#vampire folklore

[sukunasbabygirl]

One thing I’ve learned from fixating a lot on vampires is that quite a few of the folklore beliefs have not been carried over at all into the vampire image as we know it.

Some of the traits we recognise today can, to some degree, be dated back to a somewhat similar trait in folklore, but then there are other folklore traits that simply aren’t seen at all now. I imagine that is due to the specifics of some of these traits, or perhaps even the absurdity of them:

One method of locating where an Upiór (Slavic Mythology) was buried involved an innocent child riding out into the cemetery, often dressed in white if I recall correctly, and said child would stop at the grave of the Upiór. They were also believed to two souls. This belief is carried on into the beliefs of Stryzga and Stryzgon, and baptising the child under two names was usually a good prevention method.

Dhampirs (Balkan Mythology) in their original folklore iterations were said to be boneless, having jelly-like bodies and lacking nails. The boneless belief may come from beliefs that other vampires lacked bones as well, so, the more you know. As well as this they lived particularly short-lives.

Strigoi (Romanian Mythology) had some interesting potential causes, ranging from a witch’s curse to my personal favourite, being born the seventh child of the same sex in a family. Although, interestingly Strigoi were not necessarily undead, that would be the Strigoi Mort specifically, who reawaken typically to torment their families and to feast upon flesh and blood. Interestingly, the vampiric myth of garlic makes an appearance here, and one of the prevention methods of a Strigoi Mort awakening is to place a clove of garlic under its tongue.

These are just some examples named from tbe top of my head featuring some brief fact checking because I do muddle up the different vampiric beliefs sometimes. Essentially my point here is it’s truly fascinating how the vampire is completely detached now from the folklore beliefs it originated from, and I don’t say that negatively, in fact I find it incredibly fascinating!

Was this mostly an excuse for me to info dump? Maybe so! I also do not claim to be an expert so if I have muddled anything up then I think I will just bury myself alive, become a vampire, and help out with household chores every evening like a Stryzgoń might, maybe a little tormenting in there too. This being joke of course! I am a dramatic theatre kid but not that dramatic!

I did also find in recent research that the mirror belief found in Dracula may have some basis in some folklore, although not in the way you may expect. It does involve mirrors however. But perhaps analysing where Bram Stoker drew inspiration for certain traits from is something to look into later.

#pip posting #info dump #vampire #vampire folklore #half of these thoughts came to me last night but I fell asleep before I could vocalise any

[a-hypnos-v]

Hey, so to all the gothic lit mf’s and all the vampiric enthusiasts of tumblr,

So: I’ve been planning out my little OC universe for a while now, one of the secondary protagonists is a vampire so I was hoping to ask for some more obscure vampire lore, also maybe some advice on what…even counts as a vampire, like what are the essential traits does a vampire have to have?

Thank you to any who responds!

#vampire oc #vampires #vampirecore #Dracula #dracula 1992 #gothic literature #gothic lit #vampire lore #gothic lore #lore #folklore #vampire folklore

[ohwhatagloomyshow]

Feeling insane cause I think I caught an anachronism in Wuthering Heights???

At the very end, Nelly Dean questions if Heathcliff could be a ghoul or a vampire, but the story takes place in 1802, before English vampires became Byronic! The question specifically comes after Heathcliff has been acting broody and strange, staring out into the moors at night, which feels closer to Dracula than it does an earlier understanding of risen bloodsucking corpses.

One of youse, somewhere has got to be a vampire/folklore scholar who can fact-check me on this.

#wuthering heights #vampire #vampires #gothic fiction #folklore #vampire folklore #vampire mythology #emily bronte

[dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night]

One of my favorite slavic folklore reasons for how someone becomes a vampire is that anyone born after Christmas and before New Years would become a vampire after their death. I seem to recall there being some work arounds, but I don't remember which they were.

