Vampire Secrets

Well, the person I researched was Countess Elizabeth Bathory. She was a really creepy nutcase. It makes me glad I didn't live in her era! It seems like some of her insanity may have stemmed from the fact that she didn't have a really happy childhood or home life or marriage. It's really interesting that she went around murdering virgins and bathing in their blood, yet was still a very loving mother. Who would think that would be possible? There's also the fact that her children allegedly didn't know about this activity until her arrest. It seems like her fate is just another case of where the rich, wealthy, and powerful get off the hook a little when it comes to justice. I mean, she was only under house arrest after all that she did!
Here's a link to an article on her: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/bathory/countess_1.html

As for the movie, this was a really informative, albeit really creepy documentary/special. I'm glad that the History Channel looked into this, though it is a little surprising that the producers would choose this topic. A few nights after I watched this, I kept having to check over my shoulder and listen for random noises! I learned a lot about vampires, and some feasible theories about how these legends got started, especially the segment about the one murderer in Scotland who was hung but never actually died, and then returned to his village. I'm really glad that we watched it, but even as I'm blogging here late at night I'm getting a little creeped out!

Dracula's Guest

This was really well-written and interesting. I like it a lot. Having read Dracula already, I am able to compare the two introductions. As a stand-alone chapter, I like Dracula's Guest more, but for the flow of the book, I prefer the chapter that Bram Stoker chose. Something that was fascinating to read was the side narration. It helped explain about the backstory of Dracula. It was really gruesome to read about, but the information about the real Dracula was valuable. It was also intruguing to read about the Translvanian folklore. Romania is such a mysterious place that can be easily romanticized. This was definitely worth reading and should be read along with the actual story whenever colleges and high schools teach the book.

Vampire in Venice

This was a fascinating article about how people actually dealt with vampires. I'm surprised that archeological evidence of vampire slayings weren't found before. In the "Historical Evidence" section of the book that we're reading, the corpses of "vampires" are described as bloated with blood seeping out the mouth and other openings in the body. This was the case in pretty much all of the stories. The Polish legends were the ones, I believe, that thought that vampires would be swimming in their coffins in the blood of their victims. Back to the article: as creepy as it is to dig up and reuse a mass grave, it does make sense if the number of dead people isn't much less than the number of people still living. Medieval science and medicine would have no way of knowing how a body naturally decomposes, so it does make sense that the response to seeing a "vampire" is to shove a stake through the heart, a brick in the mouth or whatever to kill it.

Vampire Knight

I love this manga!!! I had actually started to read the series about a week or so this was assigned, so the timing worked out perfectly. I probably wouldn't have finished it so quickly if not for the assignment, but that's fine. The biggest problem was in the 6th-8th mangas, where it was necessary to read them online since they're not out in the U.S. yet. I despise reading online (I love the tactile stuff), and there were several garbled translations that made things hard to understand at times. Other than that it was fantastic! The artwork was beautifully drawn, and the storyline was really good. This definitely goes by the view of the "modern day" vampire. It did put a fresh perspective on a fairly new concept of how vampires organize themselves (I guess the Senate is sort of like the Volturi in the Twilight series, but better). I know that there are a lot of mangas about high schools, and there are many stories about vampires, but Vampire Knight was able to combine these two without seeming cheesy or unoriginal.

The Vampyre: A Tale

This story was one of those where you just cringe at the end about how unhappy and unfulfilled the ending was. At first this story was sort of hard to follow, but it got better as it went on. It was an enjoyable story; however it was pretty depressing. I guess that this tale would have set the foundation for the ''modern-day'' vampire- superhuman and attractive. I'm surprised that more of the characters in the book didn't figure out that Lord Ruthven was a vampire... It was pretty creepy how even after Lord Ruthven "died," he still was able to communicate to Aubrey his desire for Aubrey to keep his promise. Creepy! You have to wonder if Lord Ruthven married Aubrey's sister the day before the promise had run its course just to tick him off. I wonder why Aubrey doubted Ianthe and her parents about the existence of vampires? This is what ended up causing her death, and consequently, her parents' deaths. I'm just glad that there was a little bit of happiness in this story- when Ianthe and Aubrey are able to be together. I thought that this was a pretty good reading selection!

Historical Evidence Stories

I found these stories to be really fascinating, and it just sort of goes to show that vampire legends have sprung up everywhere and through all times in human history.
The Book of Vampires- I thought that the most interesting part of this story were the margins with all of the names for vampire throughout different cultures. It explained a lot from when I've read other books and certain terms were used, such as incubus and chupacabra. It helped me understand how all of the languages around where the vampire stories originated are similar. I also found the methods that the Wallachians used to get rid of vampires and their ways of determining if someone is a vampire to be fascinating. It also defines what a vampire is.
The Phantom World- It seems as if this story is telling different accounts of how people have become vampires and what they ended up doing, as well as how the village folk dealt with the problem of someone coming back from the dead. In all of the reports, the corpse of the vampire is found to be bloated and overflowing with blood and it appears to be just dead. The body is also dealt with in a similar and gruesome manner.
Tale of a Russian Vampire- I found this to be the most novel-like account of the four stories. It read the smoothest. Anyway, in this story there was an older man who was jealous and mean who wed a young and pretty girl, denying her true love. This seems like a general character setup for a vampire story, since most seem to involve an older man and a pretty girl. The way in which the girl acted after her late husband kept coming back to suck her blood was similar to how the female protagonist in Dracula acted. It had a pretty brutal ending, but at least the vampire was dealt with!
Vampires of Roumania- This story was the one I found a tad bit hard to follow. From what I understand the girl's lover turned into a vampire and killed her parents and threatened to kill her after she saw him coming out of his grave one night. He killed her, and she was buried in a supersticious manner. A little while later, she turned into a flower and was picked by the emperor's son and eventually turned back into herself and they got married and lived happily ever after. It was an interesting story, if not a little confusing. The second story in here was also quite interesting. I felt pretty bad for the girl at the end of the story. Who knew you could become a vampire just by being around them?
All in all, I really liked these selections and I look forward to reading more in the book.