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Okay, so maybe deviant, anti-social or blasphemous types are sometimes worthy of suspicion, but it’s still quite a leap from being a drunk to being a bloodsucking murderer. Plus, there were other categories of potential vampires that are clearly not to blame for their actions, such as victims of a stroke or accidental drowning. Barber cites a report documented by Polish theologian Felix Haase of a case in 1506: “we do not dignify with burial the bodies of those who are drowned or murdered . . . instead we drag them into the fields and fence in the place with stakes.” Haase goes on to explain how, when the weather was too cold and spring did not bring a good bounty, this community would blame its misfortune not on the weather, but on vampirism. Then they would just figure out which recently buried person had drowned or been murdered, dig up that corpse and throw it somewhere out of the way, unburied. “We believe, in our great foolishness, that his burial is the cause of the cold.” Foolish, yes. Alone in worrying about proper burial? No.

Of all the types at risk for vampirism, particular attention was paid to the bodies of suicides or the excommunicated. In Christian societies, these were the worst of behavioural infractions, requiring a penalty so serious it would follow you after death. Suicides were considered the lowest of the low and not deemed worthy of a proper burial in a church graveyard; they would be thrown to the dogs (literally), dumped in a pit on the outskirts or, if buried at all, placed at a crossroads. All because of the fear that a suicide would return after death as a revenant. Excommunication—being banned from the Church for some extremely bad sin—also doomed the body to remain whole after death and its soul in limbo, rather than decomposing naturally while the soul travelled to a spiritual realm. In Greece, in particular, it was said excommunicated bodies didn’t decompose until receiving absolution from religious officials. A fear of coming back from the dead was used by the Church as a tool to get people to behave, not unlike threats of going to Hell. Be good kids, or be transformed into a bloodsucker. (You’d be hard pressed to use that against today’s Twihards.)

And so, should sudden mysterious deaths start to befall a community, it was to the sinners and cursed that suspicion would turn—and then the wannabe vampire hunters would get to work.

Excerpt from How To Kill a Vampire: Fangs in Folklore, Film and Fiction by Liisa Ladouceur © 2013 by ECW Press. Used with permission from the publisher.