{"id":5687,"date":"2010-10-25T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=5687"},"modified":"2014-05-20T13:24:12","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:24:12","slug":"the-evolution-and-history-of-the-vampire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2010\/10\/25\/the-evolution-and-history-of-the-vampire\/","title":{"rendered":"The evolution and history of the vampire"},"content":{"rendered":"

They are, by our estimation, the downright coolest of all the supernatural creations of man.\u00a0 Vampires, those blood-sucking fiends, are back in vogue in a major way, thanks to Stephanie Meyer\u2019s uber popular book and movie series, Twilight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The history of vampires extend far past Edward and his flock, and before the trio from True Blood<\/em> donned the cover of Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine covered in nothing but blood.<\/p>\n

Even before Bram Stoker\u2019s classic vampire of vampires, Count Dracula.\u00a0 But before we go through the history, why exactly do these horror creatures fascinate us so?<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t just cold-blooded killers, for one thing.\u00a0 One reason why the Jedi from Star Wars<\/em> are so popular is their noble quest for justice.\u00a0 The vampires aren\u2019t exactly the purveyors of all that is right and good, though.\u00a0 They\u2019re, in a word, mysterious.<\/p>\n

Or, handsome.\u00a0 Note that Dracula, Edward, the True Blood<\/em> folks and even the stars of Interview with the Vampire<\/em> weren\u2019t hard on the eyes.\u00a0 The attraction, that dangerous desire, is what draws us to them.<\/p>\n

Sure, they could be evil and want to suck our blood, but just look at those gorgeous eyes.<\/p>\n

Their physical abilities are also impressive.\u00a0 Dracula, for instance, was said to have the physical strength of 20 men–if you can believe Van Helsing.<\/p>\n

Also, the only way you could kill Dracula was by lobbing off his head, followed a wooden stake to the heart.<\/p>\n

Not all vampires share abilities, though.\u00a0 Edward doesn\u2019t require the decapitation and stake routine to be killed, and suffocation won\u2019t work either because he doesn\u2019t have to breathe.\u00a0 The old count, however, seemed to need to.<\/p>\n

The abilities and fascinations all begin way back in April of 1819.\u00a0 An author named John William Polidori published a short story in that month\u2019s edition of New Monthly Magazine<\/em> called The Vampyre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The story starred a man named Lord Ruthven, a vampire, who meets a boy named Aubrey.\u00a0 The two have some adventures in Europe, are attacked by bandits and Ruthven is mortally wounded.<\/p>\n

Aubrey witnesses Ruthven die, and heads back to London.\u00a0 Surprise!\u00a0 Ruthven\u2019s alive.\u00a0 However, before Ruthven died, he made Aubrey promise to keep his death a secret for a year and a day.\u00a0 Well, okay, not so bad.\u00a0 Odd request, but okay.<\/p>\n

Ruthven then proceeds to seduce Aubrey\u2019s sister.\u00a0 It works, and they are to be married the day the oath would end.\u00a0 In the process of all this, Aubrey becomes very ill and dies, but he manages to send a letter to his sister, exposing Ruthven for what he is.<\/p>\n

The letter doesn\u2019t get there in time.\u00a0 Ruthven marries Aubrey\u2019s sister, kills her on the wedding night and escapes.<\/p>\n

Nearly 90 years later came Dracula<\/em>, Bram Stoker\u2019s finest creation.\u00a0 It stars the most famous of all vampires, Count Dracula, and is a defining piece of Victorian fiction.\u00a0 The story follows the Count\u2019s quest to take over the world.<\/p>\n

In the end, he is thwarted by Jonathan Harker and his group and killed near his beautiful castle in Transylvania.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re willing to bet that most of you didn\u2019t know about Lord Ruthven, but all of you have heard of Dracula.\u00a0 Some of you might not know the work of Anne Rice, including Interview with the Vampire<\/em>, a movie that scratches multiple Clarion<\/em> itches.<\/p>\n

But you know of Edward, Bella and those crazy kids, no?\u00a0 Wait, what?\u00a0 You don\u2019t?\u00a0 You\u2019ve never heard of those movies, which combined have earned an estimated $1,082,643,993 according to boxofficemojo.com?\u00a0 Well, then.<\/p>\n

The Twilight series differs from virtually all other famous vampire stories in a key way: it\u2019s melodramatic.\u00a0 The story centers around the romance between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, they\u2019re in high school, and drama ensues.<\/p>\n

Where Dracula<\/em> and Anne Rice\u2019s work tend to branch into the horror genre, Twilight rarely if ever does.\u00a0 Stephanie Meyer\u2019s work is more about strumming the emotional chords in the hearts of teenagers, and to her credit, it\u2019s worked.\u00a0 The movies and books are a major hit, and even if we don\u2019t like the stories, we\u2019re happy about one thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s brought our favorite supernatural beings back into the light.\u00a0 So go ahead, fateful reader, read Dracula<\/em>, or go online to find The Vampyre,<\/em> or head to Amazon and find some of Anne Rice\u2019s work. Also, if you need a good date movie, the next Twilight<\/em> film arrives in November.<\/p>\n

Turn on HBO and check out True Blood<\/em>, or head to Hulu.com and watch some Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Either way, you\u2019ve got plenty of options, should you find yourself craving some vampire on Halloween!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They are, by our estimation, the downright coolest of all the supernatural creations of man.\u00a0 Vampires, those blood-sucking fiends, are back in vogue in a major way, thanks to Stephanie Meyer\u2019s uber popular book and movie series, Twilight. The history of vampires extend far past Edward and his flock, and before the trio from True […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1tJ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5687"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5693,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5687\/revisions\/5693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}