#Abraham original: Hot off the press #Vampires #Slavic folklore #Folklore #Vampire folklore #*side eyes my Dec 27th born sister*

[mask131]

Fragments of fright (8)

From Edouard Brasey's "The Great Encyclopedia of the Marvelous"

Vampires

Also called: Vampyrs, oupires (upirs), opyrs, nosferats, nosferatus, drakuls, vercolacs, vourdalaks (vurdalaks), strigoï (Romania), obours, grobkiks (Bulgaria), dhampirs (children of vampires in Serbia), cadaver sanguisugus, undeads, living deads

Vampires are undeads that leave their coffins or their graves at night to feed off the blood of the living, whose jugular veins they pierce thanks to their large canines. By doing that they extend their posthumous life, while condemning their victims to become vampires in turn. By this process, centuries after centuries, a "vampire bloodline" forms itself that might never stop. Collin de Plancy evoked "dead men, buried for several years, or at least several days, and that came back in body and souls, walking and talking as if they were alive. They infested villages, abused men and animals, and sucked the blood of their next of kin, exhausting them and causing their death. One could only be free from their dangerous visits and their infestions by exhuming their bodies, impaling it, cutting off their head, ripping out their heart, or burning them. Those that died from being sucked dry became usually vampires too." Vampires were said to drink human blood so greedily that the same blood spilled out of their mouth, of their nostrils and of their ears. When in the morning their returned to their grave, they could be found laying in a pool of blood. Collin de Plancy added that "It was said that these vampires, having a great appetite, devoured the cloth that surrounded them. It was also said that, when they left their graves at night, they went to their family or their friends, violently embracng them - sucking their blood while crushing their throat so they could not scream. Those that were sucked of their blood weakened so much, they almost instantly died. These persecutions never stopped at just one victim: vampires hunted down every member of their family, and every inhabitant of their village (because vampirism rarely appears in large cities). It is thus needed to stop this plague, by cutting the head or piercing the heart of the vampire. People found the vampire's corpse soft, flexible and fresh, even if the person had died for a very long time. Some people took the enormous amount of blood that poured out of these corpses, and mixed it with flour to make a bread - they pretended that by eating such a bread, they could protect themselves from the vampire."

How to recognize a vampire? The vampire usually has a corpse-like skin tone - but they can have red lips and red cheeks when they just gorged themselvs with blood. Their eyes are also red and burning-looking. Their canines are sharp, pointy and usually outgrow their lips. They are very hairy - with their eyebros joinign each other above the nose, and hair being found on their hands, even inside their palms (which is also a trait of the werewolves). Finally, vampires do not have reflections in mirrors, and do not have shadows when under a light. If they usually appear as human beings, they can turn themselves into animals (mostly bats), as well as into fog or smoke. Vampires can fly, and prefer going inside houses by using windows rather than doors - fortunately, they cannot access a place in which they weren't invited. They need a living being to invite them at least once into a given place for them to access it - afterward they can return there as much as they want.

How to become a vampire? Some are more predisposed to become vampires. Children born from the union between a priest and a nun, babies "nés coiffés", born "with a cowl", meaning born with the placenta over their head ; children born with teeth, children born with a birth-mark, children born with a harelip... Red-haired people are also vampire "candidates" (especially in Slavic countries), and so are seventh sons. Children dead without a baptism, or adults born in "state of mortal sin" or outside the sacraments of the Church can also become vampires. It is believed that if a pregnant woman is merely gazed at by a vampire during the three first monts of her pregnancy, then she will give birth to a vampire. But the most certain way to become a vampire is to be bitten by one, and to have your blood sucked by the monster.

Vampires in history: Greco-Roman Antiquity knew of vampiric entities, such as the lamias, but the explicit mentions of dead people (usually excommunicated) leaving their graves at night to torment their kin date back from 12th century England, in Walter Map's De Nugis curialium (1193), and in Guillaume of Newburgh's 1196 Historia rerum anglicarum. The only way to prevent the malevolent actions of those "cadaver sanguisugus" is to open their coffins, find their preserved and blood-filled bodies, and to pierce them with a sword before killing them. After a vampire epidemic of the 14th century which marked all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans (they were attested in Eastern Prussia, in Silesia, in Bohemia, in Moravia, in Serbia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania and in Greece), the next notable cases occured in the 18th century. One of such cases was Peter Plogojowitz, an Hungarian vampire accused of killing eight people in the village of Kzilova in 1725.

