Jill Burcum

Readable and well informed, the following article by Jill Burcum provides a brief overview of recent medical research that seeks to explain the vampire phenomenon documented in the eyewitness accounts. According to Burcum, medical experts have long been interested in trying to find some medical or physiological explanation for vampire accounts throughout history. Research over the last twenty years suggests that both "furious rabies" and porphyria, a rare genetic blood disease, cause symptoms and behaviors similar to those displayed by the vampires described in eyewitness accounts and traditional folk stories. Researchers argue that the discovery of these diseases and their resulting symptoms and behaviors perhaps caused communities to assign the label of vampire mistakenly to unfortunate individuals suffering from these disorders.