance of Halloween and its old customes in America.'”

By 1900 and into the twentieth century, Halloween truly began to take shape as more of what we know today (with its witches, ghosts, and jack-o’-lanterns). But American journalists prior to 1850? Like Poe, they definitely knew little, if much at all, about the folklore and traditions of All Hallow’s Eve.