“So what can we generalize about Victorian vampires? They are already dead, yet not exactly dead, and clammy-handed. They can be magnetically repelled by crucifixes and they don’t show up in mirrors. No one is safe; vampires prey upon strangers, family, and lovers. Unlike zombies, vampires are individualists, seldom traveling in packs and never en masse. Many suffer from mortuary halitosis despite our reasonable expectation that they would no longer breathe. But our vampires herein also differ in interesting ways. Some fear sunlight; others do not. Many are bound by a supernatural edict that forbids them to enter a home without some kind of invitation, no matter how innocently mistaken. Dracula, for example, greets Jonathan Harker with this creepy exclamation that underlines another recurring theme, the betrayal of innocence (and also explains why I chose Stoker’s story “Dracula’s Guest” as the title of this anthology): “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will.” Yet other vampires seem immune to this hospitality prohibition. One common bit of folklore was that you ought never to refer to a suspected vampire by name, yet in some tales people do so without consequence. Contrary to their later presentation in movies and television, not all Victorian vampires are charming or handsome or beautiful. Some are gruesome. Some are fiends wallowing in satanic bacchanal and others merely contagious victims of fate, à la Typhoid Mary. A few, in fact, are almost sympathetic figures, like the hero of a Greek epic who suffers the anger of the gods. Curious bits of other similar folklore pop up in scattered places. Vampires in many cultures, for example, are said to be allergic to garlic. Over the centuries, this aromatic herb has become associated with sorcerers and even with the devil himself. It protected Odysseus from Circe’s spells. In Islamic folklore, garlic springs up from Satan’s first step outside the Garden of Eden and onion from his second. Garlic has become as important in vampire defense as it is in Italian cooking. If, after refilling your necklace sachet and outlining your window frames, you have some left over, you can even use garlic to guard your pets or livestock—although animals luxuriate in soullessness and thus appeal less to the undead. The vampire story as we know it was born in the early nineteenth century. As”
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Michael Sims,
Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories
