Why We Read Stories About Vampires
April 19, 2023 • Written by Heline Gokcen
Bela Lugosi, an actor famous for portraying one of pop culture's most iconic vampires, Count Dracula, died in 1956 at the age of 73 of a heart attack in his sleep after having been sick for some time. His wife told the press: “He was terrified of death. Towards the end he was very weary, but he was still afraid of death. Three nights before he died he was sitting on the edge of the bed. I asked him if he were still afraid to die. He told me that he was. I did my best to comfort him, but you might as well save your breath with people like that. They’re still going to be afraid of death.” It strikes me as being tragically ironic that a man so famous for portraying an immortal creature was scared of death up till the very last moment. We may think that as we become older we become more at peace with death, that life loses its luster and we prepare to shake this mortal coil. I had a great aunt who lived to be 111 years old; she was fervently religious and read the Quran every day. On her deathbed, I was told that despite this she was still beyond terrified to die. Isn’t that just so frightening? Death is horrifying but we push it out of our minds to deal with later like a final research paper assigned early in the semester. But the idea that you can have a successful career, live a long happy life, even be comforted by a belief in the afterlife, and still not know how you will truly react when confronted with death? It shakes me.
I’m brought back to the image of Bela Lugosi. Those old movie posters of The Count with stark stage lights under his romantic features, illuminating the lines that cut deep into his face. I read that anecdote from his wife and I am filled with a sick sense of pity. I see a premonition of my own future. I, too, fear the reaper. Yet I am continually brought back to that image of The Vampire. It feels emblematic of a paradox in our culture. We are not only hopelessly scared of death, but we live in a deep denial of it. When someone dies we are quick to take the body out of sight. To put a sheet over them or to close their eyes as if to pretend the deceased are only asleep. We embalm and preserve our loved ones, painting their faces so they don’t look like a pale corpse. We insist on saying “passed away” instead of “died.” Yet despite all this, humanity has a grim fascination with death. Through history people have gathered to watch gladiators fight to the death, public hangings, and witch burnings. A part of us remains curious about the morbid details of a true crime murder case or the technical aspects of medieval torture. We fear death, yet we are obsessed with it. Here enters: The Vampire. It takes something we are so profoundly afraid of and dresses it up in a little costume, complete with fangs and a shiny black cape.
This explains why vampires surpass many other folklore monsters and continue to spark our imaginations. They offer another answer to our species' existential crisis. If the belief in the afterlife is not enough to bring comfort, then what alternative can we create? What if you could survive until the heat death of the universe? To be evil, yet never see heaven or hell. To never grow old and weak. Wouldn’t you love to have it all? It's all very seductive. It serves as a wonderful fantasy to escape into. Death is scary. That's why we use vampire stories as a way to quell those fears, at least for a moment. Anne Rice, author of Interview with The Vampire and The Vampire Chronicles based many of her vampire characters' turmoil about life, death, and religion around her own experiences. Basing a scene wherein the protagonist, Lestat, has a sudden revelation and takes in the weight of the knowledge that everyone, including himself, was going to die. Rice wrote; “I realized that we might not even know, when we died, what this [world] was all about- which is exactly Lestat’s experience. I was a basket case for six months. I could hardly function. I never felt the same about life or death.” Except in the book Lestat never dies. He becomes a vampire.
As for Bela Lugosi, he was buried in his Dracula costume. There are pictures of him lying peacefully at his open casket funeral, as if the Count settled down to sleep. They beautifully freeze him forever in time as his character. In some poetic way he achieves immortality in our minds and in pop culture, and so does the Vampire. As long as we continue to fear death we will continue to tell those stories. To look for consolation for our very human anxieties in the inhuman.
