Evil Entities

When did the name 'vampire' come about? It's hard to estimate exactly when from the research I've found, but most point to the early-18th-century southeastern Europe. However I have found examples of ancient creatures that sought the blood and flesh of human victims to obtain their life essence. These entities were referred to as demon's or even thought to be devilish spirits inhabiting human bodies. There were many names associated with vampires, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. Stories of vampires or vampire like creatures spread all over Europe, Asia, India, and Russia. If this was just a myth as we know today, then what was a whole continent of people scared of?

During the late 18th-century, an influx of vampire stories and accounts aroused a mass hysteria, people became so scared that it led to corpses being staked in their coffins and people being accused of vampirism. So I've always wondered why the wood stakes? My educated guess would be that it comes to what is most available and the cost. Wood was everywhere and steel blades were expensive. They believed that to turn into a vampire you had to die first and then be possessed by the evil spirit, and by staking a corpse through the heart it would stop the dead from rising again. Wood stakes were easy and cheap to make, and would need to be left in the body in order for it to be effective.

So we all know the tradition methods on how to kill vampires in today's movies and T.V. shows. A wood stake through the heart, wooden bullets, garlic and even sunlight. But how did they deal with vampires in the 18th-century? Well every country had their own methods or rituals to destroy these evil beings. Methods varied, but the most common method was the staking of suspected vampires, each culture believing that certain woods must be used or they would not be effective. However the way the stakes were administered varied to being staked in the heart, the most common method. To being staked in the mouth and even the stomach (it was believed that staking in the stomach would deflate the body, not allowing it to be taken over by the evil spirit). I also wondered if there were an other methods that seems disturbing or odd, as people often result to extremes when dealing with extremes? I found examples like dismembering the body, then boiling it and serving the liquid to families of the accused vampire as a remedy to cure them from becoming vampires as well. Other examples of staking the body through the limbs and torso several times, removing the lower jaw, decapitation, bullets through the coffin, and pouring boiling water over the body to help incinerate the accused vampire.