The True Bloody History of American Vampires

Q&A with Bob Curran

1. What are your motivation behind writing your newest book “American Vampires: Their True Bloody History From New York to California”?

BC: I think that there were a couple of reasons for writing the book. The first is that we think we know America. Over here in Europe, we tend to look at the US in terms of big cities and to give it a kind of “New York” technologicalized aspect. America is not like that at all. Underneath the superficial “American culture”, traces of other cultures are bubbling and influencing the country and its people. Although we consider America to be a “young country” that which lies beneath its surface in fact very old. Many are European but not all. Some are from places like Africa, for example, and of course there are the influences of Native peoples as well. And this is reflected in its nightmares. Creatures from other cultures whether they be European, African or Native some together in a nightmarish tapestry which is breathtaking in its diversity. This is one of the reasons I chose America as the subject of the book – the sheer spectrum of influences makes it a fascinating place.

We also think that we know vampires. In a sense they are the most popular monsters that we’ve all grown up with and they have etched themselves into our consciousness. We tend to view them as either gaunt East European noblemen or as angst-ridden High School teenagers and much of the fiction/media has been built around those images. Again this is not really how vampires are and one of the aims of the book was to give a much wider aspect to the being. Vampires can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and not all of them drink blood of course. So I think probably the book was written to challenge assumptions both about America and about vampires themselves.

2. Is this book about the vampire goth subculture or about actual evil vampires that feed off the blood of others or both?

BC: Depending on your definition of the word “goth” <I’ve always looked on the term gothic as denoting a literary style or a lifestyle choice – but I think I know what you mean> then the answer is both. I don’t think that apart from the basic premise hat vampires can harm individuals or communities; there is a standardised perception of a vampire. Not all of them appear at night; not all of them drink blood; not all of them can be repelled in traditional ways – that’s what makes them so fascinating. I’m writing about vampires from a folkloric and cultural aspect – tracing their roots in American history and the perceptions of those who settled in various parts of the country. The publishers and myself decided that we’d look on the vampire phenomenon mainly on a state-by-state basis to highlight the differences between one part of America and another. Some of those aspects are dark and mysterious; others are just plain terrifying and emerge out of the basic beliefs and fears of those who have made their homes in various areas. So I suppose this book is trying to examine what a vampire really is in the wider American consciousness.

3. Vampires in North Carolina are vastly different from those in South Carolina, and even more different from those in New York State states the description of the book. What do you mean by this?

BC: Vampires in North Carolina are indeed largely different from those in South Carolina, mainly because the culture that inspired the perception is slightly different. The mountains of North Carolina were largely settled by the Scots-Irish and it is not surprising that their idea of vampires reflects this. Therefore we find the concept of “hungry wells” which was a popular belief in post-Famine Ireland and parts of Scotland. These are wells that can drink from you rather than the other way around. In South Carolina, during the period of the Rice Kings there, slaves were imported to work in the plantations of the Low Country. Many of the slaves came from Angola and this has given rise to what is referred to as a Gullah culture in parts of South Carolina and the perceptions of vampires reflects this. Here vampires have a distinctly African aspect – they can remove their skins, they can fly over vast distances, they do not necessarily have to be dead, they are driven off by the use of pepper or a special shade of blue – “haint blue” – painted on doorways and windows, rather than by, say, a crucifix Both these perceptions are rooted in different cultures and so the idea of vampires tends to be rather different.

4. What other forms are vampires known to take exactly besides human form?

BC: Vampires can take a number of forms, some of which I explore in the book. For instance, in the highlands of Tennessee, a vampire can come in the guise of a chair. In this case it does not drink blood but rather leeches the energies from those who sit in it through a process akin to osmosis. The chair in question was actually made by some famous Tennessee chair-makers up at Shell Creek in the Southern Highlands – it is thought to be inhabited by the spirit of a witch-woman near Charleston. So be careful about what you sit on. Again, in New York, the vampire can appear as a human-shaped patch of mould on the floor of a cellar which once again draws all the goodness from the house above and creates a kind of lethargy in its inhabitants. Similarly in South America and in the American South-West <New Mexico etc> vampires appear simply as balls of light which travel at fantastic speeds and hover outside houses, once again drawing out the energies from those within. These of course do not have to be the spirits of dead people but can be the embodiment of evil sorcerers or witches – in such areas witchcraft and vampirism are inextricably linked. Vampires therefore, do not have to have human form or to drink blood in order to work their perceived evil.

