The interesting thing about these American vampires is the fact that members of their community, and in some cases even their own family members, were concerned enough about the possibility of vampires that they were willing to open a person's grave and desecrate their body in order to set their minds at ease. If you ask yourself what it would take for you to do that to one of your own family members, it gives you some small idea of how truly freaked out these people must have been by the events happening around them. Faced with the possibility that death (in the form of consumption) might come for them next, they sought to take control of the situation in the only way that they knew how, even though it was gruesome and ultimately futile.
Category: folklore
With Their Heads in Their Hands, Literally: Cephalophoric Saints and Biblical Violence
I feel like I've written a lot so far about bodies in a way that's very explicit and concrete -- skeletons, decomp, mummies -- and so, in an effort to not write about dead bodies all the time, I spent a good few days thinking of something I could write about that's more cultural/historical as… Continue reading With Their Heads in Their Hands, Literally: Cephalophoric Saints and Biblical Violence