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Myths and Legends
Prehistory
Vampire beliefs and myths emerge in
cultures around the world.
1000's
- 1047: First appearance of the word "upir"
(an early form of the word later to become "vampire") in a
document referring to a Russian prince as "Upir Lichy", or
wicked vampire.
1100's
- 1190: Walter Map's "De Nagis Curialium"
includes accounts of vampire-like beings in England.
- 1196: William of Newburgh's "Chronicles"
records several stories of vampire-like revenants in England.
1200's
- 1250: Vampire hysteria begins in
Moravia, now part of Czechoslovakia.
Several suspected cases of vampirism
were reported in this central country which is now part of
Czechoslovakia. At Stadlieb, near Olmutz, a tomb was opened and the body
of a presumed Vampire was dismembered before being reburied. Some years
later, at another town not far from Olmutz called Liebava, reports
circulated that a Vampire was leaving its tomb in the local cemetery and
attacking sleeping women and children. Those who had seen the Vampire
said it was a leading citizen of the community who had recently died. A
'Vampire Hunter' was summoned from neighbouring Hungary and, after
hearing the accounts, climed up the church tower overlooking the
cemetery and there kept watch for several nights. When the man saw the
Vampire emerge from a tomb and disappear into the town, he hurried down
and stole the creatures shroud. As soon as the Vampire returned and
found its shroud missing - says the story - it immediately looked up at
the tower which the hunter had reclimbed for safety and began to howl in
a most unearthly voice. At this, the man challenged the undead being to
come up the tower and retrieve its shroud. The man kept his nerve until
the creature had nearly reached him and then knocked it off the building
with a shovel. Before the Vampire could recover from the fall, the
'Vampire Hunter' descended and cut off its head with the shovel.
1300's
- 1310: Vampire hysteria hits
France.
Following the Council of Troyes in May, King
Phillippe ordered that the corpse of a certain Jehan de Turo be exhumed
and destroyed by fire 'on suspicion that he was a Vampyre'. Jehan was
said to have been foreman of the Tower and an initiate of the Temple who
had died a century earlier.
- 1337: Vampire hysteria begins in
Bohemia.
Reports indicate that several Vampires manifested
themselves at this time from the cloisters of the church at Opatowicze,
but the disturbances ceased after the area was exorcised with holy water
and a silver cross hung on the wall. Also in Bohemia, at the town of
Lewin, a woman called Brodka, who was believed to dabble in sorcery and
had died by her own hand, was buried at the local crossroads in 1345.
Suicides of evil repute who were not interred in this manner were
believed to become Vampires after death.
1400's
- 1428-29: Vlad
Tepes, the son of Vlad
Dracul, is
born.
- 1451: A reported vampire case in
Upper Styria.
At Gratz in the mountainous regions of upper
Styria, now a Province of Austria, lived Barbara de Cilly, a beautiful
woman much loved by Sigismund of Hungary. When close to death, she was
apparently saved by the use of a secret ritual devised by Abramerlin the
Mage, but as a result was condemned forever after to be a Vampire. This
woman was the inspiration for Camilla, the masterpiece about a
female vampire by the Irish writer, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
- 1476-77: Vlad
Tepes is assassinated.
1500's
- 1523:
A
reported case in Turkey.
A Vampire which had been terrorising the people of
Sjonica was finally driven away by a courageous man named Ibro who
attacked the creature one night with a knife upon which was engraved a
lucky symbol to ward off evil spirits. Although the creature fled, never
to be seen again, a spot of its blood left behind on the ground proved
impossible to remove.
- 1560: Elizabeth Bathory,
later known as the "Blood Countess", is born.
1600's
- 1610: Elizabeth Bathory is arrested for killing several
hundred people and bathing in their blood. Tried and convicted, she
is sentenced to life imprisonment, being bricked into a room in her
castle.
- 1614:
Elizabeth Bathory dies.
- 1610: Leo Allatius finishes writing the first modern
treatment of vampires, "De Graecorum hodie quirundam
opinationabus".
-
1617: Vampire outbreak in
Moravia.
