Posts Tagged ‘History’

Vampire stories have always been a source of attraction for the people while sock puppetry is a form of art used to express a story by using puppets made from socks. Vampires are scary creatures known for sucking blood of their victims as many horror films portray them. Sock puppets are characters made from socks with designed designs and styles.

The oldest story of vampire comes from the times of Ancient Babylon. A novel called “Dracula” was published in 1897 by Bram Stoker. Since then, people have been attracted and many movies have been made on the topic. Puppets were used in India as early as 11th century BC and they had quickly spread to other part of the continent. They were a source of giving stories on moral issues in a visual impact that words alone could not convey.

In ancient times, drinking blood was always considered a demon act and evil was characterized as a creature that preyed on humans and in case of vampires turning the victim into a vampire. Puppets have been always used to represent good, evil, jealousy and greed without taking the risk of identifying individuals who might take revenge against the storyteller. The term of sock puppet is also used for the describing a fictitious identity for promoting a particular point of view or defending a person who is seen as controversial.

It is interesting to know that vampires were mostly beautiful women in ancient history and seducing their victims was a trap to kill them and drinking their blood was a source of sustaining life. Popular culture sock puppets have been widely used in television shows during these modern times.

The vampire stories became popular in the late 1800s but became even more popular after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1898. This story fused history and fiction in a believable manner for the first time and resulted in several well publicized vampire and Dracula adventures.

In the dark years in England and France, radicals who desired for the freedom they had known before the rise of the puritans had secretly organized theater shows but were often forced to use puppets since these were easier to transport and conceal than the sets, costumes and large bands of actors although some were arrested and imprisoned.
The sock puppets are mostly seen as offensive and are aggressively hunted down along with their creators on prominent community based websites and major forums.

Belief in the evil spirits was common for thousands of years even after the introduction of Christianity. Vampires were historically very fearful creatures for the Slavic people. Although vampires are real or fake is still a point to debate but people watch vampire movies with great interest.

Vampires are incredible wretches and emerge throughout folklore. Here are four myths about vampires.

The Buckinghamshire Vampire

In 1196 a vampire prowled the Buckinghamshire district of England. The account is chronicled in Historia Rerum Anglicarum. The scribe of the account is an abbot named William of Newburgh. A vampire, which was the spook of a recently deceased man, assaulted his prey each evening. He was a customary vampire; one who slept during sunlit hours in a grave at the local golgotha. When the sun set the vampire would rise from the dead and assault his widow while she was asleep. It is customary in vampire tales for vampires to assault their former family members.

Even though the vampire didn’t physically hurt his widow, each evening after sunset he came back to her bed chamber and assailed and bullied her. The widow asked family members to stay with her and keep her from drifting off to sleep at night. The vampire then began attacking her family members in the house. Before long, the total town was afraid of falling asleep.

The vampire’s grave was exhumed by the local townspeople. The corpse hadn’t decayed and was in a fresh state. The villagers buried the corpse again. On the chest of the vampire they set a holy scapula. The vampire did not rise from the grave thenceforward.

The Folktale of the Vampire of Berwick

In an additional story of William of Newburgh’s Historia Rerum Anglicarum, an affluent man who lived in the hamlet of Berwick grew sick and died of plague near the boundary of England and Scotland. After his death he was reported to be wandering the streets at night. The dogs of the hamlet would bay deep into the night while the vampire was roaming. The townspeople, who were terrified that plague might spread through the hamlet due to the vampire’s proximity, dug up the corpse, dismembered it, and set it aflame. The vampire was never seen wandering the town at night thenceforward. All the same, plague still infected the hamlet and it was attributed to the idle spiritual presence of the vampire.

The Vampire Folktale of Arnold Paole

In this famous Austrian legend, a Serbian bandit named Arnold was subject to a vampire attack during a night time stroll in a graveyard. He located the vampire’s grave and beheaded the monster with a spade. The vampire curse was a legend that made the killer of a vampire turn into a vampire themselves. In an endeavor to prevent the curse, Arnold consumed a small portion of the dirt around the grave. Arnold lived an average life for several more years.

Quite a while later Arnold died from a fall where he broke his neck. Subsequent to his funeral his spirit was discovered hiding in the town late at night. Several villagers were discovered dead after dawn, all drained of blood. The bald speculation was that Arnold had fallen victim to the vampire curse. The Austrian army was assigned to investigate the matter. They dug up the corpse and were astounded by what they discovered. The corpse had not decomposed and there was new blood dripping from the mouth, eyes, and nose. The nails had grown and new skin had grown as well.

