Vampires have a contested history. Some claim that the creatures are “as old as the world”. But more recent arguments suggest that our belief in vampires and the undead was born in the 18th century, when the first European accounts appear.

We do know that 1732 was the vampire’s annus mirabilis. There were 12 books and four dissertations on the subject published over that year, as well as the term’s first appearance in the English language, according to gothic expert Roger Luckhurst. But archaeological discoveries of deviant burials in Europe in the last few years have unearthed a belief in vampirism and revenants before 1500, much earlier than was previously understood by literary scholars.

The body of a 500-year-old “vampire”, for example, is currently on display in an ancient cemetery in the town of Kamien Pomorski, Poland. The vampire corpse, discovered two years ago, has been reported on widely in the world’s press. Archaeologists have confirmed that it has a stake through its leg (presumably to prevent it from leaving its coffin) and a rock in its mouth (to stop any unfinished blood sucking). Even older deviant burials have been discovered in villages in Bulgaria.

Meanwhile, the medieval remains of the first English vampires in Yorkshire’s village of Wharram Percy have reputedly been found. The inhabitants who fled the village in 1500 showed widespread belief in the undead returning as revenants or reanimated corpses. They fought back against the risk of vampire attacks and showed a medieval belief in an English zombie apocalypse, an episode that would not be out of place in a scene from The Walking Dead.

So some form of vampire was evidently believed in throughout much of Europe from the medieval period. But the seductive Romantic vampire does not leave his calling card in polite society in London until 1819, when the first fictional vampire, the satanic Lord Ruthven is born in a story by John Polidori. So how did our understanding of vampires transition from dishevelled peasants into alluring Byronic aristocrats? We must return the creature to its beginnings in early folk belief to fully understand its history.

Vampire, Vrykolakoi, Velku

In the first written accounts of European vampires, the creatures are understood as revenants or returners, often taking the form of a diseased family member who reappears in the unfortunate guise of a vampire. In such tales, “unfinished business”, even something as trivial as the want of clothing or shoes, is enough to make the dead return to the world of the living.

The number of words for “vampire” can frustrate scholars: Krvoijac, vukodlak, wilkolak, varcolac, vurvolak, liderc nadaly, liougat, kullkutha, moroii, strigoi, murony, streghoi, vrykolakoi, upir, dschuma, velku, dlaka, nachzehrer, zaloznye, nosferatu … the list goes on.

The Oxford English Dictionary takes seven pages to define a vampire, but the earliest entry, of 1734, is of most interest here:

These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living and thereby destroy them.

There is evidently little appeal or attraction felt for these early revenant figures. Unlike the English aristocratic vampire, modelled on Lord Byron, these early folkloric vampires are peasants and tend to appear en mass like modern-day zombies.

Agnes Murgoci explored this folk belief further. She argued in 1926 that the journey from death to the afterlife is perilous – in Romanian belief it took 40 days for the soul of the deceased to enter paradise. In some cases, it was thought that it lingered for years, and during this time there are a myriad of ways that deceased family members can succumb to vampirism.

It was thought that dying unmarried, unforgiven by one’s parents, through suicide or being murdered could all lead to a person returning as a vampire. Events after death could also have the same effect – beware breezes blowing across corpses before burial, dogs or cats walking over coffins, or leaving a mirror (a soul trap) not turned to the wall at this precarious time.

Entering Literary Spheres

It was a treatise written in 1746 by the French monk Antoine Augustin Calmet that famously gave British writers access to a number of encounters with vampires. Calmet took inspiration from Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a botanising man of science, who had earlier claimed to have come face to face with a plague of bloodsucking vampires in Mykonos in 1702. His account was still being read in 1741.

Three decades after Tournefort’s encounter, the London Journal of 1732 reported some enquiries into “vampyres” at Madreyga in Hungary (a story later referred to by John Polidori). Greece and Hungary feature prominently in these early accounts – and this is mirrored in Romantic literature: Lord Byron for example makes Greece the setting of his unfinished vampire story A Fragment (1819).

But it was Polidori who was responsible for the vampire’s English pedigree and its elevation of social rank. There seems never to have been an urban, nor an educated bourgeois bloodsucker prior to The Vampyre (1819). A predatory sexuality is also introduced. We see for the first time the vampire as rake or libertine, a real “lady killer” – a trend that metamorphosed into Bram Stoker’s Dracula and anticipated the arrival of vampire romance in the beautiful undead form of Twilight’s Edward Cullen.

As this all reveals, the history of vampires is a disputed and uncertain one whatever your perspective, scientific or literary. But the “vampire” burials discovered by archaeologists of late do cohere with practices that are known to suggest a belief in vampirism (such as piercing the corpse, nailing down the tongue, putting a needle in the heart and placing small stones and incense in the mouth and under the finger nails to stop blood sucking and clawing). These “vampire” corpses do therefore go some way towards finding out how old our belief in vampires actually is.