The next year, it was Arnold Paole who was accused of killing the cattle and the inhabitants of the Serbian town of Medwegya. The lieutenant Büttner investigated this case, which led to a document called "Visum et Repeum", published on the 7th of January 1732. A document which attracted the attention of the French duke of Richelieu, and of the French king Louis XV. The lieutenant wrote that Arnold Paole, member of the local nobility, had broken is neck five years before, falling from a hay cart. But Paole had said, before his death, that he had been the victim of a vampire near Cassoa, in Turkish Persia. To free himself from this evil, he had eaten the soil of the grave of a vampire, and had rubbed the same vampir's blood over him. Despite those attempts, Paole apparently returned beyond the grave to torment the livings as a vampire. His body was taken out of the earth - it was found perfectly preserved, the flesh of a reddish color, and the eyes filled with fresh blood. Blood also poured out of his ears and nose, staining his shirt and his shroud. Believing him to be a vampire, the villagers plunged a stake into his heart and burned the corpse.

In his "Magia posthuma" published at Olmütz in 1706, Ferdinand of Schertz wrote about a case of Hungarian vampires - collected by a certain "M. Of the Island of Saint-Michael". According to this testimony, a person attacked by a vampire in Hungaria, due to having their blood stolen, become exhausted and lose appetite - they lose weight at an alarming rate, and died after eight or ten days, fifteen at best, without any fever and any other symptoms than their body becoming skinnier and drier. The person struck by this "black melancholy" are said to have the spirit so "troubled" that they see a white spectre, a white ghost following them everywhere, the same way a shadow follows the body. The author explains that when they spent winter in Valachia, two horsemen of the company he was part of died of this very sickness, and many more (who were also sufering from it) would have died if the caporal hadn't healed "their imaginations" by performing a local folk-remedy. The author notes this ritual to be extremely peculiar - a young boy is selected, and he has to mount without a saddle a black horse. The young man and the horse are taken to the cemetery and walk among the graves. If the horse refuses to walk over a given grave, it is considered to be the vampire's grave. It is opened and if the corpse looks "as beautiful and fresha as an asleep man", then it is has its neck cut with a spade - and it is believed that from the cut neck will flow in large quantities a beautifully ruddy blood. Once it is done, the beheaded vampire is placed back in its grave, which is filled again with earth. Then, the disease stops and the victims slowly regain their strength.

Vampires in literature and cinema: Numerous treaties about vampires were published throughout the centuries. In 1746, Augustin Calmet published a "Treaty about the revenants in body, the excomunicated, the oupirs or vampires, the broucolaques of Hungaria and Moravia". But the vampires entered in the world of literature in the 19th century, with nglish Romanticism. It was Lord Byron's The Vampyre ; it was Coleridge's Christabel, it was Keats' Lamia... More recently, Anne Rice offered the character of Lestat in "Interviews with a vampire". The most famous vampire is however count Dracula, from the novel of Bram Stoker of the same name, which inspired numerous movies: F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu in 1922, Tod Browning's Dracula in 1931 with Belga Lugosi, the numerous movies with Christopher Lee, and Francis F. Coppola's 1992 Dracula. In fact, "Dracula" is the diminutive form of "Dracul", which means "devil" or "dragon" in Romania. Stoker took inspiration from the historical figure of Vlad Tepes (born in 1431, dead in 1476), the fourth voivod of Valachia, considered a national hero who set free his province (located at the frontiers of Romania and Hungaria) from the Ottoman invaders. But his bloodthirsty cruelty and his brutal methods (he liked to empale his enemies by the hundreds on battlefields) gave him the double nickname of "Vlad the Impaler" and "Dracula". Made prisoner by the Ottomans during his last military campaign, Vlad was beheaded. His headless body was buried near his castle, before mysteriously disappearing - feeding a legend which was then perpetuated by bram Stoker's novel.

Vamps and vampires: There is, in vampirism, a strong erotic connotation. As such, male vampires (such as Dracula or Murnau's Nosferatu) seem to be mainly attracted to the blood of young women, while female vampires feed off young men. With the notable exception of Carmilla, the 1872 vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu, a female vampire who drinks from the blood of other women. Carmilla and his victim, Laura, feel for each other a strange and ambiguous desire - Carmilla feeds of Laura's blood and haunts her, while clearly wanting Laura to be "hers", to "belong" to her and for the two to be united in eternity, while Laura is at the same time attracted and repulsed by the vampire (though the seduction wins it over the disgust). A similar ambiguous sentiment can be found in Théophile Gautier's La Morte amoureuse (The dead lover), in 1836 - in this story, the countryside priest Romuald falls for the venonous charm of the beautful and dangerous vampire Clarimonde - there are notably mentions of the vampire's cold body creating "voluptuous shivers" on Romuald's own, and him being overtaken by the desire of having his blood drunk so that his "love might enter her body".

