To stake or not to stake…

Ever the preferred method of killing or immobilizing a vampire, stakes are possibly the most widely recognized method by which a vampire my be dealt with. It’s the number one literary and theatrical vampire bane, it’s so dramatic that authors simply can’t say no. However, like many other vampire myths, killing with a stake has it’s historical significance. The stake driven through the heart is said to strike a killing blow to the undead, it is a technique by which a vampire may be put down while other, more permanent methods may be met, such as decapitation and burning.

Throughout central and eastern Europe this method was taken very seriously. No just any table leg or shard of wood would do. The stakes had to be made of specific materials. In Russia and through the Baltic, for example, the stakes had to be crafted of ash because of it’s magical qualities. In Silesia the stakes were carved of oakwood, while in Serbia they were crafted of hawthorn because of it’s thorny shrub quality, as vampires are said to be highly allergic to thorns and thistles. Each old mythology had it’s very real and very purposeful beginning.

Vampirism was taken so seriously in fact, that in Hungary and Romania, bodies were staked after death to prevent them from becoming the undead.

Most often vampires or suspected vampires were staked through the heart, though in Russia and northern Germany the mouth was targeted for staking. In northeastern Serbia the stomach was the appropriate place to stake a vampire. It was believed that staking a vampire was a way to relieve the bloated body of the devil spirit.

Staking is still, today, a widely used technique for doing away with vampires. Fictionalists utilize this technique over any and all others for the destruction of vampires. However, it is less known that this method, in several mythologies, was used to destroy vampire servants, such as Revenants.

For me, it’ll always harken back to the earliest vampire fictions where finely crafted wooden stakes were driven, by use of a mallet, through the chest of the monsters. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the hunter even carried a kit by which he might destroy the evil undead with it’s child brain. Mythology tells that Bram Stoker was well studied in the ancient mythological techniques.

Stakes have alwyas been, and always will be, the preferred method of vampire annihilation. