Honourable Mention: The Mysteries of Myra

This literary restoration of the 1916 serial The Mysteries of Myra is based on the novelisation by Eustace Hale Ball, based itself on the Charles Goddard script. Regular readers might recall that I looked at the tropes employed in the Algernon Blackwood story Nemesis of Fire and Blackwood’s story inspired one of the episodes within the serial – those connections, spotted by David Annwn Jones, are unsurprising given parapsychologist Hereward Carrington was associated with Blackwood and was a story consultant on the serial.

The series sees Myra (Jean Sothern) hounded and hunted by the Black Order, who want to steal her inheritance and also, it turns out, fear her developing psychic prowess. She is aided in her exploits by Dr. Payson Alden (Howard Estabrook), rapidly becoming her suitor. Her other suitor Arthur Varney (Allan Murnane) is secretly a member of the Black Order. The episode we are interested in is called the Fire-Elemental, in which the Master of the Black Order (Mike Rale) summons a fire elemental and causes it to possess the spirit of Alden’s deceased compatriot Haji (Shino Mori). The idea that a vampire might be the possessed body of a corpse is common in some folklore but to have the spirit possessed is more interesting. To summon the elemental there has to be a blood sacrifice and herein lies the vampirism.

This is no simple spilling of blood. The Master offers it Myra’s blood (providing itself the sacrifice when it kills her), but when Alden uses a(n animal) blood sacrifice to lure and trap the elemental we see that it seems to consume the blood: “the blood began to disappear, as though sucked up by an unseen sponge” (267). If this isn’t explicit enough Alden states “elementals are vampires and blood hungry” (267). The elemental is trapped by UV rays and the reasoning was given in an earlier episode, “these are ultra-violet rays and they will destroy all occult force”.

However, the appearance of the fire elemental is just a small part of the whole story and is thus just a fleeting visitation.

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Use of Tropes: Nemesis of Fire

Published in 1908 in the volume John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, this is a story by Algernon Blackwood and I came across it in David Annwn Jones’ excellent volume Vampires on the Silent Screen. When discussing an episode of the 1916 serial The Mysteries of Myra entitled the Fire Elemental (now sadly lost), Jones describes an episode in which a fire demon is summoned with the promise of a blood sacrifice. The episode description includes possession (of a spirit, interestingly) and trapping within ultraviolet rays. To tie a demonic (or spirit) source into vampirism and the depiction of it in early cinema is not so strange when we consider that Count Orlock is of demonic heritage.

Jones makes the connection not only between Hereward Carrington, who advised on The Mysteries of Myra, and Blackwood but directly to this story and suggests it was drawn on for the vampiric episode of the serial. One can certainly see that, with the story resonating to the descriptions we have of the Myra episode. They are not the same story, it must be stated, but one could see how this inspired. Narrated by Mr Hubbard, almost a Watson to the psychic detective Dr John Silence, the tale sees the pair visiting Col. Wragge who has reported strange goings on, though the materialistic soldier remains rather stoic on interview. The air in Wragge’s house feels oppressively hot and Silence soon deduces that there is a fire elemental at play.

The trop here comes down to the use of blood. Silence intends to manage the elemental through the use of blood: “The emanations of blood—which, as Levi says, is the first incarnation of the universal fluid—furnish the materials out of which the creatures of discarnate life, spirits if you prefer, can fashion themselves a temporary appearance.” This is why I have looked at the story as a use of tropes – whilst the elemental is drawn to blood, it uses it to draw corporeal shape rather than to consume. It is, however, the intertextual connection with Myra that also interests me and adds to the story's genre interest. The elemental itself was summoned due to a curse/protective spell cast on a Mummy, which Wragge’s deceased brother had taken from its tomb. As well as creating a vessel out of blood the elemental is able to possess Wragge, at one point.