It is recognized that there is a form of sexual vampirism, that does not involve blood, and consists in emptying the victim of its "life-fluid". In this approach, the vampire-woman becomes the character we know today as the "vamp". The Shorter English Dictionary describes a "vamp" as a woman who tries to charm and seduce men (often for dishonest reasons) by using shamelessly her sexual charisma. The vamp is a literal "femme fatale" whose love causes a death - either physical or mental. Sexual vampirism is the embodiment of the "wedding of Eros and Thanatos" - and a French movie-maker, amed Jean Rollin, deeply explored this motif by creating over several decades numerous small fantastic-styled vampire movies, mixing eroticism and surrealism. Le viol du vampire (The vampire's rape) in 1968, La Vampire nue (The naked vampire) in 1969, Le frisson des vampires (Vampires' shivers, in 1970), Requiem pour un vampire (Requem for a vampire, 1971), Lèvres de sang (Blood lips, 1974), La Nuit des traquées (The night of the hunted women, 1980), La Morte vivante (The living she-dead, 1982), Les Deux Orphelines vampires (The two vampire orphans, 1995) and La Fiancée de Dracula (The fiancée of Dracula, 2000). There is also a type of psychic vampires who, consciously or not, "exhaust" their victim by their mere presence. These parasitic beings usually ignore their own nature, and act out of innocence. One can recognize them because of how people are exhausted, discouraged, bored or despaired in their presence - and these feelings stop as soon as they leave.

How to get rid of a vampire? To expose the body of a vampire to broad daylight can be deadly, because these beings of the shadow fear the rays of the sun. Vampires can only cross bodies of water during high tide, or when the sea is still and flat, undisturbed. Vampires fear the crucifixes, the sacred host, and holy water. The use of garlic is tied to a local Romanian superstition. People also had the habit of burying a vampire with his body laying on its belly - as such, if they woke up and tried to dig their way out of the grave, they would go deeper in the earth instead. People also filled the corpses' nostrils, ears and eeyes with incense, when they didn't place garlic in its mouth and anus. But the best way to get rid of a vampire is to plunge a sharp wooden stake in the vampire's heart while it is asleep in its coffin - then, the head must be cut and the corpse burned. The corpse can manifest signs of life during the process - it can scream horribly when the stake is plunged, and blood can flow from the cut neck. Finally, the ashes must be scattered, in a river or into the wind.

#fragments of fright #vampire #vampire lore #vampire folklore #vampires

[somestorythoughts]

So I was watching the Nightmare Before Christmas (as one does around Halloween) and there’s this scene where Santa is squashing Oogie’s bug:

Sometimes, I think in parts of Europe, the way to finish off a vampire is to burn the body, and keep watch with a whole bunch of people, because a swarm of bugs and little critters will come swarming out of the fire and if even 1 escapes alive the vampire will live on. Every single thing has to be killed.

And maybe Oogie Boogie is just made of bugs cause that’s icky, and Santa’s certainly earned the right to stomp on something, but Oogie is the local feared thing, lives underground (aka in the dark), and is made of a swarm of living bugs which all die while the one escapee is squashed, so I kinda wonder if anyone had that in mind when writing this.

#the nightmare before christmas #oogie boogie #vampire folklore

[secretturtletim]

Is there any good vampire fiction out there with a distinctly Latino (specifically Mexican) twist written by Latino authors, or do I need to write it myself?

#vampire fiction #vampire #vampire folklore #like seriously #do y’all have any recommendations?? #please?? #i’d love to see it #please please please help a lil dude out #tim posts more

[nosferatu-png]

Thinking about the whole "came back to life as a vampire" aspect of folklore. You did something wrong and died? YOU'RE COMING BACK AS A VAMPIRE BABY!!!

