The Vampire: A Casebook

by Alan Dundes

    Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Eleven leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood.

    The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word “vampire;” Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire has been and continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it—in reality or in fiction.

Genres: Vampires, Nonfiction, Folklore, History, Horror, Anthropology, Reference

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 1998

About the author

Alan Dundes was a folklorist at the University of California, Berkeley. His work was said to have been central to establishing the study of folklore as an academic discipline. He wrote 12 books, both academic and popular, and edited or co-wrote two dozen more. One of his most notable articles was called "Seeing is Believing" in which he indicated that Americans value the sense of sight more than the other senses.

Reviews

[Ariadne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of 11 articles about vampires, this book is great for anyone who wants to write about vampires or is interested in the origins/truth of vampires instead of the popular media idea of vampires. My favorite sections included legal descriptions of crimes that were blamed on vampires, the various legends about vampires, and Paul Barber’s article “Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire” which explains the symptoms of vampires as having scientific causes, such as a misunderstanding of decomposition.

[Blair Hodgkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing I should say is that this is emphatically NOT a book for people whose only interest in vampires is from the point of view of paranormal romances and vampire films, but rather it studies the genuine historical folklore, pathology, forensics and science surrounding the vampire mythos. If you are looking for arguments that vampires exist or that they sparkle, this is NOT a book for you.

The essays included in this collection speculate on the origins of the almost-universal vampire mythology, primarily concentrating on the figure as it is presented in Eastern Europe. Much folklore is studied and disseminated and many historical examples of vampire beliefs are presented from across the centuries up to modern times. Parallels and contradictions between Christian rituals and pre-Christian superstitions are studied at length. The relationship between vampire folklore and sexual deviance and incest are explored. The essay by Paul Barber insightfully explains how variations in corpse decomposition as affected by methods of burial, temperature, quality and moisture of soil at place of interment may all have contributed to beliefs in vampires, particularly during periods when plagues and epidemics flourished.

All in all, this is an interesting and varied collection of essays for anyone interested in vampire folklore in particular and the evolution of folklore in general.

[Matthew Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I realised fairly quickly after I started listening to this collection that it would be too dense an academic work to truly get my teeth into aurally. Thus, I listened to it fairly quickly making a few notes and got hold of the physical book to chew on more thoroughly in the future. There are certainly interesting stories and concepts here - I was especially interested in Paul Barber's chapter 'Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire', but the older papers that retold a variety of folk stories were also fascinating. I'm looking forward to diving deeper with the physical book, which includes a chapter and several short introductions by Dundes that are not included in the audiobook.

[Mikael Cerbing · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a book done by putting together a bunch of articles, you will get a quite mixed bag. To start with, this book is about vampires, not the litterary type, the once that are real. At least in what people believe. It has articles about Greek and slavic vampires, psychological cases about people who seems to think that they are vampires and articles about the origin of the word vampire. Some articles are quite old, some quite recent.
Its not a great collection, some where (for me) a lot more interesting then others, but when you are done you will know a bit more about the vampire legend then when you started. And as its quite a short book, it wont take you to long. Recomended for people with a special interest in the vampire.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not just an excellent source in itself but also a great reference work guiding the interested reader to a plethora of works about vampires and the vampire myth.

Skip the last two essays on your read. They are little more than pseudoscientific babble convinced that "modern" or "clinical" vampirism somehow relates to the person's relationship with his mother.

[Mary Havens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read vampire folklore all day. Maybe all folklore but definitely vampire folklore.
Every essay in here was interesting but a few gave some great perspectives. My favorite was the "Forensic Pathology" and the vampire.
All sources were cited extremely well and the ending bibliography is worth the price of this book alone.
I'm so glad Lyndsee let me keep this book! I've always said that if I went back to get my PhD, it would be about vampires. Well, now I've narrowed that down to vampires and folklore -- or maybe vampires in literature? Comparative lit? I don't know but my interest has been re-kindled :)

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read through this fairly quickly as research for a novel, and it's a very inexhaustive crash-course collection of essays on the subject. Only 2 of the 11 essays (parts of The Greek Vampire and the entirety of Clinical Vampirism) were very fascinating and relevant to what I was looking for. Most of the others were just okay, but immersing yourself in the subject can provide some occasional inspiration regardless.

