Vampire

Vampires are found in the mythology and folklore of many of mankind's cultures as creatures sustained by the blood or lifeforce of a human. Vampire-like creatures occur in H. P. Lovecraft's work, and appear more explicitly in other writers of the Cthulhu Mythos.

In Lovecraft's Fiction[]

The vampire legend is a central theme in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shunned House", but it is not clear whether the half-fungoid / half-incorporeal monster of that tale was supposed to be regarded as a vampire in the literal or merely the metaphorical sense. After a series of unexplained deaths in the house, the servant Ann White insists

there must lie buried beneath the house one of those vampires—the dead who retain their bodily form and live on the blood or breath of the living—whose hideous legions send their preying shapes or spirits abroad by night. To destroy a vampire one must, the grandmothers say, exhume it and burn its heart, or at least drive a stake through that organ.

The narrator notes that White comes from Exeter, Rhode Island, a "remote bit of backwoods" that was

a seat of the most uncomfortable superstitions. As lately as 1892 an Exeter community exhumed a dead body and ceremoniously burnt its heart in order to prevent certain alleged visitations injurious to the public health and peace.

This is a reference to the real-world case of Mercy Brown of Exeter, a suspected vampire whose body was exhumed and her heart burned in 1892.^[1] Still, the narrator says of himself and his uncle, Elihu Whipple:

To say that we actually believed in vampires or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rather must it be said that we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain unfamiliar and unclassified modifications of vital force and attenuated matter.

The narrator concludes that the malign force in the house is "some exotic emanation; some vampirish vapour such as Exeter rustics tell of as lurking over certain churchyards."

Curwen'sVictim — A victim bitten by Joseph Curwen. Art by Harry Ferman (*Weird Tales*).

Other Lovecraft stories feature characters that have been resurrected from death and display traits associated with vampirism: Joseph Curwen from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward was responsible for "revolting cases of vampirism" in which "a lean, lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes...fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously." Surama from "The Last Test" could only be killed by fire or by a stake driven through his heart.

Other blood-sucking entities include Rhan-Tegoth (HPL: "The Horror in the Museum") and the Dunwich Horror (HPL: "The Dunwich Horror"). Brown Jenkin, Keziah Mason's familiar in "The Dreams in the Witch-House," is reported by witnesses to have "nursed on the witch’s blood—which it sucked like a vampire."

Alonzo Typer, an expert on the occult in "The Diary of Alonzo Typer," privately published "papers on vampirism, ghouls, and poltergeist phenomena...after rejection by many publishers."

Elsewhere in the Mythos[]

Other contributors to the Cthulhu Mythos have created similar creatures termed "vampires", such as:

Star Vampires from "The Shambler from the Stars" by Robert Bloch
Fire Vampires and their Lord, Fthaggua, from "The Fire Vampires" by Donald Wandrei
Nioth-Korghai, the Space Vampire from "The Space Vampires" by Colin Wilson
Seekers, the Shadow-Vampires from "The Abyss" by Robert A. W. Lowndes
Mind Parasites from "The Mind Parasites" by Colin Wilson

Occult investigator Roger Little, in Frank Belknap Long's The Horror from the Hills, claims that one of his accomplishments was proving the existence of vampires. Chaugnar Faugn in that novel is another bloodsucking entity.

Sculptor Cyprian Sincaul, in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Hunters from Beyond", has been in contact with vampires, lamias, and satyrs, claiming that such beings inhabit dimensions that overlap with our own. He tentatively identifies them as being "what the occultists would call elementals".

In Ramsey Campbell's "The Inhabitant of the Lake", it is said that The Revelations of Glaaki contains information about the origin of vampires.

Caitlín R. Kiernan's stories about the supernatural underworld of Providence, including "So Runs the World Away" and Daughter of Hounds, make frequent references to vampires, including Miss Josephine, who resides at 135 Benefit Street, the house that inspired "The Shunned House". "So Runs the World Away" also incorporates the historic vampire case of Mercy Brown.

Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game[]

In Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu horror roleplaying game, vampires were introduced to the setting in the Malleus Monstrorum sourcebook in 2007 as supernatural creatures who are not created by, or connected with, the Mythos deities.

With origins in the various legends and folklore of the world, vampires vary in abilities and characteristics, such as to whether they cast a reflection, have to return to the soil in which they were buried, are repelled by the cross or holy water, turn into animals (e.g., a wolf or a bat) or mist, etc. They take various forms, some handsome or beautiful, some without fangs that use razor-sharp fingernails to open veins, some flying heads with bloody entrails trailing from their neck. They regenerate any damage, but a stake driven through the heart kills them.

Marvel Comics[]

The origins of the vampires of the Marvel Multiverse are tied both to the ancient history of Earth and to eldritch beings:

The true vampires (or Varnaean vampires) were created in Atlantis by the Darkholders from their knowledge of the Darkhold (the dark book of the Elder God Chthon) in the days before the Great Cataclysm that felled Atlantis and Lemuria. Varnae was both the first vampire and the first Lord of the Vampires. Lilith has also been mentioned as being part of the ritual that led to the vampires' creation.
Long ago, before the Great Cataclysm, ancient "things", horrific beings that had come from the stars, built cities such as R'llyeh, where they etched their magic knowledge on the walls and then eventually disappeared. After the Great Cataclysm, they awakened due to the tremors and created the Aqueos (a race of sea-dwelling vampiric beings that are incorrectly referred to as "Atlantean vampires"). It was theorized by some that the etched writings on the walls of R'llyeh were the source of all magic on Earth, imperfectly copied in such books as the Darkhold - despite the origin mentioned above - the Necronomicon - despite accounts of it being derived from the Darkhold - and the Oracles of Zoroaster, among other mystic books and scrolls.

Some vampire-like beings in the Prime Reality such as Dr. Michael Morbius, a.k.a. Morbius the Living Vampire, may be created by science (these beings are known as "pseudo-vampires" or "living vampires"), but they have no connection to the Mythos.

Fawcett Comics[]

In the original Golden Age of Comic Books (1940 to 1953) Captain Marvel Adventures comic story "Captain Marvel Battles the Vampire", which enjoyed tight continuity, Captain Marvel and his alter ego, Billy Batson, find out how to defeat vampires by reading H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Vampire, a case where this sort of fictional book that Lovecraft and his Circle invented was used as a literary device, including Lovecraft himself being depicted as a kind of expert on the undead.

The vampire of this story, Bram Thirla, is an evil man who is resurrected by a scientific formula. It is unclear whether he was already a vampire or whether he died as a very evil man and this is the explanation for why the chemicals that brought him back only returned him in undead classical vampire form. Since the universe of Captain Marvel is steeped in magic and August Derleth-style good vs. evil, it is likely that Thirla was an evil man in life and this precluded the full return of his soul to his restored body, but this is only speculation based on the way that other resurrections and magical restorations occurred in the Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel stories.