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Originally Posted by VydorScope
Not quiet true. Varney the Vampire, for example, which was released in 1845 was had the puncture wounds from the fangs,has hypnotic powers, and has superhuman strength. He appears to have been the source for Bram Stoker's inspiration.
Vampire legends go way way back though, and vary greatly across cultures. The modern concept appears to have grown out of the Victorian era... but to your point authors do shift monsters... but my point is that it is not usually all at once.
No law says he cant try, and its been done before... its his world.  |
Good point I'd forgotten about ole Varney. There was also John Polidori's short story, The Vampyre which pre-dates even Varney by several decades(1819). The notion of Vampires goes all the way back to ancient Egypt from what I understand and probably to a time even before that. Grave markers in ancient times served two purposes, 1. they kept wild animals from disturbing the remains and 2. it was believed that the weight of the stones on the grave kept the dead from rising and causing harm to the living. So in a way Vampires and flesh eating Zombies could be said to have a common origin. It's just their means of causing trouble that differed. Of course the idea of Zombies also comes from the days of slavery. It probably at least in part came from Africa. What could be worse than having been enslaved in life and then being compelled to continue that enslavement even after death? Back then they were just a reanimated corpse made to work. It was believed that if they were fed something with salt in it they would become aware of their plight and return back to their graves (often after having killed whomever had restored them to the world of the living). No doubt there are a number of twists possible with any fictional monster though. I can imagine a storyline based on zombies right now. In the end (IMO) as long as things are consistent within the story world it's what the writer makes of it that matters, not what came before.