“ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked again, severely.
“ ‘Oh!’ she wailed. ‘You must have seen his wicked face glaring at us from your friend’s cloak, and now you will not take the rooms.’ ”[98]
In some traditions the Vampire is said to float into the house in the form of a mist, a belief which is found in countries so far separate as Hungary and China. In the latter empire wills-o’-the-wisp are thought to be an unmistakable sign of a place where much blood has been shed, such as an old battle field, and all mists and gaseous marsh-lights are connected with the belief in vampires and spectres which convey disease. Since the effluvia, the vapour and haze from a swamp or quaggy ground are notoriously unhealthy and malarial fevers result in delirium and anæmia it may be that in some legends the disease has been personified as a ghastly creature who rides on the infected air and sucks the life from his victims. But all this is mere fancy, and only deserves a passing mention as belonging to legend and story. Of the same nature is the notion that Vampires can command destructive animals and vermin such as files, and, in the East the mosquito, whose bite may indeed convey some fever to the veins and whose long proboscis sucks the blood of animals and man. We may remember that at Accaron Beelzebub was the Lord of flies, and these insects were often regarded as having something of a diabolical nature. Pausanias V, 14, tells us that the people of Elis offered sacrifice to Zeus, Averter of Flies, a ceremony which is also mentioned by Clement of Alexandria in his Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας, II, 38 (ed. Potter, p. 33). Pliny Historia Naturalis (X, 75), says: “The Eleans invoke the fly-catching god, because the swarms of these insects breed pestilence; and as soon as the sacrifice is made to the god the flies all perish.” Pausanias (VIII, 26–7) further notes that at Aliphera in Arcadia the festival of Athene began with prayer and oblation to the Fly-catcher, and after this rite the flies gave no more trouble. Aelian (De Animalium Natura, XI, 8), tells us that at the festival of Apollo in the island of Leucas an ox was actually sacrificed to the flies, who when glutted with the warm blood, incontinently disappeared. Julius Solinus in his Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium (I, xi, ed. Th. Mommsem, Berlin, 1864), records that all flies were carefully excluded from the shrine of Hercules
