Vampires

When you hear the word vampire you probably think of Dracula, maybe you think of the villains from the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, vamps such as Spike, Angel, Darla, and Drusila. You might even think of Edward Cullen *shudder*. But you probably think of vampires as contemporary figments of the human imagination, dating back only as far as say, the original publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula. But in truth, almost every civilization, almost every country has myths of vampires, stories so old some predate written word, and were passed by word of mouth. I'm not about to announce that I believe vampires to be real, but it is fascinating none the less that stories of vampires are common throughout every  part of the world.

There is much to talk about on the subject of vampires; their powers, their weaknesses, how they come to be, supposed "real life" vampires in history, their relation in regards to other mythical monsters, their role in contemporary entertainment, the various myths about them throughout human history, and much much more. All of this can be found within the contents of The Vampire Book, the Encyclopedia of the Undead by j. Gordon Melton, a book that does not use the title encyclopedia lightly. Although it could not possibly contain all information available on vampires, it does contain hundreds upon hundreds of pages of vampire related content.

Truthfully I am not even certain where to begin, so diving right in, let's talk about the different vampiric myths from around the world, including the various properties of each vampire we discuss. In later posts we'll cover "real life" vampires, and the contemporary vamp and his role in our media/entertainment.
 According to the Encyclopedia the first written mention of  a vampire was in 1047, "First appearance in written form of the word upir (an early form of the word later to become "vampire") in a document referring to a Russian prince as 'Upir Lichy,' or wicked vampire."
In Africa there is legend of a vampire called obayifo (also known as the asiman), and one called asasabonsam. The obayifo was actually a witch living in the community in disguise. At night she would leave her body and travel as a ball of light sucking the blood of the children.
The Ashanti peoples of Ghana (in Western Africa) describe the asasabonsam as a vampire-like monster.It sat in trees in the forest and used its hook like feet to snare its victims, it is said to be humanoid in appearance with iron teeth.
In Armenia there is a tale of a vampire local to Mount Ararat in the Caucasians. Attacking travelers in the night, Dakhanavar was said to suck the blood from their feet, "protecting" the valleys of the area from intruders.
According to the Aboriginals of Australia the yara-ma-yha-who were little red men, usually no bigger than four feet, with abnormally large heads and mouths, no teeth, and suckers on the tips of their fingers and toes. The yara-ma-yha-who were said to hide in wild fig trees, waiting to drop down on unsuspecting victims who came to rest under the tree. They would attach their suckers to their victims and suck their blood, just enough to leave them weak and helpless, then later return to swallow their victims whole.
It would be impossible to list every type of vampire, from every country and ancient civilization, so forgive me for picking and choosing just a few more.
In China a vampire is called a chiang-shih (or kiang shi), belief in which was derived, at least in part from the Chinese belief in two souls. According to Chinese believes their is a rational soul and an irrational soul, the irrational one called the p'ai or p'o. A body that is controlled by the p'ai and has no rational soul is a chiang-shih. "The chiang-shih seems to have originated as a means of explaining problems associated with death. The Chiang-shih arose following a violent death due to suicide, hanging, drowning, or smothering. It could also appear in a person who had died suddenly, or as a result of improper burial procedures. The dead were thought to become angry and restless if their burial was postponed for a long time after their death." (an expert from the passage about vampires in China, in The Vampire Book)
Three vampire-like creatures can be found in stories from Greece, the empusai, the lamiai, and the mormolykiai, and all three were known for drinking blood." described as coarse-looking women with deformed, serpentlike lower bodies....The lamiai were known primarily as demonic beings who sucked the blood from young children; however they had the power to transform themselves into beautiful young maidens in order to attract and seduce young men."
Vampires may not be real, but they have a presence in just about every culture known to man, and I think that alone makes them worth studying.
TBC...

Atlantis

The Lost City of Atlantis is not the only lost continent . There is a legend that speaks of another one called Lemuria. But more on this less well-known mythical land later, for now let us focus on Atlantis. Many skeptics of the existence of Atlantis will insist that with the exception of Plato's two dialogues, Critias and Timaeus there is no other independent evidence of Atlantis given by ancient authorities.However ancient myths and traditions from many if not most nations center on a legend of a great Flood and it's destruction of Paradise (the original focus of Civilization), might this have been the fabled Atlantis?

The Mayan myths of origin tell of a mysterious island or continent called Aztlan which they came from originally. A volcanic cataclysm drove them out of their homeland, which later sunk underseas. Their voyage (which is recorded in such documents as the Codex Boturini) took them over the Pacific Ocean, and they stopped for several years on the various islands of that ocean. Professor Arysio Nunes dos Santos author of the website Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found says that "There can be very little doubt that Aztlan is anything other than Atlantis. Furthermore, the western location of Aztlan, and the volcanic nature of the cataclysm that sunk it away leave no room for doubt that if it is indeed Atlantis, the lost continent was situated in the Far East, probably in the Indonesian region". Furthermore there are Hindu traditions which speak of a sunken Paradise, known as Atala, which lay in the Far East. The Greeks (who believed that the Titan Atlas was the founder of Atlantis) copied their legends on Atlas and Atlantis from the Hindu legends of Atalas (Shiva) and Atala. the Professor goes on to say that " As in the Greek traditions, Atalas - whose name is Sanskrit and means 'Pillar' - was deemed to be the 'Pillar of the world', just as was Atlas in Greece. Atala was, like Atlantis, a sunken continent destroyed by a fiery cataclysm, and which lay in the Outer Ocean. Since the Greek myth is of Hindu origin and was simply transferred to their western when the Greeks moved to their present whereabouts, it is idle to quest for Atlantis in the ocean nowadays called Atlantic" Instead the Professor would have us look for Atlantis in the Indian Ocean which the Hindu called "the ocean of the Atlanteans" or the "western ocean".

