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Bob Curran On American Vampires: Their True Bloody History From New York to California
JP: Vampires in North Carolina are vastly different from those in South Carolina, and even more different from those in New York State states the description of the book. What do you mean by this?
BC: Vampires in North Carolina are indeed largely different from those in South Carolina, mainly because the culture that inspired the perception is slightly different. The mountains of North Carolina were largely settled by the Scots-Irish and it is not surprising that their idea of vampires reflects this. Therefore we find the concept of “hungry wells” which was a popular belief in post-Famine Ireland and parts of Scotland. These are wells that can drink from you rather than the other way around. In South Carolina, during the period of the Rice Kings there, slaves were imported to work in the plantations of the Low Country.
Many of the slaves came from Angola and this has given rise to what is referred to as a Gullah culture in parts of South Carolina and the perceptions of vampires reflects this. Here vampires have a distinctly African aspect – they can remove their skins, they can fly over vast distances, they do not necessarily have to be dead, they are driven off by the use of pepper or a special shade of blue – “haint blue” – painted on doorways and windows, rather than by, say, a crucifix Both these perceptions are rooted in different cultures and so the idea of vampires tends to be rather different.
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