Some 800 years before the publication of Dracula, and long before the term "vampire" was popularized, an English historian, William of Newburgh, recorded a tale recounted to him by a devout and reputable priest. He told of a most dishonest sinner who escaped the law by retreating to Alnwick Castle.
Witten Bloodsuckers: Daniel and Manuela Ruda
Due to early associations of blood-drinking with revenant spirits or demons, there has emerged a modern-day confluence of Satanism and vampirism, though the two are more often than not exclusive to one another (i.e., real vampires are not necessarily Satanists, nor are Satanists vampires).
Video submission: Vampires Make it Into Academia
A group of academics met at the University of Hertfordshire in England to discuss the "Americanization" of the vampire genre. WSJ's Javier Espinoza reports.
The Legend Of Jure Grando, The First Person Described As A Vampire
Jure Grando was a peasant who lived in the small village of Kringa, just outside of Tinjan, Croatia. He died in 1656, leaving behind a widow and a wake of terror that haunted Kringa for the next 16 years.
Every night for those 16 years, the good people of Kringa would hear knocks throughout the city in the middle of the night. The knocks were warnings, a promise that someone who lived in a house that had its door knocked had little time left on this world.
The Terrifying Story of Bela Kiss, Hungary’s Most Murderous Bachelor
For centuries, the vampire has captured imaginations and inspired nightmares in communities around the world. And while Romania’s Transylvania region has long dominated the vampire-related conversation, for a few decades in the early 20th century the most feared blood-drainer in the world was not Dracula, but a person from Romania’s neighbor to the west: Hungary.
Video submission: In Search of the Highgate Vampire
David Farrant, one of the world's leading psychic investigators, takes you on a strange and terrifying journey into the realms of the undead. This program deals with the true life events surrounding the sightings of the ghostly apparition known as the Highgate Vampire.
Shot in 1997, this film represents the first foray of the BPOS into independent film making. Directed and produced by BPOS stalwart Dave Milner in association with his then film company Darkhouse Productions, it rapidly became an underground cult classic through its distribution at 'outsider' outlets such as Forbidden Planet.
The Bohemian Blow Vampire - A Blood-Sucking Ghost
Superstitious Bohemians Rid Themselves of a Vampire.
The people of Bohemia (the most superstitious of all Europe), were formerly great believers in muroniea vampires and other uncanny apparitions. The most terrible vampire, and perhaps, the most popular one in the annals of that country. Made its appearance in the year 1706. In that year Hans Blow, a herdsman, died and was buried.
Why we are living in 'Gothic times'?
There is a surge in goth-lit that channels our fears and anxieties. Hephzibah Anderson explores how the genre's past and new stories delve deep into disorder and darkness.
"We live in Gothic times," declared Angela Carter back in 1974. It's a theme Carlos Ruiz Zafón took up several decades later: "Ours is a time with a dark heart, ripe for the noir, the gothic and the baroque", he wrote in 2010. Both authors had good reason. The Gothic has always been about far more than heroines in Victorian nightgowns, trapped in labyrinthine ancestral homes, and along with the supernatural, its imaginings probe power dynamics and boundaries, delving deep into disorder and duality.
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