5. Where do you think the root of vampires started exactly as far as their heritage goes? How did it begin?

BC: Possibly, as with other aspects of folklore, the idea of vampires was used as an explanation or to attempt to address questions about death. One of the most fundamental questions that ancient peoples sought to answer is – what is death and can those who are dead return? Again a fundamental question might be – what would it be like to live forever and if so, would there be some sort of price to pay? The notion of a returning revenant features largely in medieval ghost stories. And remember, these were not the wispy things that could pass through doors and walls – that is largely a much later aspect to them. These were solid, corporeal entities that could actually physically harm an individual and perhaps even draw blood. They could also spread disease and infect those whom they attacked simply by biting them. The idea of them drawing blood for sustenance may have been added later – the idea of blood <the life force in Humankind> is an extremely complicated concept in ancient cultures but in essence it is seen as the source of vitality and the revitalising agent and this may have had something to do with the notion of a returning corpse. I would however, think that the idea of the vampire – the creature that can draw off blood, bodily fluids or simply energy – is a complex one, driving from notions of death.

6. The book description states Dr. Bob Curran visits the Louisiana bayous, the back streets of New York City, the hills of Tennessee, the Sierras of California, the deserts of Arizona. What did you find at some of these locations and especially anything odd in Tennessee or the south where I live?

BC: All vampires are culturally different and therefore each one is interesting and unique in its own right. In the Southern States and in the South-West they are closely linked with witchcraft – this may be a hangover from either slave or Native cultures. Here vampires don’t necessarily have to be dead but can be the manifestation of some sort of evil sorcery. In the South too the notion of a vampire becomes entwined with other supernatural creatures – for example the werewolf. In some cases a frightening creature can be a combination of a number of aspects, one of which is the vampire. Thus, deep in say the bayous of Louisiana we find the “loogaroo” which is something of a cross between a werewolf-type being and a vampire. There is also said to be a convent on Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where the nuns keep certain “vampire ladies” in a their coffins <which were originally brought from France> and which they allow to get up and wander about at certain times. Some, it’s said, have even become married to local men – although they do not reside with their husbands for long! In the deserts of New Mexico we find “haint lights” which are balls of light which often draw the energy from whoever sees them. All these things are usually witches in another guise and of course they don’t have to be dead in order to work their evil. And of course, in Tennessee, there is the famous “vampire chair” to which I’ve already alluded and the story of which I explore in the book.

7. Stated from the book “they can’t necessarily be warded off by the sight of a crucifix or a bulb of garlic” then what can they be warded off with? How do we protect ourselves from vampires or destroy them?

BC: In the West, we tend to think of vampires in Christian terms. I suppose that we have been conditioned by Hollywood to take that view and probably it also stems from the culture that we live in. This we can drive away the vampire by holding up a crucifix. But what happens if the vampire is, say, Jewish and doesn’t recognise the Christian symbol? There are indeed Jewish vampires called dybbuks <also Hebrew for an evil spirit> that cannot be driven off in such a fashion. Here an iron Star of David may be more effective. And what happens if the vampire is a pagan creature, belonging to traditions older than Christianity? In fact, even in Christian circles, the only way to properly destroy a vampire is to burn it <or at the very least to burn its heart and internal organs>. Staking <as in the movies> can be done but in some cultures it is only a means of suspending the vampire and the correct type of wood has to be used for the stake otherwise it’s ineffective. And how do you stake a ball of light? Garlic too is not always the answer to drive away a vampire <although it does appear in some cultures> but it will drive away most of your friends!