It did at least focus on traditional vampires and not the post-Dracula kind, but there must be better books than this. The printing is pretty cheap and 4 pages in the middle of the book were completely in the wrong order.

[Ryan O'Laughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the before times, I was a student of Alan Dundes. Still fighting to get into Cal's psych department, I took a class on folklore my first semester on campus. Of the 5 or 6 books assigned, this was one of them. While this is an academic book, most of the articles being narrowly focused on one particular subject of the vampire legend, the book also details the normalized hysteria that lead to mass grave exhumation, solidifying our ideas of a non-literary vampire. For anyone in search of the, "historical" vampire, this brief collection of articles is essential.

[Nichola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was FASCINATING. I thoroughly enjoy looking into the real history behind one of my favourite monsters. I would have loved a little bit of a discussion around the uncanny valley element to vampires.

This is very academic and a little dry if you aren't used to reading academic works. This was fascinating if you are interested in the true historical folklore.

My only real protest to this is the lack of discussion of vampires in other parts of the world, though the text is aware of this and mentions it at the very beginning.

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

woot woot ya girl has finished!

all the articles/essays were interesting but I found some of them dragged, or had too many in-text references to slog through it and actually read the body. overall though, it was a really interesting collection of articles on vampirism and it definitely taught me some really interesting things from folklore!

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be an interesting collection of non-fiction accounts of vampire along with vampire like creatures throughout history. In many cultures as well. The only problem I had was some essays seemed stronger to me than others. This is a topic I will be coming back to in other novels along with other folk lore as well.

[Brenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful though uneven book

[Cora · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting, but had to read it for the worst class i’ve ever taken

[Nathan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of articles, each treating a different aspect of the origins of the Vampire Mythos. As one might expect, there's a bit of overlap, especially in the first few essays. Each writer approaches the subject from a different angle, depending on their areas of expertise. It's quite fascinating and it becomes quickly clear that vampires aren't all about Dracula, Buffy, Lestat, or Edward, but that certain things are, as one might expect, a bit muddy historically. I wished there'd been more material on vampire background in addition to the focus on the Balkans. Fortunately, the editor includes short bibliography following the final essay, listing well over a dozen other books on the history of vampires.

[Essey Of Da Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of interesting information in this book, but you sometimes have to wade through a lot to get to it. Some of the essays are rather famous, or should I say infamous? Some of the essays are quoted time and time again by other authors of historical vampire books, so it was nice to finally be able to read the essays in full. I have to say, the author's own essay at the end was horrible. I thought he went off on a rather random tangent that, at least to me, didn't make much sense. I understood what he was saying, but it was like he took the letter A and came up with fish. All in all, though, it was a fascinating read. Definitely for people who are interested in historical vampires.

[Lindsey Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another largely academic book, this is a collection of essays, with introductions, discussing various aspects of the vampire. They range in tone, but most are highly readable. They cover aspects from the origin of the word "vampire," to a recounting of collected folklore, to both physical and psychological characteristics that could explain the existence of vampire lore. Valuable for a writer or an enthusiast, though it is a bit of a thin volume - so many aspects left unexplored!

My favorite essay was the forensic one, examining what happens to the body after death and how these complex changes correlate to vampire behavior.

[Kristen Hutchings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vampires are on my brain after taking a summer class devoted to them. This was our class text, and many of these essays were very enlightening. Some were a bit repetitive and ho-hum, but after some yawns and page shuffling, I came across some gold mines. If you're interested at all about how the whole vampire craze began, this would be a fun source to be acquainted with - just be ready to step back in time a few hundred years.

[Whittney · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are some really interesting essays on vampires and their origin. This book can be coupled with Freud's essays on sexuality for some very insightful explanations on how and why we created the vampire figure.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

A range of essays (recent and some older) on vampires from a folklore perspective. Alan Dundes ends the book with his universal Freudian interpretation of the vampire. It has a great bibliography and the essays have much food for thought.

[Johnny]

interesting so far. collection of articles concerning the etymology of vampire, and the origins and folklore concerning vampires.

[Reeny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some interesting primary essays about vampire history and lore but it can get a bit dry at times.

[Ulrika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intressant antologi med vampyrtexter.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dry, but very well researched!