A Child's Eye View of Vampires

By Alan Leddon

Alan Leddon delights readers with this collection of exhaustively researched vampires and vampire like creatures from around the world. Explore the enormous variety of mythological and real world creatures that have been feared for centuries.

In these pages, learn about 78 varieties of vampires, witches, and hungry ghosts from the mythology of the seven inhabited continents, alongside 50 mythological creatures that have vampire-like traits. Learn about four different diets for vampires, and why funerals are important for preventing people from becoming vampires.
Most importantly, learn how people from the world over have tried to protect themselves from these creatures!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spero Publishing
• Release date: Feb 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310846632

Alan Leddon

Alan is the owner of Spero Publishing, based out of Madison, WI. Alan is originally from Western New York, having arrived in Madison by way of a brief US Navy career and stints in Falls Church, VA and St Petersburg, Fl. Alan is the father of Raven, an incredibly intelligent young girl, and husband of Bekki, who is teaching how to use technology. In addition to operating Spero Publishing, Alan is also a licensed nurse.

Book preview

A Child’s Eye View of Vampires

by Alan Leddon

Cover and art by Bekki Leddon

Spero Publishing

Madison, WI

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Spero Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Spero Publishing maintains a website at http://speropublishing.webs.com/. Upcoming products, news, and book reviews may be found there.

Contact the owner through the Contact Us form at http://speropublishing.webs.com/

-or-

Alan Leddon

Spero Publishing

PO Box 8747

Madison, WI 53708

Acknowledgements

In writing this book, I have made extensive use of Wikipedia.org, mainly to track down names (and sometimes the spelling of names that I already knew) of different types/species of Vampires. Once I had the names, I sought out other sources. My thanks to everyone who has posted on Wikipedia regarding Vampires, and to the creators of Wikipedia.

The best resource I have in my possession on the topic of Vampires is The Element Encyclopedia of Vampires, by Theresa Chueng. There is also some excellent information on the real world beliefs about Vampires (and blood-drinking witches) in Magic, Witchcraft and Religion: An Anthropological Survey of the Supernatural, a collection of scientific essays edited by Arthur C. Lehmann and James E. Myers. I recommend both books strongly to those who wish to know more about Vampires.

Parental Advisory

This book deals with death. Death is discussed as a reality, as the source of Vampires, and more. Parents should consider their feelings and beliefs on this matter. The author recommends frank and explicit discussion about death with children, with frank answers to their questions. The author would also like to offer the one piece of advice his grandfather had regarding death: Leave it alone and, when the time comes, it will take care of itself.

Note

This work is a part of Spero’s Child’s Eye View Series. It is also a companion of four other works in that series, A Child’s Eye View of Fair Folk, A Child’s Eye View of Ghosts, A Child’s Eye View of Aliens and Monsters, and A Child’s Eye View of Totems and Tutelary Spirits. These five works share some entries; some information is duplicated. Many entities from mythology defy easy classification, and some of our unseen neighbors clearly fit into multiple classifications. With the exception of the entry for the word Skepticism, every duplication was made after considerable soul-searching. No piece of information appears in two of these books unless it was deemed important to both books. However, these five books contain mostly unique information, and nothing is wasted by possessing all five books.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: The Basics

Chapter Two: The Varieties

Chapter Three: What you’re supposed to do

Chapter Four: What do other People do?

Bibliography

Appendix

Introduction

A beautiful heiress is sleeping fitfully on an enormous bed, alone in an enormous, well-appointed room. A bat flits briefly past her window, but then a tall figure appears, as if by magic, on her balcony. He glides elegantly across the hardwood floor to her side. With a flourish straight out of the Age of Chivalry, he tosses his cape over his shoulder, revealing elegant, tailor-made clothing of an older, more elegant time. He then leans elegantly over the sleeping woman, fangs glistening elegantly in the elegant moonlight…

OMG! What. A. Crock.

The idea of a Vampire as a romantic figure comes to us from rewritings of the work of a moderately well-known Irishman, Bram Stoker. He created his Count Dracula to fit the ideas of his time. In the repressive atmosphere of Victorian England, where looking at table legs could be considered sinful, only a MONSTER such as a Vampire could be so…so romantic, so elegant, so attractive. For a gentleman of the time, it was simply inappropriate. The bite on the neck, substituting for a passionate kiss, still makes us feel funny inside when we see the monster deliver it to the heroine. However, Stoker wrote his Vampire to be a monster – even his romantic actions are an attack, an intrusion. More recent writers than Stoker made it an act of romance, even love. The older stories, the myths and legends and folklore…those are very different.

Much has happened in the 100+ years since the death of Bram Stoker. Many authors have borrowed from him, creating more or less romantic figures from the monster that Stoker created. Some fictional Vampires have been ugly (Nosferatu), some have been educational (that purple thing from Sesame Street), and some have been sparkly. All of these have borrowed from Stoker’s eerily sinister yet engaging Transylvanian count. What fictional Vampires have rarely been, however, is true to the mythology that spawned them.

In the myths from around the world, Vampires are of two types. Walking corpses show signs of decay – withering fingers draw back, leaving long nails, dirty from clawing through the dirt of the grave. Withering gums draw back, exposing more of the teeth, making them appear to have lengthened. The skin is pasty, flaccid, or rotting. The monster often wears no more than the shroud in which he was buried. He may lurch or fly, but he is a ghastly thing no matter how he approaches. The living Vampire is a witch or sorcerer of some kind, who probably has to consume from living humans as a consequence of having magic powers.

But wait…let's check out that W word, shall we?

The World English Dictionary tells us this:

witch (wɪtʃ) noun

1. a person, usually female, who practices or professes to practice magic or sorcery, esp. black magic, or is believed to have dealings with the devil

2. an ugly or wicked old woman

3. a Wiccan priest or priestess

4. a fascinating or enchanting woman

5. short for water witch

These are interesting definitions of the term. However, none of them really work for the kinds of things we’ll be talking about here. In some countries, people take witchcraft very seriously. They expect witches to drink their blood, harm their children, and kill their crops and livestock. The line between vampire and witch in these countries, such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, is blurry at best. How seriously do these people take their witch-vampires? People are still killing suspected witches and vampires in 2013, in those countries. They are beating them, hanging them, and burning them, all out of fear and disgust at what the average people expect witches to do. They are disgusted, because these witch-vampires must do horrible things, but also because many living vampire-witches must choose to become a witch-vampire; these ones must consciously decide