Creature DA·C·0002
Vampire
The dead who return to feed on the living. The term entered European languages in the eighteenth century through Habsburg administrative reports on Serbian cases.
- Name origin
- From Serbian vampir; deeper etymology disputed CONTR: Disputed tradition
- Earliest accounts
- 1725 (Kisiljevo case) DOC: Documented
- Geographic area
- The Balkans, then Europe-wide through print DOC: Documented
- Methods of identification
- Exhumation: body not decomposed, blood at the mouth PRIM: Primary source
- Documented remedies
- Staking, decapitation, cremation of the corpse PRIM: Primary source
From administrative report to myth
Before becoming a cloaked aristocrat, the vampire was an archival matter. In 1725 and 1732, Habsburg officials and military physicians wrote reports on exhumations◆ Primary sourceAn original document consulted directly: a text, record, script or film print.Source: Visum et Repertum, 1732 carried out in Serbian villages to stop the dead, accused of returning to kill, from doing so. The European press circulated the reports, and the word vampire entered educated usage.
Tradition and popular culture
The folkloric vampire is a recently deceased peasant, swollen and ruddy in the grave, who attacks family and neighbours. The literary and cinematic vampire—seducer, nobleman, immortal—is a nineteenth-century invention● DocumentedCorroborated by multiple reliable and independent sources., beginning with Polidori and culminating in Stoker. Tolstoy’s and Bava’s Vurdalak stands between them: aristocratic in its narrator, peasant in its monster.
Etymology
There are numerous hypotheses about the origin of vampir (Slavic, Turkish and others), and none has been universally accepted≈ Disputed traditionA belief or etymology on which sources disagree..
- 1725 History
The case of Petar Blagojević at Kisiljevo appears in the Viennese press
DOC: Documented - 1732 History
The Visum et Repertum report on the Medvedja case
PRIM: Primary source - 1746 Scholarship
Dom Calmet publishes his treatise on apparitions and vampires
DOC: Documented - 1819 Literature
John Polidori’s The Vampyre: the aristocratic vampire emerges
DOC: Documented - 1897 Literature
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
DOC: Documented
Connections
14 direct connections · 27 further links. Dashed lines indicate weak or unproven links.
- Film
- Creature · ritual
- Motif
- Source
- Person
- Weak link
Creatures (5)
Revenant
- Area
- Medieval England, Western Europe
- Earliest attestations
- Twelfth-century English chronicles
Strigoi
- Area
- Romania, Moldavia
- Earliest attestations
- Nineteenth-century folklore collections
Revenant
- Area
- Medieval England, Western Europe
- Earliest attestations
- Twelfth-century English chronicles
Strigoi
- Area
- Romania, Moldavia
- Earliest attestations
- Nineteenth-century folklore collections
Vurdalak
- Area
- Russia, Balkans
- Earliest attestations
- 19th century (literary form)
Sources (5)
Visum et Repertum
The Vampyre (Polidori, 1819)
Dracula (Stoker, 1897)
La Guzla
Visum et Repertum
Beliefs & rituals (4)
Protections against the dead
The threshold and invitation
Protections against the dead
The threshold and invitation
Collections (1)
Vampires of Eastern Europe
Films (1)
Black Sabbath
I tre volti della paura · Les Trois Visages de la peur
Motifs (1)
The family vampire
- Theft from the dead motif · via Revenant
- Historia rerum Anglicarum (William of Newburgh) source · via Revenant
- Eastern Europe place · via Strigoi
- The Vurdalak, from folklore to cinema bloodline · via Visum et Repertum
- The vampire child motif · via The threshold and invitation
- La famiglia del Vurdalak source · via Vurdalak
- Night of the Devils film · via Vurdalak
- Sem’ja vurdalakov film · via Vurdalak
- Boris Karloff person · via Vurdalak
- A. K. Tolstoy person · via Vurdalak
- Mario Bava person · via Black Sabbath
- American International Pictures person · via Black Sabbath
- Anton Chekhov person · via Black Sabbath
- Guy de Maupassant person · via Black Sabbath
- The threatening telephone motif · via Black Sabbath
- The sound that announces the supernatural motif · via Black Sabbath
- Italian Gothic collection · via Black Sabbath
- Dubbing glossary · via Black Sabbath
- Censorship glossary · via Black Sabbath
- Alternate cut glossary · via Black Sabbath
- Literary adaptation glossary · via Black Sabbath
- I tre volti della paura vs Black Sabbath version · via Black Sabbath
- Rome place · via Black Sabbath
- Black Sunday film · via Black Sabbath
- Black Sabbath (band) person · via Black Sabbath
- The Chekhov credit: a source that cannot be found journal · via Black Sabbath
- Why Dread Atlas begins with I tre volti della paura journal · via Black Sabbath
Bibliography
- Primary sourceJ. Flückinger et al., Visum et Repertum, Belgrade, 26 January 1732.
- StudyPaul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death, Yale University Press, 1988.
Revision history
- First draft.— Editorial team
How to cite this page
Redazione Dread Atlas, «Vampire», Dread Atlas, Entry DA·C·0002, updated 28 September 2026. https://macabralia.com/en/creature/vampiro/