#maybe will use this in my own vampire lore for my characters 👀 #vampires #vampire folklore #vampyre

[mind-of-sanity]

Dracula Unveiled: Exploring the Eternal Legend of the Enigmatic Vampire

In the depths of darkness and the embrace of the night, one figure has captivated our imaginations for centuries – Dracula, the iconic Prince of Darkness. With his charm, mystery, and insatiable thirst for power, Dracula has become an immortal symbol of the vampire archetype. In our latest podcast episode, we embark on a thrilling journey into the realm of Dracula, delving into the origins of his…

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#Bram Stoker #Dark fantasy #Dark storytelling #Dracula #Enigmatic characters #Gothic literature #Horror fiction #Immortality #Literary analysis #Podcast #podcasting #Pop culture icons #Supernatural beings #Vampire #Vampire adaptations #Vampire folklore #Vampire legend #Vampire mythology

[tedwgraham]

Dracula Unveiled: Exploring the Eternal Legend of the Enigmatic Vampire

In the depths of darkness and the embrace of the night, one figure has captivated our imaginations for centuries – Dracula, the iconic Prince of Darkness. With his charm, mystery, and insatiable thirst for power, Dracula has become an immortal symbol of the vampire archetype. In our latest podcast episode, we embark on a thrilling journey into the realm of Dracula, delving into the origins of his…

View On WordPress

#Bram Stoker #Dark fantasy #Dark storytelling #Dracula #Enigmatic characters #Gothic literature #Horror fiction #Immortality #Literary analysis #Podcast #podcasting #Pop culture icons #Supernatural beings #Vampire #Vampire adaptations #Vampire folklore #Vampire legend #Vampire mythology

[ex0skeletal-undead]

The Vampire, oil painting by Zack Dunn

This artist on Instagram

#art #illustration #painting #dark art #horror #fantasy #macabre #folklore #vampire #blood #creature design #wings

[prokopetz]

See, I think modern vampire fiction that tries to go old-school by focusing on the dirt thing is missing the point.

For the folkloric beasties that literary vampires are based on, there’s nothing special about dirt. Their weakness is that they’re compelled to return to their grave each day. Basically, they’re like sneaky zombies, rising from their grave each night to prey on the living, then returning to their grave each dawn and stealthily re-burying themselves, leaving no sign they’d ever been gone. The art of old school vampire-hunting thus revolves mostly around going down to the graveyard and figuring out which grave has the vampire in it.

(This is also the origin of the stake-through-the-heart business, incidentally: once you figured out which grave had the vampire in it, you’d drive a giant wooden spike through the corpse and into the earth below, preventing it from rising by literally nailing it into its grave!)

With an understanding of the trope’s folkloric origin, it becomes clear that what literary vampires are doing with the coffin-full-of-dirt thing is rules-lawyering their curse. A vampire must return to its grave each dawn, and apparently a coffin with a bit of the vampire’s native soil in the bottom counts as its grave, at least for this particular purpose.

Thus, if our objective is to call back to or modernise that trope, the coffin is not the point. The dirt is not the point. The point is the occult rules-lawyering: what exactly can I convince whatever force or agency governs the vampiric curse counts as “my grave”?

#media #vampires #tropes #magic #folklore #rules lawyering #semantics #violence mention #death mention

[trupowieszcz-moved]

fun facts about (polish) vampire folklore because i'm too autism

(disclaimer: my source for all of this is the book "Upiór. Historia naturalna" by Łukasz Kozak i'm not pulling this out of my ass)

The word "vampire" came from a mistranscribed Serbian word, written down by Austrian officials informing about a panic among the locals, who claimed that during a plague their dead were rising and biting them and spreading the plague further

In Poland, the words used to describe what later transformed into a "vampire" in literature were: upiór (and variations thereof - the word came from Ukrainian, and the Ukrainians got it from Turkish "ubyr"), strzyga (f)/strzygoń (m) and wieszczy (m)/wieszczyca (f). "Upiór" was used in the southeast, "strzyga" around the central regions, "strzygoń" (as well as strzyga) specifically in Lesser Poland (Małopolska) and "wieszczy" in Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) and in Kashubia. "Wąpierz" was not a word until some writer in the 19th century made it up!

The upiór actually very rarely drank blood. It happened, sure, but a much more bloodthirsty creature was zmora/mara. However, upiory often drank milk, stealing it from cows and horses. Both are life-giving bodily fluids, after all.

