“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula
― Bram Stoker, Dracula
Vampires have captured the imagination
for hundreds if not thousands of years. While most people today believe
vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures to be nothing more than
stories and myths, there was a time when corpses were staked and people were
executed for being a vampire. If you have always wondered where the stories
come from, you are not alone, and while it is difficult to pinpoint the very
first belief in vampires, we can construct a bit of a timeline of sorts from
the different creatures that culminated in the modern day vampire.
Upir- 1047 BC
What may be the first reference to vampire type creatures is
the Upir, first found in recorded history around 1000 BC. Upir’s originated in
ancient Russia and other Slavic countries. One notable difference between these
and later vampires is the fact that they were not affected by sunlight. These bloodthirsty creatures could walk about
in the daytime and were thought to be people who had committed atrocious sins
and rejected Jesus Christ.
Since they had rejected Christ, they were considered damned
by the Orthodox church and could not be buried in the church graveyard. They
were also believed to be servants of the devil who would imbue them with
immortality.
