These enduring characters have a fascinating basis in real life
Think of Halloween and your mind conjures images of ghosts, vampires, witches and monsters. Our modern versions of them have largely been crafted by popular literature and, more influentially, the movies. But like many fantastic characters of myth and lore, they have a basis in reality.
Sometimes the true stories of these creatures that haunt our imaginations are just as weird and amazing as their fictional incarnations:
DRACULA / VAMPIRES
Today's vampire persona -- the aristocratic, blood-sucking creature of the night -- comes primarily from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, published in 1897, and the subsequent play and movies based on it. Researcher Raymond McNally, in his book In Search of Dracula, suggests that Stoker's title character was based on the real-life Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia (1431-1476), a prince who actually did live in Transylvania in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.
Known as "Vlad the Impaler," who reputed killed as many as 100,000 of his enemies, chiefly by impaling.
The name Dracula is derived from a Romanian word that means "devil" or dragon." Obviously, Vlad Dracula was not a vampire, but McNally suggests that Stoker used the historical figure as the basis of his vampire story because of Vlad's bloodthirsty style of dealing with those who opposed him.
The legend of the vampire, however, predates Bram Stoker and even Vlad the Impaler. Vampires Thru the Ages traces them back to 1047 and a document referring to a Russian Prince as "Upir Lichy" or Wicked Vampire. A century later, Walter Map's De Nagis Curialium includes accounts of vampire-like beings in England.
Waves of vampire hysteria swept through Prussia and Hungary in the 1700s, fueled perhaps by disease, ignorance, and maybe a psychotic serial killer or two.
"Every culture has its own name for the night stalker," writes Brad Steiger in Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. "The word with which most of us are familiar rises from the slavonic Magyar -- vam, meaning blood; Tpir, meaning monster."
The tradition of the vampire has been firmly established into our modern culture by Hollywood, television, and the highly popular novels of Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire, Price Lestat), Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight series), and others.
Are there real vampires? No. There are small cults of people who call themselves "vampires," like to dress in "goth" fashion, avoid the daylight, and might even drink small qualities of blood, including human blood. But there's nothing supernatural about these people -- maybe just something a bit... unusual.
THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
Most people are aware that the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created come from the novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, wife of the acclaimed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. What many people do not know is that Victor Frankenstein might have been based on the real-life Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734), a kind of 18th century mad scientist who was born in 1673 in Germany at -- believe it or not -- Castle Frankenstein.
Educated as a physician, Dippel set up a laboratory at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, Germany where he would be free to conduct his bizarre experiments. There's no record of whether or not he had a hunchbacked assistant named Igor, but Dippel (who often went by the name Konrad Frankensteina) spent a lot of his time with his hobby of alchemy -- a popular pursuit of the day.
Alchemy is a kind pseudoscientific experimentation with the elements -- crazy chemistry -- the ultimate challenge of which was to be able to turn lead into gold. Like Victor Frankenstein, Dippel was also fascinated by the possibility of immortality through scientific means. He really did use the parts of butchered animals and exhumed human corpses in his vain attempt to "engender life in the dead," in his own words.
Unlike his literary and cinematic "decedents," Dippel did not rig up the body parts to elaborate lightning-powered gizmos and spark generators. Rather he boiled everything -- skin, muscle, bone, blood, hair and organs -- in large vats. When the surrounding community got wind of what Dippel was up to, maybe they didn't storm his castle with torches, shovels and rakes, but they did kick him out of town.
Shelly undoubtedly based her novel on Dippel's antics, since it is documented that she visited Castle Frankenstein in 1814 when she eloped with Percy. The ruins of Castle Frankenstein can still be seen today.
In the article The Original Frankenstein, Thomas Brisson says there might be an earlier inspiration for the mad scientist: Henrik Krahlen, who died in 1673, the very year Dippel was born!
