by Laura Holt
One night, in a certain small Georgia town, the local grave digger heard a bell ringing. Back in those days, folks were damn near feared of being buried alive, so coffins were built with holes in ‘em and a bell attached to a string that a poor soul could ring should they wake underground to find the worst had occurred. Hurrying over, the young man heard a faint but distinctly feminine voice pleading to be released. “Are you Sarah Bannon?” he asked, reading the headstone. “Yes!” “Were you born on September 17, 1907?” “Yes!” “The headstone says you died February 20, 1958.” “No, I didn’t die! I’m still alive. They made a mistake! Dig me up. I beg you!” “Sorry, Lady. This is 1959. Whatever you are, you sure as hell ain’t alive no more, and you sure as hell ain’t comin’ back up!” – The Grave Digger, a southern folktale
The human mind is both terrified of and fascinated with the vampire. Its immortal nature. Its ability to steal life from the living. Its perpetual villain-morally gray character-hero-villain cycle. There are more Dracula movies than any other monster movie in the world. (317 not counting cartoons, to be specific.) A strong belief in the undead, or strigoi, still exists in many rural Romanian villages today. In 2004, the same year I graduated from high school, six men in Craiova were so convinced that their recently deceased neighbor was a vampire that they dug up his body, cut out his heart, and burned it.
Most modern historians agree that the vampire mythos stems from an early misdiagnosis of a very real disease. Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that effects the lungs and causes chronic coughing, often including blood-containing mucus, fever, night sweats, and weight loss, was a disease that claimed the lives of eighty percent of Americans who contracted it in the early to mid-19th century. Originally called consumption because of how it appeared to consume the body of an infected person, the true cause of the illness was not discovered until advances in scientific study were made in the 1900s. Prior to that, it was widely believed to be the result of vampiric activity.
When a person became ill of consumption, the common practice was to quarantine them inside their home, make them as comfortable as possible, and wait for the inevitable. However, this actually placed the rest of the family at risk of catching it as well. Not knowing the specific workings of the disease at the time, when the family members of a person who had recently died of consumption began to show signs of the illness, people began to draw another conclusion: that the deceased was an undead monster draining the life from their still-living descendants. In retaliation, the bodies of consumption victims were often exhumed to be examined for signs of vampirism. If they did, violent, often extreme, steps were taken to prevent the undead from rising again.
This so-called vampire hysteria swept through much of colonial America, giving birth to many of the stories and characters we are familiar with today. Yet while science can explain some things—the so-called appearance of fangs and fingernail growth after death is actually the result of receding gum and skin lines—can it explain everything? And why are female vampires portrayed as monstrous, soul-sucking demons, while male vampires tend to be romanticized as brooding, lonely counts?
The only way to answer these questions is to return to my roots, and the stories from southern folklore that my granddaddy told me when I was younger. It’s no wonder that tales of these immortal beings have fascinated me from an early age, long before I picked up my first Anne Rice novel or watched episode one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a child, I used to love watching the bats swoop down at dusk to catch the mosquitoes hovering above my grandparents’ pool. It was here, in plastic patio chairs while eating fresh grown tomatoes, that my grandaddy told me my first vampire story, about a gravedigger friend of a friend who stumbled upon the grave of a bloodsucking enchantress and managed to outwit her. By unraveling this and other tales, I seek to unearth the origins of female-vampiric lore. What lessons, if any, these midnight myths have to teach us as women today about ourselves, our power, and our sexuality. And, if these buxom beauties of the night are nothing more than a case of medical misunderstanding, why they’re still around today.
Granted, the land of Dixie isn’t exactly the first place that comes to mind when you hear the word vampire. This fanged, coffin-sleeping succubus is normally more at home roaming the halls of dark, gothic castles of Transylvania in a long white nightgown or lurking in back alleys of New Orleans searching for hapless speakeasy victims. Yet Georgia has a surprising number of vampiric claims to fame, including perhaps the most notable: Covington, the location of many of my grandaddy’s nightwalker tales and where the hit series The Vampire Diaries was filmed.
Coincidence?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I certainly felt the tug of something otherworldly pulling me toward the cemetery after I checked in at the Mystical Falls Visitor’s Center. More like a museum than a simple place for tourists to stop and use the bathroom, the small but well-used building contained no shortage of Hollywood vampires, including a spanking new coffin that I endeavored to open—sadly it was locked—a monster hunter’s diary, and life-like portraits. Needless to say, I left feeling more than a little bit starstruck. Yet as I wandered down the sidewalk past sprawling southern plantation homes, lace curtains ominously drawn over the windows, and through the wrought iron gate, a hush seemed to fall over the summer day.
Thankful that I’d worn comfortable shoes, I meandered down paths lined with magnolias and flowering peach trees. The morning was sunny, with the perfect hint of a warm breeze. The rustling of the leaves shading the many gravestones sounded like whispers from the beyond. And I couldn’t help but wonder how different their stories might be from the ones we think we know. After all, history is written by the victors, the survivors. Never the monsters, because they die in the end.
Why was that? I asked myself, stopping to take some pictures in front of an impressive mausoleum. Was it simply because they were the only ones left to tell the tales? Or was there something darker at work, a rewriting of the past in order to shape the future to one of the authors’ liking?
Leaving the cemetery with only a slight sunburn on my shoulders, I made the short walk to the city square. The day was starting to heat up quickly as afternoon approached, so I took a few minutes to step into the blissfully airconditioned interior of On Location Gifts to shop for kitschy paraphernalia. After practicing my best slayer pose with a white oak stake, I left with a silver locket—complete with dried vervain inside—and, feeling parched, picked up an iced vampire latte from The Bread and Butter Bakery. Field journal in hand, I sipped my sweet-n-spicy concoction atop a picnic blanket on the courthouse lawn, where the infamous Gone with the Wind movie night scene happened.
