eminent holiness has been officially and authoritatively recognized, may be admitted as a miracle, that is to say as supernatural. More than once attention has been drawn to the fact that there exist parodies of these phenomena, and as incorruptibility is often attached to sanctity so is it an essential of the very opposite of holiness, the demonism of the vampire. It has been said that the vampire, as a demon reanimates the corpses of entirely innocent people, but this is very doubtful and it is probable that the only bodies thus to be infested and preserved by dark agency are those of persons who during their lives were distinguished by deeds of no ordinary atrocity. Very often too the vampire is a corpse reanimated by his own spirit who seeks to continue his own life in death by preying upon others and feeding himself upon their vitality that is to say by absorbing their blood since blood is the principle of life.
Dr. T. Claye Shaw in his study, A Prominent Motive in Murder[74] has given us a most valuable and suggestive paper upon the natural fascination of blood which may be repelling or attractant, and since Dr. Havelock Ellis has acutely remarked that “there is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as blood,”[75] it is easy to understand how nearly blood is connected with the sexual manifestations, and how distinctly erotic and provocative the sight or even the thought of blood almost inevitably proves. It would appear to be Plumröder, who in 1830 was the first to draw definite attention to the connexion between sexual passions and blood. The voluptuous sensations excited by blood give rise to that lust for blood which Dr. Shaw terms hemothymia. A vast number of cases have been recorded in which persons who are normal, find intense pleasure in the thought of blood during their sexual relations, although perhaps if blood were actually flowing they might feel repulsion. Yet “normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or because the checks that inhibit it are inevitably very powerful.”[76]
Blood is the vital essence, and even without any actual sucking of blood there is a vampire who can—consciously, or perhaps unconsciously—support his life and re-energize his frame by drawing upon the vitality of others. He may