Brisson discovered this passage in Denmark's first newspaper, Extraordinaires Maanedlige, dated Febraury, 1673:
In Frankenstein (Silesia), an ungodly body by the name Henrik Krahlen, along with his wife Eva and daughter Anna, has done a hideous and shameful thing. For 8 years they have unearthed dead people and removed their hearts and lungs in order to make a powder. This powder was mixed with poison and cumin and sold to unknowing victims, of which 5 are now known to have died.... Krahlen also went into a church where he held a secret feast of boiled and (prepared?) human hearts, together with his followers, who also drank from human skulls.
The Frankenstein monster is one of the most enduring images of Halloween, our most popular images of which come from James Whale's 1931 film and Boris Karloff's unforgettable portrayal. The story has been sequelled and retold in numerous movies, including some memorable Hammer films starring Peter Cushing and, of course, Mel Brooks' hilarious spoof, Young Frankenstein.
Are there any real-life man-made monsters? Not yet. But with our growing knowledge of the human genome, the means to manipulate DNA and our newly acquired ability to clone living creatures... who knows? Not too long ago, company in Melbourne, Australia announced it succeeded in creating an embryo that was half human, half pig. Why they wanted to do such a thing was not revealed in the news story, but if such creations are now possible, who knows what real-life horrors await us in the near future.
THE MUMMY
The prevalent image of The Mummy as a monster also comes from the movies, most significantly the 1932 film, The Mummy, again starring Boris Karloff. From the Internet Movie Database is this synopsis of the film by Jeremy Lunt: "In 1921 a field expedition in Egypt discovers the mummy of ancient Egyptian prince Im-Ho-Tep, who was condemned and buried alive for sacrilege. Also found in the tomb is the Scroll of Thoth, which can bring the dead back to life." The mummy then limps around terrorizing and strangling people.
The film was most probably inspired by the sensational Egyptian finds made in the early 1920s. Since the 1800s, European archaeologists had been fascinated by ancient Egypt. They were aware that the Pharaohs had been mummified and buried with incredible treasures and artifacts to provide them with a comfortable way of life in the land of the dead.
Many old tombs had been discovered, but in each case they had been long-ago plundered by grave robbers.
One young upstart English archaeologist named Howard Carter believed that at least one tomb of an Egyptian king lay untouched somewhere beneath the blistering sands of Egypt -- the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Carter searched for years without success. But then on November 4, 1922, Tutankhamen's tomb was found, and it contained all of the gold and alabaster treasures they had long sought. But along with the discovery, some believe, came a curse.
On the door to Tutankhamen's tomb, so goes the legend, was inscribed a curse: "Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king..." And in the years hence, it seemed like Tut's mummy was making good on his curse:
- On the day the tomb was discovered, Carter's canary, which he had brought with him to Egypt for luck, was devoured by a snake.
- A few months later, Carter's financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, died suddenly, perhaps from an infected insect bite.
- When Carnarvon died, all the lights in Cairo went out from a power failure.
- Although Carnarvon died in Cairo, back at his estate in England, his favorite dog howled and dropped dead.
- When Tut's mummy was unwrapped in 1925, his body bore a wound on his face in the exact same spot as Carnarvon's insect bite.
- "By 1929," says Howard Carter and the Curse of the Mummy, "eleven people connected with the discovery of the Tomb had died early and of unnatural causes. This included two of Carnarvon's relatives, Carter's personal secretary, Richard Bethell, and Bethell's father, Lord Westbury. Westbury killed himself by jumping from a building. He left a note that read, 'I really cannot stand any more horrors and hardly see what good I am going to do here, so I am making my exit.' "
Can a mummy come to life and seek revenge on those who violate his tomb? Of course not. Can a mummy kill? Maybe. In 1999, a German microbiologist examined 40 mummies and found that they contained deadly mold spores -- lethal enough to kill a person. Upon opening the tomb or sarcophagus, an archaeologist could breath in the ancient, toxic spores... and die.
