Vampires has been quite a fascination for me when it comes to the Horror Genre, and it's quite obvious to me, being someone who grew up in the South East Asia, to notice the vast difference among the different types of Vampires available around the world. Definition of a Vampire, is a creature of the night, who either feeds on Blood, or some sort of essence.
Since I’m Asian, let’s play with the vampire originating from this parts of the world. In this parts of the world, among the Malays (Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore) vampires are known as the Kuntilanak, Languir, Pontianak, Matianak and Boentianak. There is also a big taboo in calling out their names over here, since, they can supposedly hear you and come when you call their names, we occasionally call them, “Ponti-baby”.
Anak is translated as baby in English. I guess it's less scary that way.
So anyway… let’s deal with the origins of our vampires. It is a sad story actually, because they origin from women who died in childbirth, where they become the undead, seeking revenge and terrorizing villages. A Pontianak kills her victims by digging their sharp fingernails though their victims stomach, devouring their organs. They perform their revenge on male individuals by ripping out their sex organs with their bare hands. They tend to locate preys by sniffing out the clothes which are being left outside to dry. Langsuir is the most deadly of them all. Unlike Pontianaks, they appears as a very beautiful woman to devour their victims. She would possess and suck their blood from the inside, slowly killing their victims. She is said to be form when a woman who suffered from laboring sickness (meroyan) or what we would now called as post-natal depression, died and she turned into a Langsuir 40 days after her death.
Then, there is the Chinese Vampires, which are commonly known as Jiang Shi, or the hopping
Chinese ghost. They just hop around, killing living creatures to absorb their life essence from their victims. These vampires are form when their souls failed to leave their dead bodies, due to improper death, suicide or just a want to be a trickster, or the victims of pre-mature burial. Honestly, this is kind of the most funniest vampires I have ever known (not personally of course). They have eyes but they locate victims by smelling them. You could just be in front of them and by holding your breath, they can’t see you. Their eyes would be opening all wide but they can't see you. It just doesn’t compute, but that’s how it is. *lol*
As far as I know, there are hardly any books regarding Asian vampires. Unless if you are Russell Lee, and Tamar Jalis. But even with them, they barely cover the subject as a main stream. I, as an author, tried but I ended up scared out of my wits before finishing it. *hehe* I guess that’s why in written form, it’s quite rare to find them over here. Visual stream however has covered this part of the genre over and over again.
Vampires originated from the west is kind of simple and ultimately strong characteristically, living quite a lifestyle when it comes to portraying them. They are far more feature as gothic and the nature of romanticism appear dominant and that to me.. kind of lose its horror edge. They are far more alive and social rather than how the vampires from the East ‘lives’. The most famous of them all would be Dracula, originated from Transylvania (yes I look the darn spelling up! I can’t spell that place by myself, even if my life depends on it >.<). He is the product of Bram Stoker and the character himself is also being connected to Vlad the Impaler, famously nicknamed as Vlad Vampire. The running history of how a vampire in the western civilization works is by another vampire infecting them with their vampire blood. There’s nothing really that scary about them. No creepy crawly factor at all for me. For me that is.
Some Vampire Books:
P/S: No! I am not featuring glittering vampires in this post. Period! It’s just not fair to us horror enthusiastics. I drew the line there in Vampirism!
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