Theresa Bane: Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology

Dear Mrs. Bane,

In your preface, you say that "knowing the “why” of the hili is what a vampirologist does. Why did the Xhosa people of that region of South Africa develop their vampire the way they did? Why does the hili look the way it does? Why is it an indiscriminate killer, attacking anyone at any time of the day or night? Why are the vampires that live due west completely different in every way? Why do they not cross into each other’s territories? I know the answers to all these questions because I have delved into the history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and religious studies of just about every culture I could get my hands on."

If you know all these things, Mrs. Bane, then why didn't you include any of it in your Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology? The entry for hili is eleven lines long. It describes the hili as a skull-headed bird that spreads disease. Not a word about why people believed it this way. Why did Germans believe that the Nachzehrer chews its burial shroud? Because the liquid that rises from the rotting body's mouth is slightly acidic and contains enzymes enough to make a hole in the shroud. You don't mention that, either.

Let me ask you some more whys, Mrs. Bane. Why did you write that "over 30,000 people were burned as werewolves during the Inquisition" in Greece? There never was an Inquisition in Greece. The Inquisition was a catholic institution, Greece is an orthodox country. There were very few witch hunts in Greece, if any at all. And 30,000 victims, when between 40,000 and 60,000 people in total were killed in witch hunts in all of Europe? Why didn't that number make you suspicious? Why do I have to double-check your entries, Mrs. Bane?

Another why: During your research into "the history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and religious studies of just about every culture" you could get your hands on, why did you never open a dictionary? A latin dictionary, for example, would tell you that stryx, strix and striga are three different latinizations of the same greek word, στρίγξ. The plural of striga is strigae. (Why would you write that it's strigele?) When Stephen I of Hungary and Charlemagne issued laws against witchcraft, they used the words strigae and stryx, respectively, because these had become the latin words for witches in general. The Italian strega evolved from striga. So did the Romanian words strigoi, strigoii, strigol, strigon and all the other versions. The stories changed with time, but you can still see where the roots are. The why of the word strigoi.

Let's look at some more roots: for example the succubus. That's derived from the latin verb succubare: "to lie beneath". A succubus is "one who lies beneath". Why would you translate it as a "spirit bride"? The male version, called incubus, is "one who lies in" (the bed). In some versions of the legend, incubi and succubi are the same demonic spirits. In their female form, they will visit a man and harvest his semen. Then they will shapeshift into a male incubus, lie down with a woman and impregnate her. What a way of explaining an illegitimate child! This might be why people told the story. The Bulgarian glog, the Rumanian dhampir and all the myths about children sired by vampires show that sometimes an undead father was better than an unknown one. Why didn't you mention this, Mrs. Bane?

Why did you write separate entries for sburator and zburator when both are different spellings of the same word? The same goes for the Greek vampires. Why do you have a separate entry for each of the possible transliterations of one name? Why did you write two entries for Bluatsauger and Blut Aussauger when one word is a dialect variety of the other? Were you striving for completeness? Then this piece of information - that they are the same - would have been crucial to include. Did you think that, if two names look different in the least, they must belong to two different species of vampires? Or did you want to have more different vampire species than anyone else? Your 600 would boil down to a lot less if you eliminated the clandestine duplicates and the many entries that consist of "xxxxxx is the word for vampire in the yyyyyyy language."

In short: Why did you compile information from fourth-hand sources for your Encyclopedia? Why didn't you double-check anything against a dictionary, a history book or an original source? Why did you bloat the book with useless bits and duplicates, but leave out important and interesting facts? And why don't you answer what, to you, is the most important question of vampirology: the why?

Yours with curiosity
Christina Widmann de Fran

Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology by Theresa Bane

published in 2010 with McFarland

ISBN: 978-0786444526.
Available on Amazon.co.uk.