An Anthropological Perspective on Vampires

Since time immemorial, human beings have believed in the existence of supernatural beings. A good example of these supernatural beings include: God, Satan, ghosts, demons, werewolves, vampires etc. This essay examines the concept of the vampire from a social/anthropological perspective based on the cultural context read in this class.

Basing on the read cultural context, a vampire can be defined as an undead person (living or actual corpse) who derives physical or emotional sustenance from a victim, who is debilitated by the experience. Therefore, the kind of person that could be considered a vampire in the provided cultural contexts is one that possess supernatural powers. A good example of such person is Dracula, a prince who ruled using harsh measures and killed anyone who was not witty enough to solve his riddles and Aysa, a prostitute who used her sexual powers to amass a lot of wealth. Aysa could be considered to be a vampire because even after a death, her image continued to haunt her clients in their dreams. Dracula on the other hand could be considered to be a vampire because he “forsook the light” of the Orthodox Church and accepted the “darkness” of the Roman Church while in prison and conducted mass murders during his entire life time.

The greater purpose for believing in existence vampires was to instill morals among members of the community and bound them to a certain religious belief. To begin with, the story of Dracula teaches courage when he ordered his men not to follow him to battle if they feared death and teaches honesty when he failed to impale the merchant from Hungary after he revealed to him that his gold had been retrieved but there was an additional gold that was not his. Secondly, the Kashubs were bound to the religious belief that failure to take precautionary measures against a detected Kashubian vampire after it dies could result to massive deaths in the community.

In our current society, the sort of people that might have been termed as vampires if they lived in the past are those suffering from photophobia, cannibals and serial killers. Photophobia individuals might have been termed as vampires because they fear light and are affected by it similar to vampires that are believed to thrive in darkness. Cannibals on the other hand might have been termed as vampires because they kill their victims, devour their flesh and drink their blood while serial killers might have been termed as vampires because they tend to derive pleasure in killing their victims.

The fact that people suffering from photophobia, cannibals and serial killers might have been termed has vampires if they had lived in the past implies that we humans still believe in existence of vampires. The only difference is that instead of embracing the term vampire, our own society uses different names such as cannibal to refer to individuals who portray behaviors similar to those of a vampire