Thinking about Southern Belle heroines got me thinking about the women in the different vampire folktales I’d grown up hearing. How they only ever played two roles: either the damsel in distress, or the bloodsucking beauty. The one who needed to be saved, or the one who needed to be destroyed.
But why?
What makes a vampire a monster? Is it their inhuman appearance? That they feed off the living to survive? How things like sunlight, crosses, and silver can harm them, or the way they can’t cross running water? Male vampires exhibit these traits, yet we hero-worship them, to the point of teaching young, impressionable teen girls to desire unhealthy, obsessive, controlling Twilight-Esque relationships. (And yes, I am #teamjacob all the way. Sorry, not sorry.) So why then are female vampires who exhibit the same habits and appearances treated differently?
I pondered this question at length as I tossed my empty cup into a nearby trash can and hurried back to the Visitor’s Center to the tolling of the courthouse bell, where I joined my tour group with the rest of the vampire hunters. Together, we jostled along on the trolley, listening as our guide pointed out all of the famous Hollywood and historical sites, snapping photos of the bridge and the witch’s house, where coffins were found in the basement by the current owners. Yet it wasn’t until I stood on the steps of the Lockwood Mansion, imagining myself in a long ballgown, that I understood.
The fear of female vampires does not stem from their monstrous abilities, but from their unnatural otherness. From their eternal beauty, their superhuman strength, and the power those things give them over men.
It is a patriarchal ideal that a woman by nature is weaker, meeker, and milder than a man. Yet it is a belief none the less that is embedded in our society’s culture, one that has been around so long that is part of the very bedrock of our nation, our world, and our religions. But why? Why are powerful women seen as such a threat? When male vampires feed upon women, they are simply acting upon their true nature. They cannot help themselves the stories tell us. They are to feared, yes, but also pitied, and killing them is an act of kindness that puts them out of their misery. It is female vampires who are more often than not painted as abominations, and the main reason seems to be because their bodies are no longer able to do the things that a woman’s body should: be a wife to a husband, bear children, and, above all, be pious and saintly.
“I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of the family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all—I need not say it—she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty—her blushes, her great grace. In those days—the last of Queen Victoria—every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: ’My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of your sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.’ And she made as if to guide my pen”(59).
The above paragraph, written by Virginia Woolf in her 1931 Killing the Angel in the House, puts it in plain terms: women are meant to be soft, subservient, sacrificial creatures who give of themselves for the better good (read here, for the better good of men). By becoming a vampire, a woman essentially kills that part of herself, as Woolf says it is so important to do when she states “I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me”(59). And by doing so, she steps into her own power, thus finding the ability to embrace her sexuality and shape her own future, one where she can have a man, if she desires, but does not need one in order to be happy.
This, then, seems to be where the fear of a female vampire differs from that of a male vampire. True, a male vampire can stalk us, invade our homes, overpower us and murder us. Yet how many human men have been guilty of the same thing? Jack the Ripper. Charles Manson. H. H. Holmes. The list of male serial killers is a long and prolific one, with most its members being nearly as well-known as our 45 former presidents. It is the female monsters, from the real-life blood-bathing Countess Elizabeth Bathory to fictional ones like Medusa, who are hunted down and snuffed out by heroic men. These “nasty women” are only spoken of in scandalous, hushed tones, at best turned into party games by giggling tweens—if you’ve ever played Bloody Mary, you know what I mean—and overall viewed are as “other” and “beastly.” All because they do not conform to what we have been taught a proper lady should be.
Not exactly a surprising revelation to have over a chopped salad at The Mystic Grill, since painting female sexuality as something dirty in order to undermine feminine power has long been a tool of the patriarchy. Mary Magdalen went from being a disciple of Christ to a whore thanks to the Catholic church. Numerous women were put to death during the European witch trials for allegedly stealing men’s penises, aka the phallic symbol of masculinity. Even today, where women enjoy many of the same freedoms and opportunities as men, girls coming into womanhood or working in a predominantly male business are still warned to dress modestly lest they give off the wrong vibe or attract the wrong kind of attention. And Hillary Clinton was all but run out of town during her 2016 presidential campaign. The only things missing were the torches and pitchforks.
Yet that does not make it any less important, because it begs the question “why?” Why is any woman who is different—either because she lives alone, chooses not to marry or have kids, goes to work a full-time job rather than staying at home, takes multiple lovers or, heaven forbid, demands equality—treated as a pariah of Lilith proportions? We should admire them for having the guts to forge their own paths, but instead we ostracize them for breaking the mold.
“When a woman is passive, it is acceptable. However, when a woman speaks her mind and voices her opinion, that is a serious problem.” – Charlena E. Jackson, A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough
Maybe vampire was never a term meant to describe an otherworldly monster at all, but instead was simply another way to demoralize a woman who stepped out of bounds, much like the terms witch, succubus, demoness, or, my personal favorite, scarlet woman. A vampire is a woman who lives on her own terms, who makes her own rules, and does what it takes to survive. Sure, sometimes she’s bad. But others, she’s good. And aren’t we all a little bit of both at the end of the day?
So, if you ask me do I believe in vampires—or at least the nocturnal, averse-to-sunlight-silver-garlic-and-crosses, coffin-sleeping, cape-wearing, blood-draining, immortal vampires of folklore—my answer is probably not. These tales seem to stem, at least in part, as another way to stifle feminine power by preventing women from embracing all aspects of their nature. The dark and the light, the soft and the hard. Still, if you’re looking to experience some Georgia nightlife, you might want to wear a silver cross on the off chance you do run into a member of the undead who’s out looking for a bite.