THE WEREWOLF
The lore and tradition of the werewolf are ancient and complex. A werewolf is a human shapeshifter who, traditionally under a full moon, turns into a wolf. From the popular Wolfman movies of the '50s to the more special-effects laden films like The Wolfman, Underworld, and, of course, the Twilight films, the werewolf has been a standard character in horror culture and Halloween costumes.
But the werewolf legend goes back thousands of years.
"In European folklore," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people or corpses, but returns to human form by day. Some werewolves change shape at will; others, in whom the condition is hereditary or acquired by having been bitten by a werewolf, change shape involuntarily, under the influence of a full moon.
If he is wounded in wolf form, the wounds will show in his human form and may lead to his detection. Belief in werewolves is found throughout the world. The psychiatric condition in which a person believes he is a wolf is called lycanthropy."
How does one become a werewolf? According to "Werewolf Facts," you can become infected if you:
- Eat the brain of a werewolf.
- Drink from a place where werewolves have drank from.
- Wear or smell the plant wolfbane.
- Are bitten by a Werewolf.
- Were born on Christmas Eve.
- Hairy or rough palms.
- Tattoos of the crescent moon.
- Slanted eye brows which meet in the middle.
- A much longer third finger on each hand.
But the reality inspiring the myth, as the encyclopedia states, is most likely the medical condition of lycanthropy, a delusion that "has been most likely to occur among people who believe in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls."
Another rare medical condition that has undoubtedly contributed to the belief in werewolves is hypertrichosis in which a person has excessive hair covering his or her entire body.
Very often, people afflicted with hypertrichosis joined circuses and carnival sideshows, with such names as wolfboy, apewoman or missing link. They are otherwise normal people, and certainly don't compulsively howl at the moon.
Yet reports periodically surface of sightings of creatures the witnesses proclaim might be real-life werewolves. In The Beast of Bray Road, author Linda Godfrey documents sightings and encounters with the monster that began in 1936 near Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Godfrey describes it as "big, hairy and wolfish [that] roamed the country roads and woods of Walworth, Jefferson and Racine Counties."
What does she think the creature is? "I don’t know," she writes in her blog. "We simply don’t have enough evidence to say yet. And there is a high probability that everyone is not always seeing the same thing. There could be a biological, physical animal seen by some while others see phantoms or supernatural entities from a variety of sources. A few may be misidentifications or hoaxes."
WITCHES
What would Halloween be without witches? Witches and witchcraft date back to at least ancient Greek and Roman times. Even then there was a distinction made between "white" witchcraft (benevolent) and "black" witchcraft (evil), the former of which was tolerated by the government of ancient Rome.
With the spread of Christianity in the 4th century, witchcraft was more and more associated with devil worship, an association it never truly had.
But because witchcraft -- or Wicca -- was practiced by pagans who worshiped pagan deities, the Church demonized the religion and those who followed it. The association stuck and resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women being tortured and killed as witches over hundreds of years, including during the well-known witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts.
The association with evil created the Halloween caricature of the witch as an ugly, wart-studded hag with an evil, toothless grin.
There really are witches, of course, but they have no supernatural powers in the conventional sense and are no more homely than the general population. And over the last dozen years or so there has been a revival of Wicca and Paganism, making it one of the fastest-growing religions in the US.
"Wicca is a tradition of Witchcraft that was brought to the public by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s," explains Patti Wigington, About.com Expert on Paganism and Wicca. "There is a great deal of debate among the Pagan community about whether or not Wicca is truly the same form of Witchcraft that the ancients practiced.
Regardless, many people use the terms Wicca and Witchcraft interchangeably. Paganism is an umbrella term used to apply to a number of different earth-based faiths. Wicca falls under that heading, although not all Pagans are Wiccan."
The reality is that witches do not worship Satan and have no particular inclination toward evil.
On the contrary, the Wiccan Rede -- their code of ethics -- forbids them to do or wish harm to anyone. Patti Wigington provides a lot of expert information about modern Wicca, dispels the myths and explains the rituals and practices.
Happy Halloween! And don't let the monsters get you!
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