So as far as I'm concerned there is the possibility that Atlantis was once a real place, and maybe even where Civilization began.

TBC...

Lake Monsters

This myth is a less popular one, but it is no less fascinating than say, aliens or Atlantis.Most people have heard of the Loch Ness Monster, at least in passing; and while it is by far the most famous lake monster legend (so famous there is a permanent spotting post lakeside), it is by no means the only one. Large lakes all over the world are reportedly home to sea serpent like creatures.

Scotland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, East Asia, South America, and West Asia all have lakes that are supposedly home to mythical monsters. That's right I said the United States has their own lake monster, more than one actually. The more popular one being Champ, the lake Champlain monster, featured in an episode of X Files. But we will get to Champ later, for now we must ask ourselves, do we believe it? Do we believe there really are prehistoric creatures living in Earth's large lakes? Many skeptics will say that after 70+ years of searching for the monster of Loch Ness, it can be safely concluded that no such creature exists. After searching so long and so hard a body would have been produced, whether alive or dead. That being said many still believe because there are so many eyewitness accounts, surely they can't all be false or mistaken. All I know for sure is that I want to believe, I want to believe that there are still mysteries in our world.

Being the most famous case of a lake monster we will start with Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. There have been sightings of a strange creature in Loch Ness as far back as the 6th century. But as far as the media is concerned the monster was first seen in 1933. One John Mackay and his wife, owners of a hotel in Drumnadrochit (near Invernness, I assume) anonymously reported seeing the creature to a journalist, Alex Campbell, who published the story in the Inverness Courier on May 2. An excerpt from the article "... on Friday of last week, a well-known businessman, who lives near Inverness, and his wife... when motoring along the northern side of the loch were startled to see a tremendous upheaval on the loch... the creature disported itself for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron... Both on-lookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing, for they realized this was no ordinary denizen of the deep. No indeed: for a few years before a party of Inverness anglers had 'encountered an unknown creature, whose bulk, movements and the amount of water it displaced suggested that it was either a very large seal, a porpoise, or, indeed, the monster itself!" May 2 2003 marked the 70th anniversary since that first publication, and in 70 years are we any closer to proving or indeed disproving that Nessie exists?

TBC....

Aliens and UFOs

It is an arrogant and stupid man indeed who believes that humans are the only intelligent life forms in the universe. And an even dumber man that believes Earth is the only planet in the universe capable of sustaining life. The universe is so vast we can't even conceive the size, and as far as we know it's still expanding.In our galaxy alone there must be hundreds of stars similar to our Sun, with planets like Earth, capable of sustaining life. Therefore it can be concluded that there is life out there, that we are not alone. I can say with some certainty that martians do not exist.In fact it isn't likely that there is any other life in our small solar system, we'd have found it by now, and most of these planets would not be able to sustain life. But that still leaves millions of planets orbiting tens of thousands of stars.

Do I believe that there are extraterrestrials among us? Or that people are being abducted by aliens from outer space? I don't know. As a child I used to tell myself that UFOs and alien abductions weren't true, that if aliens were really visiting Earth it would be public knowledge. But I told myself this so that I might sleep at night, while avoiding nightmares of aliens coming to get me. As an adult I believe that the government would have to cover up the truth if aliens were here. It's like that line in Men In Black "People are smart" "No, a person is smart, people are dumb panicky animals". It is clear to me that most of the general populous would not react well to the news that extraterrestrials were real and among us, there would be mass panic.

I think the best place to start is with the story of a UFO encounter that really started the modern UFO craze and where we got the term "flying saucer". It was June 24th 1947, Kenneth Arnold, an experienced pilot and seller of fire-control equipment, was flying from Chehalis Air Service in Washington , to Pendleton Oregon. While flying near Mount Rainier Arnold spotted a group of nine aircraft he could not identify flying in a V formation. He described their flight pattern, comparing it to the way a saucer would bounce if you skipped it on water, he calculated the speed at which these craft were flying based on their distance from the ground, Mount Rainier and his plane, and he concluded that they were flying faster than any known aircraft, military or commercial. Arnold went on to write a book about his encounter, The Coming of the Saucers By Kenneth Arnold & Ray Palmer. In the days and weeks that followed Arnold's sighting there were numerous reports of UFO sightings all over the country, the most famous report being that of a crashed saucer recovered by the U.S. Airforce from a ranch just north of Roswell New Mexico.

TBC...