Vampiric explorations
An encyclopædia has too many inaccurate translations; but a new history of vampires is detailed, absorbing and crisply written
Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology
Theresa Bane
McFarland 2019
Pb, 207pp, £32.95, ISBN 9781476681771
The Vampire
A New History
Nick Groom
Yale University Press 2020
Pb, 320pp, £9.99, ISBN 9780300254839
Vampires must constitute the mythological success story of the past couple of centuries, rising from obscure and localised beginnings to spawn a continuing industry not just of novels, movies, tours and costumes but also of serious academic studies that bring into play a bewildering range of theories and methodologies.
The two works reviewed here both deal mainly with what people have thought about vampires rather than the fictions they inspired, but there the similarities end.
Theresa Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology first appeared in 2010 as part of an eight-volume reference series on the supernatural.
It functions essentially as a dictionary that relentlessly and somewhat indiscriminately lists the name of every supernatural being that could be described as “vampiric” (a favourite adjective applied without analysis) along with entries on anything associated with them, such as “green” or “hair”.
Designed for dipping rather than reading at length, it boasts an extensive bibliography, but the entries themselves don’t examine their sources and rely far too much on inaccurate translations that turn specific supernatural beings into vaguely related manifestations of the familiar, all-purpose vampire, forgetting that differences are at least as important as similarities.
The Greek Empouse doesn’t translate as vampire, nor do Incubus, Banshee, Grendel or Chupacabra, while declaring the Sile na Gig (a name given to an enigmatic type of female figure usually found carved on churches) to be “a type of vampiric earth spirit” involves baseless speculation and culturally inappropriate categorisation. Entries on those blooddrinking revenants who do (by reason of place and period as well as behaviour) fit the vampire profile tend to be (inevitably) repetitive, reflecting slight localised variations of terminology rather than different types of beliefs.
By contrast Nick (the Prof of Goth) Groom’s book, first published more expensively in 2018, puts context centre stage, revealing vampires as little capsules of historic ideas to be found embedded in a variety of discourses concerning theology, economics, medicine and politics.
Indeed, he covers a vast amount of relevant background in a fairly short book (206 pages of main text, the rest being index, notes and a bibliography it would require an undead lifespan to explore thoroughly).
I had doubted that there could be a new history of the vampire, but this absorbing account uncovers those very aspects of the belief that kept (and keep) it vital.
Groom points out that the desire to view vampirism in terms of age-old folklore and tradition relates more to its Gothicisation in fiction, while by contrast the first 18th-century written accounts report it as something current and dangerous, an infection as seen by local believers but a disruption of order as viewed by Western observers worried by illegal desecrations.
From this starting point the concept plays its part in debates on the circulation of blood and the circulation of currency, the spread of contagious disease, the politics of capitalism and the philosophies of religion and science.
Most significantly, from the earliest reports of something so unbelievable yet unofficially believed in, accounts of the vampire invite us to examine the value and nature of evidence – who says or records what has happened, and how do context and reception affect the way we process and use this information?
The concluding discussion of the vampire’s post-Enlightenment absorption into popular culture feels somewhat hurried, perhaps because we’ve already seen Dracula and co analysed at length so often.
But Stoker’s mother’s account of cholera in Ireland fits in particularly well with the larger argument.
Remarkably, in a work that relies on so dense a mesh of historical texts, Groom’s writing remains crisp and clear, delighting in a good quotation and exhibiting a sharp turn of phrase.
The final comparison between vampires and potatoes is alone worth the price of this affordable paperback.
Gail-Nina Anderson
Encyclopedia ★★★
The Vampire ★★★★★
Lives of the Great Occultists
Kevin Jackson & Hunt Emerson
Knockabout Comics 2020
Pb, 111pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780861662845
How many FT readers go straight to Phenomenomix when they receive each new issue? The comic page has been an integral part of the package that is
Fortean Times for years. And now dozens of them have been brought together in a stunning full-colour A4 book.
Lives of the Great Occultists includes lots of old favourites, from Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno and John Dee through William Blake, Eliphas Levi and Gerald Gardner to more-or-less the present day, with William Burroughs, Kenneth Anger and even David Bowie.
And, of course, popping up here and there (“Me again!”) and with 11 pages all to himself, is everyone’s Uncle Al, the Great Beast himself, 666 emblazoned on his forehead.
Hunt Emerson’s wickedly funny drawings are of course a delight, but Kenneth Jackson’s well-researched storylines bring out a host of fascinating details. Who knew that women’s rights campaigner, free love advocate and psychic Victoria Woodhull had stood for the US presidency in 1872? Or that Orson Welles directed an all-black voodoo version of Macbeth in 1936, and that goats were sacrificed to make drum skins for the drummers from Haiti?
This brilliant collection won’t be the end to it; in the lives of occultists (great and not so great) there’s an endlessly rich seam for Jackson and Emerson to plunder for future stories.
As the pandemic drags on we need humour more than ever. I don’t need a scrying mirror to predict that Lives of the Great Occultists will be on the Christmas present list (both giving and receiving) for many hundreds of FT readers.
David V Barrett
★★★★★