(10-21-2024, 10:57 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: I have a question for the Rogues during this spooky Halloween season, "Where do the classic horror story monsters like vampires, werewolves, and Frankenstein's monster, et al, come from?"
What is the basis of the classic old haunted house or castle, one that is usually in ruins, that is inhabited by some old eccentric aristocrat from some European family bloodline? Or some mad scientist, that one is pretty classic. I am speaking of Gothic Horror of course, as opposed to slasher or other types of stories.
Just fishing around for opinions on this subject, one I have of my own.
Let's hear what you got Rogues, Inquiring minds want to know.
The 19th and early 20th century versions of vampires, Frankenstein, mummy, and wolfman all go back, way back, to early Bronze Age, Chalcolithic, Neolithic, or probably even before archetypes: the "revenant" and "shapeshifters".. However, every culture they are passed on to, or pass through, puts it's own stamp on the basic types, so that what we have today bears only a passing resemblance.
The "revenant" archetype is what spawned vampires, Frankenstein's Monster, and the mummy. What we think of today as the classic vampire passed through the Transylvania area of Romania, and got mixed in with Vlad the Impaler by Bram Stoker. He gave a uniquely Western European flavor to raw materials that started out as eastern European.
Ditto the decrepit haunted castle - Stoker got that from a couple of Vlad Dracul's castles that are still in existence, but now abandoned, such as the one at Poenari. As a matter of fact, the Poenari castle is still reported to be haunted by locals, who report such things as floating orbs around it. Stoker took the castle, the notion of vampires being European nobility, and even the name "Dracula" all from Vlad Dracul, Vlad the Impaler, and worked the story over into a western European motif as applied to the ancient revenant archetype.
Frankenstein's Monster and the Mad Scientist came from Germany via the pen of Mary Shelley in the early 19th century. She spun up a tale that was new concerning the ancient revenant archetype in the case of the monster, and a whole new mad scientist motif in the case of Dr Frankenstein who created the monster.
The revenant archetype is, at it's most basic, just a corpse returned from the dead. All of the rest are embellishments to personalize the revenant to the culture at hand. While the "mad scientist" might appear to be an entirely new wrinkle, I personally think it's an extension or modification of the old alchemist and before that wizard motifs.
The Wolfman comes from Romania just as Dracula does, but it was transmitted from the shape-shifter archetype via the lens of Chalcolithic proto-Celtic peoples. Most cultures around the world have equivalents that have been personalized to their own culture, from the Scandanavian Berserkers and Ulfhednar to the Americas and the Native American shape-shifters like skin walkers and owl-witches.
Nowadays all of thee monsters are undergoing yet another American-inspired transformation, probably spurred by teenage girly emo culture. Things like vampires that sparkle in the sunlight - or can even get into the sunlight without bursting into flame and a puff of smoke are as alien to classic vampires as classic vamppres are to the Medieval vampires who had bricks and rock stuffed into their mouths to neutralize them found in places as far apart as Italy and Ireland.
All of these monsters and more really came into their own as cinematic tropes during the mid-20th century probably as escape mechanisms to take folks' minds off the very real dangers of the modern world, like the threat of nuclear destruction. Now they seem to be morphing into an escape mechanism for teenage girls to escape the drudgery of having to go to school and learning to read and write and cipher. My, how the times do change!
And now, in honor of the new-style wussified vampires, which is currently bringing them into line with our new, kinder, gentler, far more wussified society, I leave you with: