Wikipedia: Vampire/Talk

I think we've made good progress on this page, but now it needs to be refactored (I am referring to Vampire, not this /Talk page).

I always thought silver was good against Werewolfs, not vampires? Can anyone explain that?

I think that both this and the daywalker stuff come next to exclusively from the movie Blade, which wasn't a particularly traditional view on vampires, or something close to it. I tried some searching to find any references...vampire with anything like "silver kills" reveals nothing classical, although I might have missed some combination (just silver gives to many false hits to cut down). Definitely daywalker got nothing other than RPGs and movies. Neither of these are listed on Britannica's page or any of the kid's books I can remember.

I found an interesting article on themestream.com [[1]]

Classic vampires are killed by a wooden stake through the heart. Silver as being efficacious against vampires (and in Blade, it was not silver but a concoction of mercury, garlic, blood with vampirism antibodies, etc which was supposed to do the trick) is very recent and poorly supported - hardly part of traditional vampire myth yet.

The rationale behind the silver thing is that silver is supposed to have properties that make it resistant to evil. Don't ask me to elaborate, I read it in an old book. I do remember it said that silver hurt vampires, particularly silver crosses did the trick. It also of course mentioned the silver bullet killing werewolves. There is nothing special about the bullet, its the silver. Apparently silver could also be used to expose witches. BTW, hazelwood was the preferred wood for killing vapires. It was supposed to have evil-resistant properties as well.

I believe that the silver as dangerous to vampires theory has basis in history. --Alan D

Bram Stoker introduced us to "undead," of course, contemporaneously with the modernized legend of Vlad Drakul - aka "Vlad the Impaler" who was a quite real old-time prince who terrorized local peasants by hanging the heads and bodies of those who displeased him from stakes outside the "castle" or manor house.

Silver bullets are supposed to kill werewolves. Until a movie was made on the subject, I wonder if there was any substantial literary classic involving lycanthropy (people turning into wolves) to which we can refer, or if oral tradition is all there is to fall back on. Oral tradition does go back hundreds of years, at least.

I think there's some instances of lycanthropy amongst the ancient Greeks. There should be a book on my shelves somewhere with a detailed history of this sort of thing...

Getting back to vampires, it's interesting to see how Bram Stoker's Dracula was an assortment of folk traditions, grafted onto a more or less Roman Catholic framework of demonic possession; his Dracula is effectively the corpse of Vlad Dracul possessed by a demon - hence the crucifix & holy water being so effective.

I have some reservations about the works listed on the previous page: Nosferatu is simply a take on the dracula story; Bram Stoker's widow in fact sued the people involved with the film for copyright violation and won, which does not mean that the work does not deserve mention; but Salem's Lot is also a take on the Dracula legend which has merely been updated and moved to New England. Stephen King has admitted as much himself, and says the novel came about from a comment made when he had a friend over and they were discussing Stoker's novel: Tabitha King said that today Dracula would get run over by a cab at the airport and that would be the end of it. The parallels between the two works are obvious enough to anyone who them both.

How about mentioning vampire legends which do *not* depend so heavily on Stoker's work? e.g. works by Anne Rice, and, um, well that's all I can think of. :-) I haven't read up on vampires much, which was why I followed this link. :-)

Certainly, there is a school of vampiric writing which derives more from le Fanu's work than Stoker's. sjc

There is no evidence that Stoker ever heard of a Vlad Drakul or Vlad the Impaler while doing his research for the book, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. -- corvus13

Also, there is no evidence which suggests that he hadn't. Moreover, the setting in Transylvania indicates that he was probably aware of it. But I have expanded the original author's description of Stoker's sources to cover all bases. sjc

Actually, there is evidence that he didn't. See "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense" by Elizabeth Miller. --corvus13

This is kind of academic. Stoker had a friendship with a Hungarian professor who may well have related the story, but nothing is provable in either direction. Unless Stoker walks again, that is... sjc