Vampires

Sucking blood, black outfits, straight teeth, and bats. I first believed that vampires are only popular on television sets or on theatre big screens, but vampires have been known throughout much of Russian, Hungarian, and Romanian history. On the other hand, for those of us who do not live in that part of the world, media fuels such unrealistic and ravenous creatures within our minds. Ever since we were children, Scooby-Doo has made its mark on our minds. We know what vampires look like and what they do. Even for teenagers and some adult audiences, the movie Van Helsing reignited our knowledge concerning vampires and how scary and brutal they are.

In the book Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber, he is able to uproot priceless history regarding vampires that most of the world has probably not read. Actual accounts of possible vampire activity and possibilities for vampire existence are mentioned in the early portions of the book. A man by the name Peter Plogojowitz from the village of Kisilova is a written account of a man that was diagnosed to be a vampire; therefore, the people of Kisilova sharpened stakes and stabbed his death body with them. The villagers believed that Peter Plogojowitz was a real vampire because after his death, 9 people had died within a span of only 24 hours. Later in the book, they mention that a person that dies first as a result of an epidemic may be considered a vampire because many others die after that person. Therefore, everyone believes that the first person to die was one at fault. I believe that the case with Mr. Plogojowitz correlates entirely with this way of diagnosing a vampire. I believe Peter Plogojowitz definitely died as a result of an epidemic, which 9 other people also died with.

The section of the introduction under the heading "How Revenants Come into Existence" gives readers the chance to understand the many ways that vampires can come into existence. People are able to prove or disprove vampire diagnosis just by only knowing the four ideas: predisposition, predestination, events: things that are done to people, things that they do, things that happen to them, nonevents: things that are left undone. Despite the unrealistic ideas surroundings vampires and their true existence, I believe that knowing how revenants come into existence allows believers and even nonbelievers to reevaluate their reasoning or completely change their reasoning into believing that vampires really do exist.