The recently published collection, The Vampire of Vourla and Other Greek Vampire Tales, 1819-1846 fills a void in vampire fiction history. Published in 2024 by Valancourt Books and edited by Álvaro García Marín, the book contains six works plus an introduction by Marín that explains the role of Greece in vampire fiction.
The first two works are the well-known fragment by Lord Byron (1816) and John Polidori’s novella The Vampyre (1819), which began the craze for vampire fiction in Europe. I won’t discuss these works since they are well known, but it is worth noting that “The Vampyre” is partly set in Greece and Byron’s characters travel to Turkey, visiting ruins of Greek civilization. Prior to these works, Goethe’s The Bride of Corinth (1797), Byron’s The Giaour (1813), which has a note discussing vampire beliefs in the Levant, and Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) reference Greek vampires.
As Marín points out in his introduction, these works all signify that Greece was a country often associated with vampires in the early nineteenth century until Transylvania became the definitive home of vampires in literature. The interest in Greece arose at the time from the Greek War for Independence against the Ottoman Empire. Westerners were divided in wanting to Orientalize the Greek as “the Other” along with the Muslims, and wanting to see Greeks as the heirs of classical Greece. Consequently, treatment of Greek vampires and vampire beliefs often differed. In some of the stories, the Greek vampires are not bloodsuckers but just mischievous. Some are just superstitions and do not really exist. Others are classical in ancestry yet full-out bloodsuckers.
Notably, these stories have not been reprinted until now because Greece fell out of favor as a setting for vampire tales. In this blog post, I will briefly discuss each of the four rediscovered stories. I will be giving away the full plots, so if you are concerned about spoilers, I encourage you to read the entire collection instead. Even if you read on, the stories themselves are well worth reading.
The Story of Demetrio Grikas, The Vampire of Santorini (1829) by James Emerson Tennent
This story is not really fiction but a tale taken from Tennent’s travel book Letters from the Aegean. Tennent claims he heard this story from a ship captain. However, Marín points out it contains all the conventions of Western fiction and reflects that Tennent had knowledge of that tradition. It also treats the vampire sympathetically, seeking to evoke pity over horror, thus de-Orientalizing the Greek vampire as opposed to the Slavic vampire.
The story begins with Demetrio, the son of a wine merchant, who is betrothed to his cousin Stefania. Demetrio is on a ship when it is attacked by the Turks. They take him prisoner and make him into a slave. Demetrio ends up being forced to serve the Turks in their fight against the Greeks in the Greek War for Independence. He must even renounce Christianity to save his life. Demetrio’s father dies of despair when he hears his son has converted. Others deride Demetrio as having gone over to the enemy. While Stefania remains true to Demetrio, her father ends their engagement.
After a while, the Greeks attack the Turkish ship that Demetrio is forced to work on. The Greeks kill the Turks and leave the Greek slaves, whom they wish to punish for siding with the enemy, on an island to perish. Soon all the Greek slaves starve to death, except Demetrio. He swims to the mainland, but not before Stefania has died of grief.
Once back in Greece, Demetrio renounces Islam, but he is still shunned by the Greeks. Demetrio then disappears. When he is seen during a storm, people believe he’s a vroukalakos (Greek for vampire). When a peasant sees Demetrio enter a cave, the Greeks visit the cave and find his body there, undecayed, meaning he is a vampire. However, they take this as a positive sign that the Virgin accepted his return to Christianity because members of the Latin Church and Islam have never been reanimated as vampires. The people exorcise Demetrio and bury him beside Stefania. His spirit is then seen no longer.
The story is sympathetic to Demetrio as a vampire. How he becomes one is not explained—it seems he died of grief, but then the Virgin turned him into a vampire. He is not a being of terror and does not attack anyone. Instead, he becomes a wanderer and someone isolated from the rest of humanity until his death. There will not be a such a sympathetic vampire again until Varney the Vampire (1845-7).
The Vampire Knight and His Cloud Steed (1837) by Anonymous
This story was published in The Keepsake, which published many well-known authors of the day, including Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. In this specific issue, all the writers were anonymous, so the story may have been written by a well-established author.
The story begins with Mustafa Pasha, the governor of Crete, marrying a Greek wife. The couple agree their sons will be raised as Muslims and their daughters as Christians. However, Mustafa’s wife is childless. Finally, his prayers to Allah are heard; his daughter Emina is born, but his wife dies in childbirth. Since his wife is dead, Mustafa raises Emina as a Muslim. However, her maternal cousin Irene interests her in Christianity enough that she sneaks out to go to chapel with her cousin. There Emina first sees Irene’s brother, Theodoros, and falls in love with him.
Meanwhile, Irene’s paternal cousin Youseff wants to marry her. When Mustafa says Emina can see both of her male cousins and decide for herself whom she will marry, his brother Hassan, Youssef’s father, is unhappy and gets the Sultan to appoint him as governor in his brother’s place. Youseff then plans to marry his cousin, but Emina feigns madness, claiming a vampire is under her bed, to get out of marrying him. Theodoros and his “spiritual brother” (read best friend) then rescue her. The spiritual brother disguises himself as a dervish and helps her change clothes to disguise herself so she can escape. Meanwhile, Theodoros dresses as a vampire knight and makes Youseff’s men too frightened to follow in pursuit when Theodoros rides off with Emina. In the end, Theodoros and Emina marry and Mustafa is restored to power while Hassan and Youseff fade into obscurity.
