Chapter XVI: Conclusion
I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I cannot think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed, could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to come, and reinduced a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific.
Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg, to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mircalla's grave.
He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvelously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his fingers' ends all the great and little works upon the subject.
"Magia Posthuma," "Phlegon de Mirabilibus," "Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis," "Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris," by John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern—some always, and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved the vampire-life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.
How they escape from their graves and return to them for certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the cerements, has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable. The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigor of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast.
The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a relation, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her real one, should at least reproduce, without the omission or addition of a single letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it.
Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.
My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard, and then he asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the long-concealed tomb of the Countess Mircalla? The Baron's grotesque features puckered up into a mysterious smile; he looked down, still smiling on his worn spectacle case and fumbled with it. Then looking up, he said:
"I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable man; the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you speak, to Karnstein. The tradition, of course, discolors and distorts a little. He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed his abode to that territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he was, in truth, a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in very early youth he had been a passionate and favored lover of the beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.
"Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal more.
"Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.
"He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years, he looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and a horror took possession of him. He made the tracings and notes which have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that he had practiced. If he had intended any further action in this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast."
We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this:
"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the General's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from."
The following Spring my father took me a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.
Recommended in Horror
This section includes my top recommendations in horror in certain media. To be clear, there is ample more I could recommend to read or watch but am providing just what I find to be the best tales to enjoy based upon my own experience.
Books
1.Ajvide, Lindqvist J, and Ebba Segerberg. Let the Right One in. New York: St. Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Print.
2.Barker, Clive. The Hellbound Heart. New York: Harper, 2007. Print.
3.Chambers, Robert W, and E F. Bleiler. The King in Yellow, and Other Horror Stories. New York: Dover Publications, 1970. Print.
4.Cutter, Nick. The Troop. New York: Pocket Books, 2014. Print.
5.Herbert, James. The Rats. London: Pan, 2010. Print.
6.King, Stephen. Just After Sunset: Stories. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print.
7.Konrath, Joe. Horror Stories: [twenty-six Scary Tales]. S.l: Createspace, 2010. Print.
8.Matheson, Richard. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories. New York: Tor, 2002. Print.
9.Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein. Charlottesville, Va: University of Virginia Library, 1996. Internet resource.
10.Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Charlottesville, Va: University of Virginia Library, 1996. Internet resource.
Graphic Novels
1.Deering, Rachel, Ted Adams, and Scott Snyder. In the Dark: A Horror Anthology. , 2014. Print.
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2.Hill, Joe, Gabriel Rodríguez, and Jay Fotos. Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft. San Diego, CA: IDW Pub, 2013. Print.
3.Itō, Junji, and Yuji Oniki. Uzumaki: 1. San Francisco, CA: VIZ Media, 2007. Print.
4.Kirkman, Robert, Charles Adlard, Tony Moore, Cliff Rathburn, Rus Wooton, and Sina Grace. The Walking Dead Compendium One. , 2013. Print.
5.Lockwood, Dan, and H P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraft Anthology: A Graphic Collection of H.p. Lovecraft's Short Stories. London: SelfMadeHero, 2011. Print.
6.Moore, Alan, Jacen Burrows, Antony Johnston, Juanmar, and Alan Moore. Neonomicon. Rantoul, IL: Avatar Press, 2011. Print.
7.Niles, Steve, Ben Templesmith, and Robbie Robbins. 30 Days of Night. San Diego, CA: Idea & Design Works, LLC, 2003. Print.
8.Niles, Steve, and Kieron Dwyer. Remains. San Diego, CA: IDW Pub, 2004. Print.
9.Normanton, Peter. The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics. Philadelphia, Pa: Running Press, 2008. Print.
10.Rodionoff, Hans, Keith Giffen, and Enríque Breccia. Lovecraft. New York: DC Comics, 2003. Print.
To this list, I would of course add any of the EC Comics horror series that have been put into bound paperback or hardcover form.
Films
1.American Psycho (2000)
2.Blair Witch Project (1999)
3.Cabin in the Woods (2012)
4.Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
5.The Fly (1986)
6.It (1990)
7.Jekyll (2007)
8.King Kong (1933)
9.Night of the Living Dead (1968)
10.The Thing (1982)
Studies in Horror
Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Carroll, Noel. "Nightmare and the Horror Film: the Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings." Film Quarterly. 34.3 (1981): 16-25. Print.
Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.
Cohen, Jeffrey J. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.
Feldman, Leslie D. Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2010. Print.
Gardner, Dan. The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print.
Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999. Print.
Grahame-Smith, Seth. How to Survive a Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2007. Print.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. Pocket Books, 2010. Print.
Kneale, James. "From Beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the Place of Horror." Cultural Geographies. 13.1 (2006): 106-126. Print.
Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Print.
Lee, Christopher, and Ted Newsom. 100 Years of Horror: The Complete Collection. North Hollywood, CA: Passport Video, 2006.
Lovecraft, H.P. "Supernatural Horror in Literature." Fantasists on Fantasy : a Collection of Critical Reflections. (1984). Print.
Maddrey, Joseph. Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 2004. Print.
Selby, Chip. Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television. Reistertown, MD: CS Films, 2004.
Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Norton, 1993. Print.
Thomson, David. Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Print.
Zinoman, Jason. Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. New York, N.Y: Penguin Press, 2011. Print.
The Select Texts
The texts chosen were chosen in part because they are part of the public domain and free to republish. Below are places that you can find these texts online. I would very much encourage the use of public domain and Creative Commons materials for the benefit of everyone.
Black Cat
https://archive.org/stream/theworksofedgara02148gut/2148.txt
Chickmauga
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chickamauga
The Call of Cthulhu
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu/full
The Yellow Wall Paper
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wall_Paper
The Horla, or Modern Ghosts
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Horla
The Willows
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Willows
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde
The Great God Pan
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Great_God_Pan
Dracula's Guest
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula%27s_Guest
Carmilla
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Carmilla
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