Historical Evidence

Since this section is all addressing the same thing I've decided to make one post to address them all. There is much historical evidence of vampires shown in this book, however I must say it is still unlikely there are vampires. The main, almost only, point for the existence of vampires is that almost every culture has come up with some for of vampirism. This, however, can easily be explained away. Humans are scared of the unknown, it's a natural instinct because the unknown can be dangerous and our goal is to preserve our life. Death is unknown and therefore we fear it. We are the only animal that activly thinks of our own demise and worries about it before it happens or is happening. Since we fear death we imagine that those who have died to not continue into nonexsitence, the next world, whatever you happen to believe in. As mentioned in the book blood is a symbol of death when we see it, but is also thought to preserve life because we die when we loose it. So we believe that the dead must want to return to the world of the living by consuming out blood. And sicne this beleif is based upon natural human instincts it isn't hard matter to dissmiss the accounts of vampirism to this. And once the idea of a vampire is created it is used to explain things like strange deaths or people found in their grave seeming to be alive. The way I see it there are many possible explanations for this. Internal bleeding or people being burried while still alive but in comas seem plausible. And more than likely tales of vampires where exagerated and made to seem more real by the pree concived notion of them. Therefore when a grave was dug up looking for a vampire and they believed the signs of a vampire would be there the signs would be found whether they were actually there or not. So self fulfilling prophecy is what 'm getting at I guess. And of course there are the mentions of Vampires screaming when stabbed. Well if they were in a coma it is possible that they screamed. Or since everyone was expecting it they believed it happened whether or not it did. Then the matter of people seeing relatives and friends passed? Well we've all heard the expresion "the rumours of my death have been greatly exagerated" so there's that to consider. As for dropping dead after seeing this apparation, well this reminds me of a quote from Harry Potter. After Harry tells Hermione and Ron that he's seen the Grim, a sign of death for you non Harry Potter people, Ron says that Harry Shouldbe worried because his uncle died just 24, or maybe it was 48, hours after seeing it Hermine says "Well he probably saw it and thought 'oh well I better drop dead' but Harry's not that stupid, are you Harry?" I'm sure I didn't get the exact wording right, but that quote explains that aspect of vampirism.

And this is rather random but the book made mention of vampire bats consuming entire herds of cattle in South America and I had the most random thought "that's what happened to Roanoke" Obviously not, and I have no idea what made me think of Roanoke since the two are hardly related, but it was funny. ^^