#folklore

#folklore

Facts About the Historical Vampires of EuropeThe modern concept we have of vampires came from the movies, which mostly came from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The legends of vampires that go back hundreds of years in Europe were more like pop culture zombies. They were dead people who rose from their graves to kill the living. (As an aside, the term zombie came from Haitian tales of people who were resurrected and kept as slaves even after death. Our modern idea of zombies was cemented by the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.)Hundreds of years ago in Eastern Europe, death by mysterious means was rampant, due to wild animals, disease, and murderous bandits. Vampires were an explanation for many deaths, assisted by the strange way some human bodies decompose. The natural response to vampire fears was to bury the dead with insurance against their return, such as driving a stake through the body. When that didn't work, bodies were exhumed to further curb their powers. Besides the legends, we have archaeological evidence of defensive tactics against vampires. Read about those practices and the legends that spawned them at Mental Floss.(Image credit: Edvard Munch) #vampire #legend #folklore

The Cultural Significance of the Headless Horseman MythWhen Washington Irving wrote the classic horror short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820, he drew upon a lot of things he knew. Sleepy Hollow is real town, although it was called North Tarrytown at the time. The Van Tassel family lived there. Ichabod Crane was based on two real people; Irving took his appearance from one guy he knew and his name from another. There was a headless Hessian soldier found nearby during the Revolutionary War, which Elizabeth Van Tassel arranged a burial for. Irving maintained that the legend of the Hessian having his head blown off by a cannonball was known when he was a child. But what brought all these elements together to establish an American horror story is the myth of the dullahan. The dullahan is a very old Irish mythological character. While the dullahan has several forms, he is most often portrayed as one who lost his head, but still roams the earth, bringing either a portent of death or a warning of it. Read how the dullahan went from Irish folklore to Sleepy Hollow and established itself as a horror trope in our pop culture at Tedium.-via Digg #folklore #dullahan #HeadlessHorseman #SleepyHollow #TheLegendofSleepyHollow