Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore & Reality by Paul Barber

Barber has written a stimulating, authoritative discourse on the relationship between the historical concepts of vampires in folklore and fiction across the ages and throughout the world. To explain the underlying myraid interment and mourning practices designed to keep the dead at bay, he postulates a universal fear of the"vampire/revenant." Such fear was most probably based on universal lack of knowledge and control over fatal illness and disease, and misinterpretations of the natural (and varied) physical manifestations of death and decay in the human body. A lengthy bibliography accompanies the text. Best for academics, but for interested general readers too. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred, N.Y. (from Amazon.com)

Order Info: ISBN 0300048599, Yale Univerity Press, 1990 (Reprint edition)