Myths and monster’s stem from aspects of reality, trying to make sense of things that aren’t understood. The most distinctive and iconic of myths is that of the Vampire. A monster who dates back hundreds of years and crops up across continents, popularised by Bram Stocker and embedded into our culture almost as firmly as beliefs in the afterlife. The cross-cultural appearance of Nos Feratu has a lot to do with word of mouth certainly, but the variations in the legend stem from the possibility that these tales of ‘the dead becoming un-dead’ existed in their own right in each place, before they were embellished into a vampire through the sharing of tales. Before post-mortem knowledge had been developed the sight of a body after death would have shocked many. The receded gums, the bloated stomach, and the trickles of blood that came from the mouth would have easily have been misinterpreted. It is therefore no surprise that tales of the recently departed roaming the night and drinking the blood of others soon developed after these corpses were seen; and thus the Vampire was born.
With the recent surge of popularity in vampires, werewolves and the like I thought it would be fitting to have a little ponder about possible explanations that might be given if for example if these cases were looked at from a psychological view point. It is not difficult to come up with a couple of Freudian reasons as to why women in particular are fascinated with the myths, particularly the biting part, but what would a psychologist living in the world of Sookie Stackhouse make of Eric Northman the Viking Vampire, if they were unwilling to accept the existence of the mythological creatures in this fiction?
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