Classic Literature: The Vampire of Vourla

When I featured the earlier version of The Bruxa: A Legend of Portugal I was pleased that the version had a much more obviously pre-Stoker bat transformation than its later version, and yet my excitement was tempered. I was also aware of the existence of The Vampire of Vourla, due to being Assistant Editor of the Journal of Vampire Studies, but the research had not at that point been published and so I was compelled to hold, as mentioning this before the release of the Journal was unfair on Álvaro García Marín who has rediscovered the story. Volume 3 of the Journal of Vampire Studies has now been released online and I can break my silence.

The original story was published anonymously in The Chaplet; An Elegant Literary Miscellany, with Twenty-Seven Highly Finished Engravings on Steel, from the Most Eminent Artists in 1845 (Marín gives great evidence for the date). The story, as relayed by Tom Gahan, concerns Lt. Somers a naval officer, and Gahan’s former master, stationed in a warship at the Vourla Bay. During a storm, whilst hunting, Somers talks shelter in an ancient mansion and meets Heira, a beautiful Greek-woman who he suddenly falls in love with. “Will you swear by your lifeblood? Will you mingle it with mine? Will you pledge with me to our eternal fidelity?” (p71) she asks and cuts his arm, allowing the blood to trickle into a crystal bowl (she also cuts herself but there is no blood from the wound) and she drinks his blood. They spend the night together but she sends him away just before dawn saying he must come back at nightfall. He returns, ferried by two mysterious men rowing a boat, and continues to return night after night, growing weaker until he is unable to leave his bed. This then sees him visited by a monstrous bat – seen by Gahan and described thusly:

“I was awoke by a sort of flapping and flapping, just as if some one was fanning with a large fan, as they do in the East Indies… …My master was lying motionless in the cot, his eyes wide open—staring at the hideous form of a large bat, nearly as large as some I have seen in the island of Java—there they call them Vampires—and oh! what a head it had! I could almost fancy that I saw human, or rather a devil’s features, in those small bright eyes, and quickly working jaws, as these last, close-pressed my master’s neck, were drawing, drawing, drawing, the lifeblood from his sinking frame, while the dark leathern wings fanned as the creature sucked.” (P 77)

The insinuation is, of course, it is Heira come to him, as he could not go to her, in bat form and the tell is in the fact that it seems to be possessed of human (or devil) features. It is not as explicit regarding the transformation as Kingston’s story the year after but nevertheless it is, I believe, the earliest vampire taking the form of a bat we’ve come across yet within literature. Kudos to Álvaro García Marín for the find and also the very in-depth and interesting critical study, both on the Greek aspects of the story and the pre-Stoker motifs that foreshadow Dracula, that you can read in The Journal of Vampire Studies Volume 3 and you can find the original story here.