A beautiful and allegedly very beguiling female
Vampire seduced and then drank the blood of a number of men in the town
of Craiova during this year. She was last seen near the River Jiu and,
as water is said to be fatal to Vampires, is presumed to have drowned.
-
1645: Leo Allatius finishes writing the first modern treatment
of Vampires, De Graecorum hodie quirundam opinationabus.
- 1657:
Fr. Francoise Richard's "Relation de ce
qui s'est passé a Sant-Erini Isle de l'Archipel links
vampirism and witchcraft.
- 1672: Wave of vampire hysteria sweeps through
Istria.
- 1679: A German vampire text, De Masticatione
Mortuorum, is written by Phillip Rohr.
- 1690-1725:
Hungary
For some years, Arnold Paul, the High Duke of
Medreiga, was said to have been regularly attacked by a Vampire at Cassova
- but then claimed to have put a stop to these attacks by eating earth
taken from the dead man's grave and also smearing himself with the dead
creatures blood which he found in the tomb. However, soon afterwards, the
High Duke died in an accident and within weeks cases of vampirism were
being reported throughout the region. Though the Duke's body was exhumed
and destroyed, the phenomena continued and records claim that Arnold Paul
turned a total of 17 others into Vampires.
1700's
- 1710: Vampire hysteria sweeps through East Prussia.
- 1725: Vampire hysteria returns to
East
Prussia.
- 1725-30: Vampire hysteria lingers in
Serbia
and Hungary.
A vivid account of a plague of Vampires which
troubled districts of Serbia for almost a decade has been described by
John Heinrich Zopfius in a dissertation published in 1734: "The vampyres,
which came out of the grave in the night-time, rushed upon people sleeping
in their beds, sucked out all their blood, and destroyed them. They attacked
men, women and children; sparing neither age nor sex. The people attacked
by them complained of suffocation, and a great interception of spirits;
after which, they soon expired. When these Vampyres were dug out of the
graves, they appeared in all parts, such as the nostrils, cheeks, breasts,
mouth, etc, turgid and full of blood. Their countenances were fresh and
ruddy; and their nails, as well as their hair, very much grown. And, though
they had been much longer dead than many other bodies, which were perfectly
putrified, not the least mark of corruption was visible upon them. Those
who were destroyed by them, after their death, became Vampyres; so that,
to prevent so spreading an evil, it was found requisite to drive a stake
through the dead body from whence, on this occasion, the blood flowed as
if the person was alive. Sometimes the body was dug out of the grave, and
burnt to ashes; upon which, all the disturbances ceased."
- 1725-32: The wave of vampire hysteria in Austrian
Serbia produces the famous cases of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold
Paul (Paole).
- 1731: Moravia
Two women, an old crone named Miliza and a young beauty, Stanno, both of
whom had died in 1729, were to be the cause of an outbreak of
vampirism at Metwett. Thirteen deaths occured in a two-week period
in this area, which were attributed to the couple, Miliza was said
to have become a vampire as a result of having sexual intercourse
with a male member of the undead in Turkey before she moved to
Moravia, and it was there that she infected her young confederate.
- 1734:
The word "vampyre" enters the
English language in translations of German accounts of European
waves of vampire hysteria.
- 1744: Cardinal Giuseppe Davanzati publishes his
treatise, Dissertazione sopre I Vampiri.
- 1746: Dom Augustin Calmet publishes his treatise on
vampires, Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges des
Demons et des Espits, et sur les revenants, et Vampires de Hundrie,
de boheme, de Moravic, et de Silesie.
- 1748: The first modern vampire poem, "Der
Vampir," is published by Heinrich August Ossenfelder.
- 1750: Another wave of vampire hysteria occurs in
East Prussia.
- 1756: Vampire hysteria peaks in Wallachia.
- 1772: Vampire hysteria occurs in Russia.
- 1797: Goethe publishes his poem, "Bride of Corinth" (concerning a vampire).
- 1798-1800:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes "Christabel," now conceded
to be the first vampire poem in English.