The above might make you think about witches, who were often blamed with stealing or spoiling milk, and you wouldn't be far off. You see, you had to be born as an upiór (these ones weren't contagiously biting!), and while you were alive, it would give you various magical powers, like clairvoyance and detecting the dead upiory, and so the upiór was practically a synonym of a sorcerer or witch. Of course, the sources vary, but depending on who you asked, they could control weather bringing heavy rains or droughts, see the future, know literally everything and so on. Those so-called "living vampires" knew who they were since birth and were often helpful, until they died.

After an upiór died, that's when the bad things happened. They disappeared from their graves, destroyed churches, broke candles, brought plague upon the people, scared their neighbors, and if one puffed in your face, you would soon die. They were said to be able to walk around with their decapitated head, so anti-vampiric burials often had to be very thorough and decapitation wasn't enough.

The signs that were supposedly telling of a living vampire were, among others: being born with teeth, being born in a caul, not having armpit or pubic hair BUT having a hairy chest, not having undergone confirmation (i'll come back to that in a moment), having a very red face and easily and often blushing (not being pale!), or being born with a deformed foot.

Not having participated in the confirmation sacrament was especially damning, because it was believed that upiory had two souls (and two hearts). When they were baptized, only one soul was being saved, and the confirmation sacrament was supposed to protect the second soul. This, of course, was extremely against the catechism, so the first "official", church-related sources recording those beliefs had to invent another "backstory" for upiory, and they claim that an upiór is a dead person specifically, who was given to the devil at birth, the baptism saving their soul, but their body still belonging to the dark forces, which was why they rose from their graves - the devil basically hijacked their corpses.

I won't make this post much longer but I will GLADLY answer any questions because this is my special interest and I just came back from an exhibition where the author of the aforementioned book talked about all of that so. me right now ⬇️ (readmore so you dont get continuously blased with the gif under it)

#vampires #history #folklore #poland

[vyvilha]

fun facts about ukrainian vampires (opyr)

• opyri can be of two origins: born and made. made opyri are made by witches, who can smear a baby with blood of a man who went to sleep without praying, thus making the child an opyr.

• opyri have two souls. when opyr dies, only one soul goes to the otherworld. this is why they continue living after death. they aren't immortal though, and only live post-death for seven years. you can presume the person who died was an opyr and will return later if right after their death was a great storm.

• they are very merry fellas and are known to sing, dance and play musical instruments. you can see them partying if you go to the village border at midnight. they also can be spotted smoking a pipe while laying in their coffin.

• opyr can turn into variety of different things: a child, a white or a black dog, a cat, a wolf, a horseman.

• if someone sneezes and you don't respond with "bless you" such person can become an easy target for opyr.

• to get rid of the opyr, you must take them into your arms and carry them across the town or village three times. classical stake to the heart works too.

#ukrainian folklore #vampire #upyr #upiór #vampire lore #slavic folklore #ukraine #lore post

[cheesy-cryptid]

tw // blood, body horror

“Honora…“

“Not now, Benito! We've just uncovered—-“

“No…look!”

🥀🐦‍⬛🧛🍂

Tropical gothic my beloved i am SO back 🩸 decided to make a fake book cover about filipino monster hunters solving mysteries together

#artists on tumblr #digital art #digital illustration #digital painting #oc #original characters #vampires #vampire hunter #filipino folklore #manananggal #aswang #filipino myths #character illustration #character art #tropical gothic #philippines #filipino aesthetic #vampire aesthetic #southeast asia #SEAsian art #monster art #supernatural #fantasy #historical fantasy #dark fantasy #aesthetic #nik's art

[writingwithcolor]

[Running Commentary] Zombies are Zombies: Cultural Relativism, Folklore, and Foreign Perspectives

She obviously started getting into media in Japan, and (from my research into Japanese media and culture), Japan’s movies about zombies are mostly comedic, since due to traditional funerary practices the idea of zombies bringing down society is ridiculous to a lot of Japanese people. 

Rina: OP, this you? https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-zombies/

Marika: Counterpoint: Parasite Eve. Resident Evil. The Evil Within. 

