VAMPIRES - THE SCAPEGOATS

It was in the 18th century when craze and fear of vampires begin to spread across various European countries

. In those days, many people lost their lives, becoming victims of vampirism.

How vampires came into existence? How they became the bloodsuckers? What made medieval people believe in them? ‘Vampirism’ Was it real or just fear? The answers to all these questions are here.

Diseases made vampires, it’s surprising but true.

Due to the lack of hygiene knowledge, medieval people faced lots of death caused by diseases like plague, Porphyria, rabies, goiter, and most commonly by consumption (tuberculosis).

When people died from plague and consumption, they were left with blood and fluids in their mouth, which for the uneducated was a sure sign for vampirism. Thus, rumors about vampires begun to spread even faster than diseases that covered almost every part of Eastern Europe.

It is said that disease named Porphyria gave rise to most of the vampire myths like:

1. Vampires can’t move around in daylight: Victims suffering from Porphyria (a blood disorder) generated severe blisters on the skin when exposed to sunlight. Thus, innocent people who became victims of Porphyria were blindly assumed to be vampires.

2. Vampires drink blood: The person suffering from Porphyria used to have symptoms like ejecting red-colored urine, this made people believe that this was due to drinking blood.

3. Vampires don’t like mirror: According to books and mythology, a vampire can’t see himself in a mirror. This is because of the facial disfigurement caused by Porphyria.

4. Vampires have fangs: With facial disfigurement, continuous attack of this disease causes gums to shrink and thus exposing the teeth, which may look like fangs.

Back in the medieval era Vampires were held among one of the deadliest creatures. So, to protect themselves, people started vampire hunting with their own built tricks and methods.

We, humans, were always resourceful and thus made a kit hundreds of years ago to keep vampires at bay. This vampire protection kit contains –wooden stakes, holy water, crosses, and cloves of garlic. Stakes and crosses make sense but why did people back then think that vampires would be killed by a clove of tiny garlic?

There is a couple of theories -

1. Garlic smells bad — it is said that vampires don’t like garlic as it has a strong pungent smell. Vampires are assumed to have heightened senses due to this condition they get repelled from garlic.

2. Garlic can cure vampirism — garlic is a super-strong antibiotic, and if used properly it can kill most infections like vampirism

3. Evil spirit hates garlic — many cultures use garlic to stop evils like activities of witches and sorcerers, even garlic has been used by the Christian church in ceremonies to banish evil.

So, the idea is that vampires are evil and they get also repelled by garlic.

In 2017, a 700 years old skeleton was found in Bulgaria whose teeth were removed and was stabbed through the chest with an iron rod. The scholars suspected that town people did this to get rid of vampires as vampirism was a real fear at that time.

If we think properly it wasn’t exactly the diseases that created vampires but were the fear which made a home in the minds of people.