Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead-corpse?

Abstract

In his Treatise on Vampires and Revenants (1746), Calmet argued that although Western Europe may have witnessed troublesome revenants in the past, the vampires of Eastern Europe were a unique type of undead-corpse. In this paper, I examine the characteristic features of the various types of undead-corpse that supposedly existed in Europe from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, so too the revenants of nineteenth-century New England. I argue that, unlike other types of undead-corpse, the distinguishing feature of eighteenth-century vampires was their apparent thirst for blood.