1800's
- 1800: I Vampiri, an opera by Silvestro
de Palma, opens in Milan, Italy.
- 1801: "Thalaba" by Robert Southey is the
first poem to mention the vampire in English.
- 1810: Reports of sheep being killed by having their
jugular veins cut and their blood drained circulated through
northern England. "The Vampyre," an early vampire poem, by
John Stagg is published.
- 1813: Lord Byron's poem "The Giaour"
includes the hero's encounter with a vampire.
-
1816: Isolated
Vampire incident in Yugoslavia.
While the famous French author, Prosper Merimee,
was dining with some friend at Varbeska, a vampire appeared at an upstairs
window in the house and bit the neck of a young girl named Khava who was
sleeping. According to Merimee, the girl awoke just as the creature was
raising himself up from her bed and, despite her fear, she recognised him
as a man named Vieczany who had died a year defore. At this, the family
and some friends lit torches and went to the village cemetery where the
man was buried. Vieczany's coffin was opened and his body was found to
be untouched. Although the Vampire was destroyed, his victim passed away
18 days later.
- 1819: Dr. John Polidori's The Vampyre,
the first vampire story in English, is published in the April issue
of "New Monthly Magazine."
Its
hero/villain vampire character, Lord Ruthven, was actually modeled
after the famous poet Lord Byron. As a product of the same writing
competition out of which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein,
Polidori developed his own frightening tale of a vampire based on
suggestions from Lord Byron. Some people thought that Byron actually
wrote the story himself, but this apparently was not the case.
Polidori wrote it.
- 1819:
John Keats
composes "The Lamia," a poem built on ancient Greek
legends.
- 1820: "Lord Ruthwen ou Les Vampires" by
Cyprien Berard is published anonymously in Paris.
June 13: Le Vampire, the play by Charles Nodier, opens at the Theatre de
la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris.
August: "The Vampire; or, The
Bride of the Isles," a translation of Nodier's play by James R.
Planche, opens in London.
- 1829: March: Heinrich Marschner's opera, Der
Vampyr, based on Nodier's story, opens in Liepzig.
- 1840s: Sir Frances Varney in the penny
dreadful Varney the Vampire (originally printed in parts in
the early 1840s), has a face - not to mention his courtship -
that is dreadful:
"It is perfectly white - perfectly
bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back,
and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth -
the fearful looking teeth - projecting like those of some wild
animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the
bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long
nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends.... He
drags her head to the bed's edge. He forces it back by the long hair
still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his
fang-like teeth - a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise
follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous
repast!" (Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Rymer's italics)
The reader's first glimpse of Varney reveals something more bestial
than human, a creature with fangs and claws who comes in the night
to drink the blood of his unwilling victim.
- 1841: Alexey Tolstoy publishes his short story, Upyr, while living in Paris. It is the first modern
vampire story by a Russian.
- 1845: United States
According to a report in the Norwich Courier
in Connecticut, after the death of a certain Horace Ray in Jewett City
in the winter of 1845, the members of his family all fell ill of a wasting
desease. When just one son remained alive, the body of the father was exhumed
and found to be as fresh as the day it had been laid to rest. After the
corpse had been burned, the health of the last members of the Ray family rapidly inproved and he lived to a ripe old age convinced that his parent
had been a Vampire.
- 1847: Bram
Stoker
is born. "Varney the
Vampire" begins lengthy serialization.
- 1851: Alexandre Dumas' last dramatic work, "Le
Vampire," opens in Paris.
- 1854: The case of vampirism in the Ray family of
Jewell, Connecticut, is published in local newspapers.
- 1871-2: Carmilla
is written by an Irish countryman of Stoker's, Joseph Sheridan Le
Fanu. No doubt this work influenced
Stoker's work. However, in Le Fanu's work, the vampire was a female.
