(no subject)

The Good
Sunday I went over to nimstar and mikey_altered's house for West Memphis Three day. Lovely snacks were provided and there was far too much wine but still I managed to watch one and a half of the documentaries and there were very rousing discussions about the miscarriage of justice that seemed to have occured. For me one of the most interesting things was the confession of the "tard" upon which both cases seemed to have been based. Having worked in that field for ten years I really felt for him, and was horrified, yet again, by the US legal system's treatment of the disabled. Though CJ (whose LJ name I've forgotten) did say that in the past couple years the supreme court has FINALLY ruled that it is ilegal to execute a tard! Still the poor guy in the WM3 still faces life in jail as a result of his blatently false and incoherant testimony. Quite tragic really. Though as much faith as I have in the US court system I'm sure there are hundreds of similar cases. But if you've not heard of the West Memphis Three go and check out the website if you have time. It's quite interesting, though also quite frustrating as there seems to be so little that can actually be done about it.
http://www.wm3.org/

The Bad
Work underpaid me £200 pounds this month. I am currently trying to make sure this does not happen again next month, apparently they are having "budget issues".

Vampires, Burial and Death By Paul Barber

Vampires, Burial and Death By Paul Barber is not your average book about Vampires. He makes it very clear from the outset that he in not dealing with the Vampires of fiction, or literary Vampires. He focuses entirely on the Vampires of folklore, mainly from Eastern Europe. At times he can be quite derivative about the difference between fictional Vampires and folkloric Vampires. It’s probably because of this that most people who are interested in Vampires are find his book less interesting. When you want an elegant count sucking blood out of beautiful women’s necks and are faced with a ruddy bloated peasant the romanticism of the Vampire is totally lost. However, despite this I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Vampires, or the undead, or folklore as it’s a thoroughly fascinating book.

Barber fills the book with accounts taken from a variety of early sources on the subject, including many counts of actual Vampire attacks and killings in Eastern Europe within recent centuries. He has a totally scientific approach to what is happening. He analyses the information presented in the stories and draws out the common threads between them. He is also quick to point out that the mythology surrounding the Vampire in these settings is not set in stone, but rather, like most folk beliefs, is a constantly changing and growing mythology.

He is able to spell out several specific things about the folkloric Vampire, they are usually peasants, they have met their death in a sudden or unexpected way, they are usually then responsible for the death of others often people they knew in life, they visit their victim usually while the victim is asleep, they don’t tend to go for the jugular but if they do drink the victims blood then they are more likely to bite over the heart. The victim will die very quickly after the attack and become a Vampire themselves. It is interesting to note that one of the protections against Vampires was to drink a vampire’s blood. Barber points out that in folklore there were many more instances recorded of people drinking a vampire’s blood than vice-versa. To discover if someone is a vampire their corpse is exhumed. The signs of a corpse being a vampire are that they “have not decomposed”, that they have fresh blood around their mouth, that their blood still runs, there are large quantities of blood in their coffins, they are ruddy in colour, their bodies have become bloated, they show signs of growing new skin and nails. Vampires can be staked, though the head or the heart and also burned. Barber goes into great detail about the problems with burning a corpse. Like in literature, it is important to kill the first Vampire in order to make the attacks stop. Though it is interesting to note that not all Vampires do attack those around them. Some people are simply suspected of being Vampires due to the circumstances surrounding their life or death, alcoholics, vagrants, suicides etc. where suspected of being Vampires and often dug up even when no other deaths had occurred.

After establishing the beliefs about the Vampires Barber then goes on to look at the reasons behind this. There are several chapters in the book that give a detailed account of the decomposition process of human bodies after death. These accounts are very graphic in nature, but I have to say I did find them fascinating. For me, learning the processes that were going on that produced the affects, and the ways that people came up with explaining these occurrences, was highly interesting. Barber also dealt with the different burial practices that were brought about as a result of these beliefs and how they were dealt with on both the natural and the supernatural level.

The book was a fantastic look at folklore and how such beliefs make sense. I enjoyed the scientific approach Barber used, and the great variety of primary sources he included in his work. It was nice to see several books that I have read previously been included in his list of quotes. (Such as the Phantom World). Despite the lack of romanticism I’d definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in Vampires, myths, burial customs, or forensics.