Rina: Literally all the grody horror game franchises that people forget were developed and written by Japanese people because the characters have names like “Leon Kennedy” and “Sebastian Castellanos” 

~ ~ ~

Based on the reception we received the last time we did one of these, the Japanese moderator team returns with another running commentary. (They’re easier to answer this way) (Several of Marika’s answers may be troll answers)

Our question today pertains to foreign perspectives on folklore—that is, how people view folklore and stories that aren’t a part of their culture. CW: for anything you’d associate with zombies and a zombie apocalypse, really.

Keep reading for necromancy, horror games, debunking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Hong Kong jiangshi films, Japanese disaster prep videos, and Vietnamese idol pop...

Essentially, in my story there’s an organization who wants to end the world. They think this one woman in particular, a woman of mixed Vietnamese (irreligious, Kinh) and Japanese descent who spent her formative years in Japan, is the person to do it because she’s (for lack of a better term) a necromancer; powers are semi-normal in this world. She prefers not to use her powers overall, but when she does she mostly talks to ghosts and spirits that are giving people issues. She could technically reanimate a corpse but she wouldn’t because she feels that would be morally wrong, not to mention she couldn’t start a zombie apocalypse in the traditional sense (plague, virus, etc.) in the first place. 

(Marika (M): Your local public health officials would like to assure necromancers that reviving the dead will not provoke a zombie apocalypse. This is because necromancy is a reanimation technique, and not a pathogenic vector. Assuming that the technique does not release spores, airborne viruses, gasses, or other related physical matter that can affect neighboring corpses in a similar way, there should be no issue. However, necromancers should comply with local regulations w/r to permitting and only raise the dead with the approval of the local municipality and surviving family.)

M: I think it makes sense for most people of E. Asian descent, including Japanese and Vietnamese people, to find it culturally reprehensible to reanimate the dead. I imagine the religious background of your character matters as well. What religion(s) are her family members from? How do they each regard death and the treatment of human remains? Depending on where she grew up, I’m curious on how she got opportunities to practice outside specialized settings like morgues.

M: It’s true, space in Japan is at a premium, even for the dead. You note that most of Japan cremates, but, surely, it must have occurred to you that if there aren’t that many bodies in Japan to raise…she doesn’t exactly have much opportunity to practice with her powers, does she? I yield to our Vietnamese followers on funerary customs in Vietnam, but you may want to better flesh out your world-building logic on how necromancy operates in your story (And maybe distinguish between necromancy v. channeling v. summoning v. exorcisms). 

She obviously started getting into media in Japan, and (from my research into Japanese media and culture), Japan’s movies about zombies are mostly comedic, since due to traditional funerary practices the idea of zombies bringing down society is ridiculous to a lot of Japanese people. 

Rina (R): OP, this you? https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-zombies/

M: Counterpoint: Parasite Eve. Resident Evil. The Evil Within. 

R: Literally all the grody horror game franchises that people forget were developed and written by Japanese people because the characters have names like “Leon Kennedy” and “Sebastian Castellanos” 

R: And yes, the Tofugu article uses Resident Evil and those games to support its theory, with the reason that they are set in the West. But that only suggests that Japanese people consider zombies a Western thing, not that Japanese people consider zombies nonthreatening if they were to exist. 

M: Same with vampires - series like Castlevania also use Western/ European settings and not “Vampires in Japan '' because vampires just aren't part of our folklore.

(M: Also, realistically, these series deal with individuals who quickly perish after their bodies are used as hosts for the pathogen in question, rather than the pathogen reanimating a corpse. Although the victims are initially alive, they soon succumb to the pathogen/ parasite and their organic matter then becomes an infectious vector for the disease. It should be noted, infecting ordinary, living humans with viruses to grant them elevated powers, is not only a major violation of consent and defies all recommendations made by the Belmont Report (in addition to a number of articles in the Hague Convention w/r to the use of WMDs) and is unlikely to be approved by any reputable university’s IRB committee. This is why the Umbrella Corporation are naughty, naughty little children, and honestly, someone should have assassinated Wesker for the grant money.)

R: wwww

From what I know Vietnam didn’t have a zombie movie until 2022. 

R: Do you mean a domestically produced zombie movie? Because Vietnamese people have most certainly had access to zombie movies for a long time. The Hong Kong film Mr. Vampire (1985) was a gigantic hit in Southeast Asia; you can find a gazillion copies of this movie online with Viet subs, with people commenting on how nostalgic this movie is or how they loved it as a kid. 