The following excerpt from Carmilla
(first published in the magazine The Dark Blue in 1871)
reveals a being slightly more recognizable to 20th-century
readers:
"The grave of the Countess Mircalla
was opened: and the General and my father recognized each his
perfidious and beautiful guest... Her eyes were open; no cadaverous
smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially
present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry,
attested the marveleous fact, that there was a faint but appreciable
respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were
perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated
with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay
immersed. Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of
vampirism." (Ch. XV)
Earlier sections of LeFanu's
"Carmilla" reveal a being who, like the beautiful Miriam,
is cultivated - even genteel. However, when LeFanu reveals that
Carmilla's natural habitat is the crypt, not the drawing room, he
also gives her characteristics that distinguish her from most
twentieth-cenlury vampires.
- 1872: In Italy, Vincenzo Verzeni is convicted of
murdering two people and drinking their blood.
- 1874: Reports from Ceven, Ireland, tell of sheep
having their throats cut and their blood drained.
- 1888: Emily Gerard's Land Beyond the Forest
is published. It will become a major source of information about
Transylvania for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
- 1889:
Great Britain
A grisly-looking Vampire plagued the Cranswell
family living in isolated Croglin Grange in Cumberland. The creature repeatedly
tried to break into the manor house and attack the beautiful young daughter,
Anne. When finally tracked to its lair in a nearby churchyard by the girl's
two brothers, the Vampire's coffin was set on fire and its body consumed in the flames.
- 1889: Rumania
One of the worst outbreaks of vampirism on record
occurred in the district of Crassova when several dozen mwn, women and
children were discovered to be slowly dying from blood loss and bite marks
on their necks. In a concerted effort by the local people, a total of 30
corpes were interred in local graveyards and all pierced by stakes, before
the attacks ceased. In Rumania, also, a few years later, the youngest-ever
Vampire was reported - a 13-year-old child who had recently died and was
reportedly attacking other infants while they slept. The villagers of Prejam,
in the Vilcea district, provided their own solution by staking the child
in its coffin and then removing the head.
- 1894: H.G. Wells' short story, The Flowering of
the Strange Orchid, is a precursor to science fiction vampire
stories.
- 1897: Dracula by Bram Stoker is published in
England.
- 1897: The Vampire by Rudyard Kipling
becomes the inspiration for the creation of the vamp as a
stereotypical character on stage and screen.
1900's
- 1912: The Secrets of House No. 5, possibly
the first vampire movie, is produced in Great Britain.
- 1913: Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker is
published.
- 1920: Dracula, the first film based on the
novel, is made in Russia. No copy has survived.
- 1921: Hungarian filmmakers produce a version of Dracula.
- 1921: The
remains of a suspected Vampire are found in Essex,
England.
A skeleton believed to be that of a woman, which was found in St Osyth in Essex, may have been that of a
Vampire - because the remains had been bound wirh rope and nails driven through the thigh bones to prevent
it from rising from the grave.
- 1922: Nosferatu, a German-made silent film
produced by Prana Films, is the third attempt to film Dracula.
- 1924: Hamilton Dean's stage version of Dracula
opens in Derby.
- 1924:
Fritz Harmann of Hanover, Germany, is
arrested, tried and convicted of killing more than 20 people in a
vampiric crime spree.
- 1924: Sherlock Holmes has his only encounter with
a vampire in The Case of the Sussex Vampire.
- 1927: February 14: Stage version of Dracula
debuts at the Little Theatre in London. October: American version of
Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, opens at Fulton Theatre in New
York City.
- 1927: Tod Browning directs Lon Chaney in London
After Midnight, the first full-length feature film.
- 1928: The first edition of
Monague Summers'
influential work, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, appears in
England.
- 1929: Montague Summers's second vampire book, The
Vampire in Europe, is published.
- 1931: January: Spanish film version of Dracula
is previewed.
February: American film version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi
premiers at the Roxy Theatre in New York City.
- 1931: Peter Kurten of Dusseldorf, Germany, is
executed after being found guilty of murdering a number of people in
a vampiric killing spree.
- 1932: The highly acclaimed movie Vampyr,
directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, is released.
- 1936: Dracula's Daughter is released by
Universal Pictures.
- 1942: A. E. Van Vought's Asylum is the
first story about an alien vampire.