This story contains no vampire, just someone pretending to be one. It treats the Greeks as wiser than the superstitious Muslims who believe in vampires, thus allowing themselves to be tricked.
The Vampire of Vourla (1845) by Anonymous
This story has been chosen as the title for the collection because Marín believes it is the true gem. Content-wise, I agree it is the most significant story in the collection. Not only does it provide the last instance of a full-fledged Greek vampire in fiction, but it is the first fictional tale in English to have a female vampire—the next would not appear until Carmilla (1872), though there would be several female vampires in French Gothic literature. Finally, it is the first story in which a vampire turns into a bat. Previously, that tradition was not believed to have begun before the 1880s. All that said, as far as storytelling goes, the narrative style makes it difficult to read and follow, so it is not my favorite. I prefer Tennent’s story and its sympathetic vampire.
The tale is told by Private Tom Gahan, who was a servant to Lieutenant Somers. He is garrulous and continually interrupted by his listeners, which makes the story somewhat tedious.
Tom recalls how Lieutenant Somers often left the barracks at night and took a boat, not returning until morning. When he returned, he would look weak and pale. Eventually, Somers shared the secret of his nocturnal visits. He was once caught in a storm and sought shelter in a house where he met a beautiful Greek woman who spoke in pure Ionic dialect—a sign she is a cultured Greek of classical descent. Although the woman warned him he was in danger by being there, he proclaimed his love for her. To prove his fidelity, she asked him to mingle his blood with hers. After that, she sent a boat for him every night so they could be together. Every morning as dawn approached, Somers had to leave. He always returned with a wound in his arm that wouldn’t heal. Obviously, she was a vampire draining him nightly of his blood. She was also clearly a nocturnal vampire (prior to this, vampires were not usually restricted by daylight).
Eventually, Somers grew ill from being drained. A doctor tried to bleed him, but discovered he had little blood left to bleed. Tom watched over his master at night, but he ended up falling asleep. Tom was woken by the sound of flapping, and he saw a large bat with an almost human head pressed to Somers’ neck and sucking its blood.
Tom attacked the bat with a liquor bottle, but when others heard him, they thought he was drunk and put him in irons. Somers died and was buried before Tom was freed so Tom could not learn anything more. He decided not to speak of the bat from fear others would think he was crazy, but he pondered whether the bat and the mysterious woman were connected.
Interestingly, in this story, the vampire is not hunted down. Only Tom makes the connection that a vampire might be involved, and he is too frightened to say anything.
The Vroucolacas: A Tale (1846) by James K. Paulding
This is the collection’s only story by an American author—the others are all British. It was published in Graham’s Magazine. Paulding was a friend of Washington Irving and a humorist who was also US Secretary of the Navy at the time he wrote it. The work is a parody that mocks the East from a position of Western superiority.
The story is set in Crete when it is ruled by the Turks. The Greek Crispo Sanudo is proudly descended from Byzantine emperors, including Michael the Stammerer (included as a dose of humor to mock his ancestral pretensions). He is Catholic, and wants to marry his daughter Florentia, to a Venetian. However, a young man named Michael meets and falls in love with Florentia. He’s a member of the Orthodox church and of common birth. When Crispo learns of their secret meetings, he locks up Florentia and goes to the Bashaw for justice.
The Bashaw mocks Crispo’s ancestors since he has no grand ancestry of his own, yet he is in power. Plus, Michael’s father is his physician and he fears that if he angers his physician, he could be poisoned. Consequently, while Crispo will not agree to the marriage, Michael is not punished for pursuing Florentia.
Meanwhile, Policarpo, a thief and robber, has died and is believed to have become a vampire. He causes all kinds of mischief. The people dig him up and burn him, but it only causes him to torment people more. Only Florentia, Michael, and Michael’s family are not harassed by the vampire. Finally, the vampire warns he won’t cease his pranks until Florentia marries Michael. Crispo continues to hold out, but when the rest of the people learn of the vampire’s conditions, they go to the Bashaw to complain.
The Bashaw has Florentia summoned to him, but when he sees how beautiful she is, he decides first she will be his tenth wife, and then that he’ll give her as a gift to the Commander of the Faithful. The people are not happy with this decision since the vampire will continue his pranks, so finally, under duress, Crispo agrees to the marriage between Michael and Florentia. As soon as the marriage takes place, the vampire is not heard from again. Florentia asks Michael if he had anything to do with the vampire’s actions, but he is too discreet to trust his wife with his secrets.
Again, we have trickery and no real vampire in the story. This time the Greeks and Muslims both come off looking superstitious. As a comedy, the story is more aligned with “The Vampire Knight and His Cloud Steed” than any true vampire literature designed to be Gothic and create terror.
Overall, none of the stories in this volume create true fear or are of the same quality as Dracula, Carmilla, or Varney the Vampire. They even fail to evoke the terror felt in Polidori’s story. However, they are a great addition to our understanding of the evolution of early vampire literature, and they do entertain. I am grateful that they have been reprinted, and I am left wondering how many more nineteenth-century vampire stories have yet to be rediscovered.
The Vampire of Vourla is available from the publisher at https://www.valancourtbooks.com/the-vampire-of-vourla.html plus at online bookstores.
____________________________________
Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and the upcoming The Mysteries of Marquette: A Novel, plus many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.
The Gothic Wanderer