8. I have been called a vampire since junior high after I was healed from Cancer at 17. I turned pale and bald and sort of resembled a more handsome Nosferatu. I have always been interested in Vampire lore but I do not drink blood or anything ridiculous like that. Energetically they maybe some exchange but not on purpose that I know of. I am curious to how you feel about energy vampirism. Do you think its just a wound in the energy levels of humans that feeds from others or an entity trying to do so through the human form?

BC: Energy vampirism is an interesting concept and one which is not confined solely to Native peoples. I think we have all be in the company of somebody and when we came away from that encounter we felt somehow drained and debilitated. This does not, of course, mean that the person that we have encountered is necessarily evil. I tend to think there may be energy vampires, so-called, who have the power to drain us of our vital energies and do so unconsciously. In the American South-West, as I’ve mentioned, witches sometimes are believed to have the power to drain energies from others in order to sustain themselves – is this some sort of explanation for a sensation of tiredness in the presence of some folk. And also in South America witches tend to travel across the countryside as balls of light which draw the energies and goodness out of a house outside which they hover. This is a characteristic of evil sorcerers who leech off others. This is also supposedly connected to witchcraft. So is this some sort of condition or ability which manifests itself in certain humans? Can it be activated either consciously or unconsciously? I’m not sure but I think that there may be something there.

9. Could you tell us a story about a real vampire that you discovered while researching your book preferably one that you find the most eerie or amusing?

BC: I think that one of the eeriest stories I came across and which I use in the book is that of the man-shaped patch of mould growing in the basement of the house in New York. Perhaps I find it interesting and terrifying because I knew of a similar patch of mould which was considered to be “a bad thing” which grew on the wall of an old outhouse which I knew about when I was growing up in the Irish countryside. It grew on the interior wall of the all house and there was a legend that a tramp had died in that particular building and that his spirit was somehow trapped in the patch of mould on the dark stone wall. The place was largely abandoned and closed up and yet, growing up, I had a fear of the place – it was nothing more than an unused storehouse and animals may have been kept in it at one time <although local farmers now shunned it>. When I was writing in the book about the house in old New York, this came back to me and I suppose a personal recollection made the story from New York all that more immediate. It had a particular resonance for me. However, I have to say that all the stories in the book were fascinating for me and, in some respects, were fun to write

10. What is Bob Curran up to next book and projects wise that you can share with us and any departing words on vampires you would like to share as we depart? Thanks.

BC: There are a number of projects that I’m working on with a couple of publishers and I’m still talking to Career about a possible new title for 2013. I don’t want to say too much about it as we’re still exploring a number of options but it might be something about the underlying premise that makes us believe in the supernatural. But things are still pretty much in discussion and have been held up a little when Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast where Career are based. On the other hand I’ve just completed the text for a new book on monsters called The Carnival of Dark Dreams and we’re just finalizing that now. So there will be something out very soon I would think. As for departing words about vampires – “Be on your guard. Vampires may not be what you think!”

Vampires are much more complex creatures than Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Twilight, True Blood, or scores of other movies and television shows would have you believe. Even in America.

American vampire lore has its roots in the beliefs and fears of the diverse peoples and nationalities that make up our country, and reflects the rich tapestry of their varied perspectives. The vampires that lurk in the American darkness come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can produce some surprising results. Vampires in North Carolina are vastly different from those in South Carolina, and even more different from those in New York State. Moreover, not all of them are human in form, and they can’t necessarily be warded off by the sight of a crucifix or a bulb of garlic.

Dr. Bob Curran visits the Louisiana bayous, the back streets of New York City, the hills of Tennessee, the Sierras of California, the deserts of Arizona, and many more locations in a bid to track down the vampire creatures that lurk there. Join him if you dare! This is not Hollywood’s version of the vampire–these entities are real!

Published by New Page Books.