Vampires, Before Dracula - Mythillogical Podcast

Sharpen your stakes and grab your crucifixes, as Charles and Crofty rise from their crypts and delve into the folklore of Vampires, to discover the origins of one of the most popular creatures of modern horror.

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#vampires #folklore

Suonatore di Liuto by Kevin MacLeod

[TheHistocrat]

You can also find this episode on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Stitcher! You can find it at the links below:

[biscuit]

Can't stress enough how much I appreciate sources being included. History youtube needs more of it

[alasdairmackintosh]

Ancient Scottish Highlanders believed in a vampire like fairy called the Baobhan Sith (sith pronounced as she, it means fairy). They shared similarities with the Succubus, and appeared as young beautiful women with Dark hair and wearing a robes which revealed hooved feet at the bottom. One story, there were four men who went hunting and took shelter for the night in a hut. One of the men sang while the others began dancing. The men expressed a desire for partners to dance with, and soon after that four women entered the hut. Three of them danced while the fourth sat beside the vocalist. He then noticed drops of blood falling from his companions and fled from the hut, taking refuge among the horses. His partner chased him but was unable to catch him, and when daylight came she disappeared. The man went back inside and found all three of his friends dead and drained of blood. Its suggested by folklorists that the baobhan sith was unable to catch the fourth man among the horses because of the iron with which the horses were shod, iron being a fairy weakness. The trend in these stories is that the baobhan sith appears when lone men express desires for a romantic partner and drains them of their blood or prys their chests open. This connects with the traditional Scottish belief that if someone makes a wish at night without invoking God's protection, then the wish would be granted in a terrible manner

[DingbatToast]

Imagine walking past a graveyard at night and hearing;
"I am the Count and I love to count! One grain of sand! Ah, ah aaah!"

[melody]

i expect your next video to be a 2-hour "vampires /after/ dracula" that is a deep dive into the history of twilight fanfics.

[alek]

I rarely comment on videos. But guys please don't stop this series, I think that a lot of us love it

[TheMylittletony]

The vampires sitting on the chest of the victim and constricting their breath is still a thing in Thai folklore. They believe that ghosts sit on people's chest when they are asleep. The situations in which people think this happened generally sound very similar to sleep paralysis.

[Terminal-Man]

I remember that episode of The X-Files when Mulder intentionally threw his sunflower seeds on the floor to force the vampire to pick them all up because of an obsessive compulsion.

[yensid]

In America, historically vampire folklore is closely associated with TB outbreaks in small rural towns. They've found the evidence when accidently stumbling on unmarked graveyards during new construction & found unusual burials. There is still a belief in energy vampires talked about by those in the New Age/Occult/Esoteric crowd currently.

[Purpleturtlehurtler]

So Sesame Street has one of the most accurate portrayals of a vampire. Sweet.

[taylorslade]

The counting aspect of vampires is interesting. The overwhelming need to count spilled sugar or seeds or something similar is a part of faerie folklore as well.
Also, Crofty should get a raise for all his terrible jokes. They're brilliant and I love them.

[joji]

The term "hajduk" (the J is pronounced as the Y in "young") doesn't refer to a soldier exactly, I'd translate it as "bandit" in most cases. They were anti-ottoman insurectionists, living in the forests and robbing the turks whenever possible. Many became soldiers during the serbian revolution, but at that point they are no longer refered to by that name. The serbian word for soldier is "vojnik", and army is "vojska".

Source: being a serb

[cjeromet]

1:49:48 For anyone interested in learning the Vampire on the Thumbnail, its south east asian specifically Filipino , the Manananggal, which is a tagalog word that means "One who seperates", root word is "Tangal" becuz the Manananggal detaches its upper body from its lower body, though i never knew that our Vampire was similar to our neighbors and comes from the Malay Word, since "MANANANGGAL" is a Philippine Word.

[quixoticpuma]

I found myself wishing The Histocrat would randomly update the channel and bless us with a video… and it happened. Oh yes.

[stevenmccart]

A "what we do in the shadows" reference. Werewolves not swear wolves.

[hoibsh]

They say if you laugh at a Jang Chi (hopping vampire) --- which you would naturally do coz it's such a funny sight -- the Jang Chi will be embarrassed and hop away.

[LyndsianaJones]

Crofty's voice puts me asleep in the best way. I fall asleep and then have to rewatch the video the next morning (although at this point I've listened to the podcast 20 times. )

[jayplay]

May this find you in bloody good health.

[rkoll]

Well done, so good job guys. Slavic tradition was very precise.

Here are few other things that my Granny told me (she was from eastern past of Bosnia, born 1935): Vampir was there sometimes also named "Utvara". In one story she told me about some guy who died and got to vampire "povampirio se". He then comes after midnight out of his grave back to his house, uses the smallest hole to get inside and after getting in, he first opens everything that can be opened (doors, boxes, etc.). After that he lays down to his wife and stays until the first rooster crows. This ritual continues every night until exhumation and "glogov koljac" hawthorn stick in his hearth.

In general the border between Vampir, Nachmar (in Serbian "Mora") and Ghost (in Serb. "Utvara, Prividjenje, Privida") was not that precise.

[linkow]

I'm Brazilian and the Yara/Iara myth is pretty popular. There are many regional variations but it is the first time I hear that a Yara drinks blood. However, I'll say that Monteiro Lobato's top-rated children's book series, where characters interact with many folklore creatures, helped homogenize them and sanitize them from the more gruesome details.

Modern folklore has Yara either as a single entity or as a species equivalent to the greek siren or generic European mermaid. They are half woman, half aquatic beast. They attract people by their singing and will drown them in the river. "Yara" is from the indigenous people and their language it literally means "water maiden". Yara can be used as a given name for a woman. Most Brazilians would not hold any vampiric associations with the myth of the Yara.

Given the definition at the beginning, I can think of a few creatures from Brazilian folklore that would fit the bill a lot better than the Yara.