- 1943: Son of Dracula, from Universal
Pictures, stars Lon Chaney, Jr., as Dracula.
- 1944: John Carradine plays Dracula for the first
time in Horror of Dracula.
- 1953: Drakula Istanbula, a Turkish film
adaptation of Dracula, is released.
- 1953: "Eerie" No. 8 includes the first
comic book adaptation of Dracula.
- 1954: The Comics Code banishes vampires from comic
books.
- 1954: I am Legend by Richard Matheson
presents vampirism as a disease that alters the body.
- 1956: John Carradine plays Dracula in the first
television adaptation of the play for "Matinee
Theatre."
- 1956: Kyuketsuki Ga, the first Japanese
vampire film, is released.
- 1957: The first Italian vampire movie, I
Vampiri, is released.
- 1957: American producer Roger Corman makes the
first science fiction vampire movie, Not of This Earth.
- 1957: El Vampiro with German Robles is the
first of a new wave of Mexican vampire films.
- 1958: Hammer Films in Great Britain initiates a
new wave of interest in vampires with the first of it's
"Dracula" films, released in the United States as the
"Horror of Dracula."
- 1958: First issue of "Famous Monsters of
Filmland" signals a new interest in horror films in the United
States.
- 1959: Plan 9 From Outer Space is Bela
Lugosi's last film.
- 1961: The Bad Flower is the first Korean
film adaptation of Dracula.
- 1962: The Count Dracula Society is founded in the
United States by Donald Reed.
- 1964: Parque de Juelos (Park of Games) is
the first Spanish made vampire movie.
- 1964: "The Munsters" and "The
Addams Family"; two horror comedies with vampire characters,
open in the fall television season.
- 1965: Jeanne Youngson founds The Count Dracula Fan
Club.
- 1965: "The Munsters," based on the
television show of the same name, is the first comic book series
featuring a vampire character.
- 1966: "Dark Shadows" debuts on
television.
- 1967: April: In episode 210 of "Dark
Shadows", vampire Barnabas Collins makes his first appearance.
- 1969: First issue of "Vampirella," the
longest running vampire comic book to date, is released.
- 1969: Denholm Elliot plays the title role in a BBC
television production of "Dracula, Does Dracula Really Suck?
(aka Dracula and the Boys)" is released as the first gay
vampire movie.
- 1970: Christopher Lee stars in "El Conde
Dracula," the Spanish film adaptation of
"Dracula."
- 1970: Sean Manchester founds The Vampire Research
Society.
- 1971: Marvel Comics releases the first copy of a
post-Comics Code vampire comic book, "The Tomb of
Dracula."
- 1971: Morbius, the Living Vampire, is the first
new vampire character introduced after the revision of the Comics
code allowed vampires to reappear in comic books.
- 1972: "The Night Stalker" with Darrin
McGavin becomes the most watched television movie to that point in
time.
- 1972: Vampire Kung-Fu is released in Hong
Kong as the first of a string of vampire martial arts films.
- 1972: In Search of Dracula by Raymond T.
McNally and Radu Florescu introduces Vlad the Impaler, the
historical Dracula, to the world of contemporary vampire fans.
- 1972: A Dream of Dracula by Leonard Wolf
complements McNally's and Florescu's effort in calling attention to
vampire lore.
- 1972: True Vampires of History by Donald
Glut is the first attempt to assemble the stories of all the
historical vampire figures.
- 1972: Stephan Kaplan founds The Vampire Research
Centre.
- 1973: Dan Curtis Productions' version of Dracula
(1973) stars Jack Palance in a made-for-television movie.
- 1973: Nancy Garden's Vampires launches a
wave of juvenile literature for children and youth.
- 1975: Fred Saberhagen proposes viewing Dracula as
a hero rather than a village in The Dracula Tape.
- 1975: "The World of Dark Shadows" is
founded as the first "Dark Shadows" fanzine.
- 1976: Interview with the Vampire by Anne
Rice is published.
- 1976: Stephen King is nominated for the World
Fantasy Award for his vampire novel, Salem's Lot.
