Why Vampires Get Staked Through the Heart

We just finished watching season three of True Blood on DVD. Lots of vampires got staked through the heart, and burst into puddles of bloody, stringy pulp.

I don't expect any subtlety from True Blood, but I still think it's interesting how Hollywood portrays vampires being staked through the heart. Something that originated to prevent malevolent souls from wandering out of their graves has now become a messy way to kill a physical monster.


Vampire lore originated in Eastern Europe, and the original vampires weren't sexy monsters who sucked blood from their victim's necks with fangs. Vampires were the souls of the restless dead, often of criminals or others who had violated social norms, who fed on the life force (sometimes symbolized by blood) of the living members of their community. Vampires weren't strangers who came to town, but were people known to their victims.

One way to keep a vampire in its grave was to drive a stake through its heart. The point of this was not to kill a corporeal monster (a vampire's already dead, after all), but rather to nail the soul into its grave. The wandering soul was really the problem, not the mouldering body. To drive the symbolism home, in some places the stake was driven through the legs, or even through the corpse's clothing. Anything to keep that vampire in the grave!

Stakes were sometimes also put through the heart of witches, as in the case of Goody Cole of Hampton, New Hampshire.

Goody Cole lived in Hampton in the late 17th century, and was poor, sharp-tongued, and unpopular with her neighbors. Eventually she was found guilty of witchcraft: killing an infant with magic, causing a man to fall ill, harming various farm animals, and capsizing a boat to drown a carpenter who angered her. She spent many years jailed in Boston, and finally died in a small hut where she had been living as a ward of Hampton.

When the citizens of Hampton buried her, they put a stake through her heart. For good measure, they also attached an iron horseshoe to the stake. (In European folkore, iron has the power to stop malevolent magic.) They weren't killing a vampire, and Goody Cole's body didn't explode into a pile of bloody goop. The people of Hampton just wanted her soul to stay in the grave.

The Hampton library has a great webpage full of resources about Goody Cole with lots of interesting stuff. For example, after her death the well near her hut became known as Goody Cole's well. Sailors used to fill their casks with water from it because it never went brackish. Check it out if you get the chance!

Jesus Likes Codfish, Satan Likes Haddock

I just spent some time on Cape Cod, and came back curious about the cod and codfish folklore.

Cape Cod got its name back in 1602 when the English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold noticed lots of cod in the water near a large sandy peninsula. Voila! Cape Cod. He also saw lots of herring and mackerels, so Massachusetts could have wound up with a Cape Herring or Cape Mackerel. I guess Gosnold like the alliterative sound of Cape Cod instead.

Most people in Massachusetts know that a wooden cod hangs in the state's House of Representatives chamber on Beacon Hill. It's called the Sacred Cod, and is perhaps the only sacred thing in the State House. The Sacred Cod has hung in the State House since the 18th century, and symbolizes the important role this once plentiful fish used to play in the local economy.

In The Yankee Cook Book (1939), Imogene Wolcott relates another story about why the cod is sacred.

She claims that when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes, he did so using a codfish. The light colored markings found on the cod today are the impressions left by Jesus's fingers and thumb.

Note the white stripe caused by Jesus's touch

Of course, Satan was hanging out nearby, and when he saw Jesus perform the miracle he laughed evilly. "Ha!", he said. "You think you're so great? I can do the same thing."

Satan reached into the sea and grabbed a haddock. The fish wriggled free of Satan's hellishly hot hands, but not without damage. The black stripes found on the side of haddock today are actually burn marks caused by Satan's fingers so long ago.

Note the black stripe caused by the touch of Satan!

Cod prefer deep cold water, and are found in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. I don't think they're found in the Sea of Galilee, so this story is probably not gospel truth. If you want to avoid the theological dilemma caused by having to choose cod or haddock for dinner, just go vegetarian!

Conscateous Air

A few weeks ago I went to Kansas City, Missouri for work. Wow, was it hot! The temperatures were well over 100 degrees during the day, and at night they were still in the 80s. It was really humid too. It was thick and sticky.

In New England, we've been lucky to escape the worst of the monster heat wave that's torturing the middle of the country. But although most people hate the heat and humidity, it may have a positive side.

Well, at least according to the Old Farmers Almanac. The almanac's writers claim that the warm, damp air so prevalent in July is good for growing corn. The term "cornscateous air" was supposedly used by early almanac writers to describe hot, humid, corn-promoting weather. Cornscateous. Things in Kansas City were really cornscateous.



I kind of wonder if the people at the almanac's office in Dublin, NH are just pulling our legs with this word. I've never seen the word "cornscateous" anyplace except in their almanac or someplace that references their almanac. I couldn't find it in any dictionary. And who exactly were these early almanac writers anyway?

Maybe I'm being too skeptical. Perhaps if I were a farmer, or liked miserable humid weather, I'd be more familiar with the word. However, I did buy some local corn at the farmers' market, and it was great. Whether I like it or not, I guess we're getting just the right amount of conscateous air in Massachusetts.

Omens from Maine

License plates from Maine call the state Vacationland or the Pine Tree State. It sounds so innocent and idyllic!

Anyone who has read a Stephen King novel knows there's a dark side to Maine, however. That dark side has probably been there since the area was first settled.

Horace Beck's book The Foklore of Maine lists some signs Mainers use to foretell death. Here are a few of them:

A beetle clicking on the hearth is a sign someone will die.

A howling dog? A sure sign of death.

If you see tallow building up around your candle, be leery because it's an omen of doom.

If a corpse is limp, it means another person will die soon.

A white horse at a funeral means another death is coming. (If you're at a funeral with a limp corpse and a white horse I guess you're really in big trouble!)

Don't let a partridge in your house because it is an omen of death. Was this ever a common situation, or is just it a local variation on the common belief that a bird in the house means someone will die? Although not mentioned by Beck, the gorbey and the whippoorwill are two other New England birds associated with mortality and the soul.

The belief about birds apparently even affected how the Mainers decorated their houses. According to Beck's book, wallpaper with birds on it brings bad luck. Just play it safe and use paint, I say!

The Horned Boy of Bangor

After last week's post about Pamola I got a hankering for more Maine folklore. Here's a great story from Horace Beck's 1957 book The Folklore of Maine.

Many years ago near Bangor a family had two sons. The older boy was always mischievous and getting into trouble. He was so poorly behaved that his neighbors said he had the Devil in him. The younger boy, however, was quiet and well-behaved.

One day the older boy found out his younger brother would be walking home after dark. "Aha!" he thought. "The perfect occasion for a prank."

He covered his body with a cow skin, put a cow skull on his head, and hid in the bushes near the road. When his little brother walked by, he jumped from his hiding place, howling and waving his arms. He expected his brother to run all the way home!

The surprise was on him. His younger brother picked up a large branch and hit the horned monster soundly on the head. Then he ran home.

When he told his parents what happened they ran down the road. Their worst fears were confirmed - their oldest son was dead, killed with a single blow.

His parents pulled off the cow skin, but no matter how hard they tried they were unable to remove the horns from his head. They asked neigbhors and friends to help, but to no avail. The horns wouldn't budge. It was if they were fused to his head.

A few days later the boy was buried with the horns still attached. At the funeral all the neighbors whispered, "We always knew he had the Devil in him."