Vampire Lore from Transylvania to Ancient Peru

From the historical Vlad Tepes, the bloody count of Transylvania's Early Modern period, to the fanged deity Ai Aipec, sacred icon of Peru's pre-Incan Moche kingdom, the vampire phenomenon has captured humanity's morbid fantasy. Chronology and geography notwithstanding, the vampire is sometimes imagined nightmare and sometimes embroidered historical fact/fiction. "Undead" characters of the male and female varieties literally haunt the global imagination. Sixteenth-century noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory drank peasant blood to maintain her youthful appearance; and the feared Kharisiri demon of the Bolivian Altiplano sucked the life-essence from Aymara children. These tales indicate class and religious conflicts whose actual histories surpass any horror story. Join us for a spooky evening where we search for the real-life meanings beyond the supernatural, the historical role that the fictional "vampire" played in the collective imagination of medieval and Early Modern peoples, and for a discussion of contemporary versions of the older, and chilling, legends.