- 1976: Shadowcon, the first national "Dark
Shadows convention, is organized by Dark Shadows fans."
- 1977: A new dramatic version of Dracula
opens on Broadway starring Frank Langella.
- 1977: Louis Jordan stars in the title role in Count
Dracula, a three-hour version of Bram Stoker's book on BBC
television.
- 1977: Martin V. Riccardo founds the Vampire
Studies Society.
- 1978: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's book, Hotel
Transylvania, joins the volumes of Fred Saberhagen and Anne Rice
as the third major effort to begin a reappraisal of the vampire myth
during the decade.
- 1978: Eric Held and Dorothy Nixon found the
Vampire Information Exchange.
- 1979: Based on the success of the new Broadway
production, Universal Pictures remakes Dracula (1979),
starring Frank Langella.
- 1979: The band Bauhaus's recording of "Bela
Lugosi's Dead" becomes the first hit of the new gothic rock
music movement.
- 1979: "Shadowgram" is founded as a
"Dark Shadows" fanzine.
- 1980: The Bram Stoker Society is founded in
Dublin, Ireland. Richard Chase, the so-called Dracula Killer of
Sacramento, California, commits suicide in prison. The World
Federation of Dark Shadows Clubs (now Dark Shadows Official Fan
Club) is founded.
- 1983: In the December issue of Dr. Strange,
Marvel Comics' ace occultist kills all of the vampires in the world,
thus banishing them from Marvel Comics for the next six years. Dark
Shadows Festival is founded to host an annual "Dark
Shadows" convention.
- 1985: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice is
published and reaches the best seller list.
- 1989: Overthrow of Romanian dictator Nikolai
Ceaucescu opens Transylvania to Dracula enthusiasts. Nancy Collins
wins a Bram Stoker Award for her vampire novel, Sunglasses After
Dark.
- 1991: Vampire:
The Masquerade, the most
successful of the vampire role-playing games, is released by White
Wolf.
- 1992: Bram Stoker's Dracula directed by
Francis Ford Coppola opens.
- 1992: Andrei Chikatilo of Rostov, Russia, is
sentenced to death after killing and vampirizing some 55 people.
- 1994: The film version of Anne Rice's Interview
with the Vampire opens with Tom Cruise as the Vampire Lestat and
Brad Pitt as Louis.
- 1995: In May, the International Transylanian Society of
Dracula sponsers the World Dracula Conference in Romania.
- 1995: Four vampire movies are released: 1) The
Vampire in Brooklyn, 2) Dracula: Dead and Loving It., 3) Nadja,
and 4) The Addiction.
- 1996:
Members of the Vampire "cult" led by Rod
Ferrell are arrested for the murder of 2 people in Florida. They
were subsequently tried and convicted of the murders.
- 1996: January: From Dusk Till Dawn, written
by Quentin Tarantino, starring George Clooney opens nationwide.
- 1997: The centennial of the
publication of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula occasions a flurry of
activiy through 1997 and into 1998, including the publication of a
number commemorative books, many television programs, and the issueance
of postage stamps (Canada, Ireland, England and the United States).
- 1997: June
13 - 15: "Dracula the Centenary" is held in Whitby, Wngland.
It is sponsered by the Whitby Dracula Society.
- 1997: August 13: Serial killer
Ali Reza Khoshruy Kuran Kordiyah, known as the "Tehran
Vampire", is
publicly executed in Iran .
- 1997: August 14 - 17:
"Dracula '97", a Centennial
Celebration is the largest of several events commemorating the 100th
anniversary of the American and Canadian chapters of the Transylvanian
Society of Dracula and the Count Dracula Fan Club.
- 1998: Rod
Ferrell convicted of killing Richard and Ruth Wendorf.
- 1998: "Blade"
and "John Carpentar's Vampires " movies are released.
- 1999: The
Vampire Encylopedia 2nd edition is released.
2000's
- 2000: Production on
next Anne Rice
movie "The Queen of the Damned "starts.
 Sources:
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Blood of the Ancients - Chronology
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Other internet sites
See also:
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