But the history of vampires is still impossible to chart with any certainty, and we should probably take heed from British vampirologist Montague Summers (1880-1948) in our search for the lair of the original fiend. He referred to vampires as “citizens of the world”: to him, they existed beyond temporal or geographical boundaries.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Could the Jinmenken from Japanese folklore be real? Could these mythical creatures have really existed and, more importantly, are they still around today?

The Jinmenken, or “The Human-Faced Dog”, was first reported back in the “Edo Era” from the early 1600s to the mid 1800s. They were often seen by locals and were so common that they were featured in some newspapers of that era. Many of the creepy critters that weave their way through Japanese mythology are purely imagined fantasies. They border between fact and fiction, thus blurring one’s perspective of what is reality and what is just pure fantasy.

But what if this bizarre creature is still among us today? Sighting locations of this strange animal can vary, from dark rural roads to bustling city streets, where they have reportedly been seen to rummage through rubbish bins for scraps of food.

Unlike most of the mythical creatures in Japanese folklore, it is said that the Jinmenken means you no harm. They are known to plead with those who have come in contact with them to leave them alone. Or in some rare cases, have held simple conversations with those who would choose to stay and listen.

These sad-eyed beasts are said to look like ordinary dogs from a distance, but have dirty, matted coats with their tails between their legs as if to cower or be submissive. To the observer, these pathetic creatures seem to be sad and scared.

It has been reported that Jinmenken were once used in “misemono” – the Japanese equivalent to a travelling sideshow. These exhibits would typically feature an assortment of exotic creatures, mummified monsters and mysterious artefacts of the strange and macabre.

After visiting a misemono, one noted zoologist of the time described his reaction to seeing a purported Jinmenken on display:

“There, cowering and whimpering in the corner of the display booth I saw the hunched over form of what I first took to be a typical Shiba Inu, although of a somewhat more pungent odour. Then the thing looked up with sad eyes and I could see clearly that it was the face of a human being, albeit with the empty, soulless gaze of an animal. I was eager to be on my way from such a ghastly abomination and the thing’s gaze left me with a deep unease long after I had left.”

The zoologist was not the only one to feel such unease. Foreboding feelings of dread and despair are common among those who claim to have encountered Jinmenken. There are even reports of observers being hypnotised by these peculiar creatures, which some say are omens of tragedy and misfortune.

But can there be a logical explanation for the bizarre beasts?

One theory is that these creatures are nothing more than Japanese macaques, or “snow monkeys”. These primates, the most northern inhabitants of the monkey world, can be found all over Japan and resemble a small dog from a distance. They also have human-like faces and have a varied range of vocal abilities that could easily be mistaken as speech buy the anxious observer.

That leaves us the question, is the mystery of the Jinmenken just a myth? Or is there some truth to the stories that are still being told today? Could they just be the imaginations of a people steadfastly engrossed in the fables of their culture? Or are they just a misunderstood little monkey?

Look deep into your soul, could you have seen one of these creatures in your dreams? Did you recognise your own face on the body of a desperate animal? Could these mythical beasts be real?

We’ll leave that up to you to decide.

What do you think? Could the Jinmenken really exist? Let us know what you think in the comments and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to avoid missing out on new articles!

On 26 December 1980 at around 3:00 am, two US Air Force pilots were patrolling the grounds of RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk when something strange caught their attention.

The airmen had noticed “unusual lights” descending into the nearby Rendlesham Forest. Being so close to the air base, the pair initially presumed that the lights belonged to a downed aircraft and naturally went off to investigate.

Upon entering the forest, it quickly became clear that their presumption had been wrong. Expecting to see an aircraft in need of assistance, the servicemen instead saw an object unlike any they had ever seen before:

“The object was described as being metalic [sic] in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) [sic] of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs.”

As the men approached, the object moved through the forest and sent the animals on a nearby farm “into a frenzy”. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone.

Later that morning, servicemen from the base were sent to investigate the scene of the extraordinary encounter. There was no denying that something had been there. Whatever it was, it had created three indentations in the soil and left the surrounding vegetation scorched and broken.

Shortly after midnight on 28 December, the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Halt, visited the site to see for himself what all the fuss had been about. He was underwhelmed.

Radiation readings were taken at the site, with raised levels being detected at the centre of the three indentations. As this investigation was taking place, strange lights similar to the ones seen two nights prior began appearing in the sky. This time, Halt got to see them for himself:

“Later in the night a red sun-like light was seen through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared. Immediately thereafter, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky, two objects to the north and one to the south. The objects moved rapidly in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights. The objects in the north remained in the sky for an hour or more. The object in the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time.”

Halt was assured. He had witnessed something from another world. However, Halt’s conviction was not enough to deter the sceptics. The indentations in the ground were dismissed as rabbit holes and the lights were explained away as being from a nearby lighthouse. The entire story was even accused of being a hoax.

The former Deputy Base Commander has stood firm, however. In a 2010 affidavit, Halt accused the UK and US governments of conspiring to hide the truth about what he and his men had really witnessed in Rendlesham Forest. It was, he insists, a genuine and bona fide extraterrestrial encounter.

What do you think? Did Lieutenant Colonel Halt and his fellow USAF servicemen really encounter a visitor from another world? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to avoid missing out on new articles!