M: “Didn’t have a [domestic] zombie movie” is not necessarily the same thing as “Would not have made one if the opportunity had arisen.” None of us here are personifications of the Vietnamese film industry, I think it’s safe to say we couldn’t know. Correlation is not causation. It’s important to do your research thoroughly, and not use minor facts to craft a narrative based on your own assumptions.

(R: …Also, I did find a 2017 music video for “Game Over” by the Vietnamese idol Thanh Duy which features… a zombie apocalypse.)

(R: The MV has a very campy horror aesthetic and zombie backup dancers (which I love, everyone please watch this lol). But the scenes at the beginning and end where people are biting their fingers watching a threatening news report clearly establish that the zombies are considered a threat.)

So at one point, she laughs about the idea and remarks how ridiculous it is to think zombies could end the world. What I’m struggling with are other ways to show her attitude on the issue because I’d assume most non-Japanese readers wouldn’t get why she thinks like that. Are there any other ways to show why she thinks this way, especially ones that might resonate more with a Japanese reader?

R: The problem is this does not resonate in the first place. Your line of thinking is too Sapir-Whorf-adjacent. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, otherwise known as linguistic relativity theory, claims that language shapes cognition—that you can’t conceive of something if you can’t express it in your language. This is a very weak theory that you can easily bring evidence against: think of the last time you felt an emotion you had a hard time putting into words; just because you didn’t have the language for it doesn’t mean that you didn’t feel it, nor does it mean that you won’t be able to understand or recognize it if you feel it again. Similarly, it’s not a sound assumption to say that if some kind of subject matter does not exist in a culture, then people of that culture couldn't possibly conceive of it. This excerpt from linguist Laura Bailey sums it up quite well. 

M: Just because ghosts may be more culturally relevant doesn’t mean that zombies (or vampires, or whatever) are nonexistent in a Japanese or Vietnamese person’s imagination when it comes to horror and disaster.

R: Really,  if anything, Japanese people are much more attuned to how easily a society’s infrastructure can be destroyed by a disruptive force without adequate preparation. Japan is natural disaster central. A Japanese person would know better than anyone that if you aren’t prepared for a zombie epidemic—yeah it’s gonna be bad. 

M: Earthquakes, tsunami, typhoon, floods: Japan has robust disaster infrastructure out of necessity. 防災 or bousai, meaning disaster preparedness is a common part of daily life, including drills at workplaces, schools, and community organizations. Local government and community agencies are always looking for ways to make disaster and pandemic preparedness relevant to the public.

M: Might “zombie apocalypse prep as a proxy for disaster prep” be humorous in an ironic, self-deprecating way? Sure, but it’s not like Japanese people are innately different from non-Japanese people. Rather, by being a relatively well-off country practiced at disaster preparation with more experience than most parts of the world with many different types of disasters (and the accompanying infrastructure), it likely would seem more odd to most Japanese people within Japan to not handle a zombie apocalypse rather like might one handle a combination of a WMD/ chemical disaster+pandemic+civil unrest (all of which at least some part of Japan has experienced). Enjoy this very long, slightly dry video on COVID-19 safety procedures and preparedness using the framing device of surviving a zombie apocalypse.

M: Living in Los Angeles, I’ve often experienced similar tactics. We do a fair amount of advance and rehearsed disaster prep here as well. In elementary school, the first and last days of class were always for packing and unpacking home-made disaster packs, and “zombie apocalypse” simulations have been around since I was in middle school for all kinds of drills, including active shooter drills, like the one shown in this LAT article. The line between “prepper” and “well prepared” really comes down to degree of anxiety and zeal. So, it wouldn’t be just Japanese people who might not be able to resonate with your scene. The same could be said for anyone who lives somewhere with a robust disaster prevention culture.

M: A zombie apocalypse is not “real” in the sense of being a tangible threat that the majority of the world lives in fear of waking up to (At least, for the mental health of most people, I hope so). Rather, zombie apocalypse narratives are compelling to people because of the feelings of vague, existential dread they provoke: of isolation, paranoia, dwindling resources, and a definite end to everything familiar. I encourage you to stop thinking of the way Japanese people and non-Japanese people think about vague, existential dread as incomprehensible to each other. What would you think about zombies if they actually had a chance of existing in your world? That’s probably how most Japanese people would feel about them, too.

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