The townspeople pounded a stake into the heart of the corpse. The body began to bleed from the injury and the corpse began moaning in pain. The vampire appeared no more.

The Vampire Folktale of Peter Plogojowitz

This example was one of the most sensational and well documented cases of vampire hysteria. The myth is found in Imperial Provisor Frombald, penned by an Austrian official who witnessed the vampire stalkings of Peter Plogojowitz.

In 1725 Peter Plogojowitz, a Serbian countryman, lived in a town named Kisilova. Just after Plogojowitz’s death, at least nine additional villagers perished. They died gradually and on their death beds they claimed that Plogojowitz was attacking and strangling them after dark.

The townspeople dug up the body and closely inspected it for any sign of vampirism. They discovered that the corpse had not decayed, that the nails and hair had grown, and that a beard had grown as well. Blood was discovered in the mouth of the corpse. The townspeople staked the corpse through the heart. Blood began to run from the ears and nose. Fearful that the vampire would rise again, the villagers burned the body.

Conclusion

Vampire stories share very general elements. When a person dies and is reborn as a vampire, the monster most of the time attacks past family members first. Just before dawn the monster returns to its tomb to seek protection until the next evening. When the body is dug up it doesn’t have any signs of decay. After the remains are staked through the heart or destroyed by fire, the vampire is not seen again.

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There is no doubt that Freidrich Willhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Symphony of Horror) is a piece of landmark cinema, both for its Expressionist filmmaking and its unique treatment of the vampire as plague. Yet few people saw this monumental film prior to 1960. Though slated for destruction by Bram Stoker’s widow, the film managed to survive, popping up in the most peculiar places.

Nosferatu debuted at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens in 1922. The movie was the first and last product of a small art collective called Prana Films — the brainchild of artist Albin Grau (later Nosferatu’s production designer). A month later Florence Stoker caught wind, and she started the legal machines rolling. Her only income at this point was her deceased husband’s book Dracula, and she would not let some German production company steal her meal ticket. During the 1920s, intellectual rights were a bit dodgy, so Florence paid one British pound to join the British Incorporated Society of Authors to help defend her property. Never mind that the society would also pick up the tab for the potentially huge legal bills.

Florence seemed unaware that a second vampire film, this one called Drakula, was produced by a Hungarian company in 1921. Although the title harkens back to Bram Stoker’s novel, the resemblance ends there. This film, now lost save for some stills, was more concerned with eye gouging than straight out vampirism. Nosferatu on the other hand took much of its plot from Stoker’s Dracula, changing only the names.

The film continued to be exhibited in Germany and Budapest up through 1925, though Prana was beleaguered by creditors and harassed by Florence Stoker. They tried to settle with the society, offering a cut of the film’s take in order for them to use the Dracula title in England and America. Florence would not relent.

She not only wanted Prana to halt exhibition of the film, she wanted it torched — all prints and negatives of the film destroyed. And she got her way. In 1925 Florence won her case and the destruction order went through. Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens vanished into thin air just as Count Orlock, the vampire in the film, does when exposed to the rays of the morning sun.

Nosferatu did not stay dead. Like any good horror movie, the villain revived himself and carried on the fight. A print of the film resurfaced in 1929, playing to audiences in New York and Detroit. However preeminent Dracula scholar, David J. Skal, writes that the film “was not taken seriously” and that most audiences considered it “a boring picture”. The print was then purchased by Universal to see what had already been done in terms of a vampire movie. The film was studied by all the key creative personnel leading to the Universal production of Dracula in 1931.

The undead film continued to rise from the grave throughout the years. An abridged version was aired on television in the 1960s as part of Silents Please, and subsequently released by Entertainment films under the title Terror of Dracula, and then again by Blackhawk Films under the name Dracula. Blackhawk also released the original version to the collector’s market under the title Nosferatu the Vampire. An unabridged copy of the movie survived Florence Stoker’s death warrant and was restored and screened at Berlin’s Film Festival in 1984.

Despite its influence on the making of the 1931 Dracula, Nosferatu has few film decedents. It’s theme of vampire as a scourging plague has only been seriously taken up by two films: the 1979 remake by Werner Herzog, Nosferatu: The Vampyre, and the 1979 television miniseries of Salem’s Lot, directed by Tobe Hooper. Perhaps if the original Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens had been allowed regular release, this would not be the case. It remains to be seen if Nosferatu will vanish again with the daylight or if this rare film will rise again in a new form.

For more information on the making of the original Dracula, check out David Skal’s book Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen. If you want to see how vampire films have changed from Dracula to Underworld, pick up a copy of my book The Changing Vampire of Film and Television. Also you may visit www.timkanebooks.com for more vampire articles and fiction.