Description
Book SynopsisSurveys centuries of folklore about vampires. This book offers an explanation for the origins of the vampire legends, from the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires.
Trade Review"A stimulating, authoritative discourse on the relationship between the historical concepts of vampires in folklore and fiction across the ages and throughout the world."—
Library Journal"Barber, a specialist in German language and folklore who has a faintly ghoulish sense of humour, has written a splendid book about the undead, illuminated by the findings of morbid anatomy. . . . The main value of this most interesting book is to remind us how far we have come in our ability to explain the world and how this has released us from at least some terrors."—Anthony Daniels,
The Spectator "Since this is essentially a scholarly work on human decomposition and historical attitudes to it, it is remarkable how often Paul Barber manages to be funny. . . . His insights, medical and cultural, hold a chastening fascination."—Hugh Barnacle,
Independent "A pioneering work on the role of medicine in unraveling the mysteries of the supernatural. Breaking new ground, it belongs among the significant studies of folklore."—Felix J. Oinas, Indiana University
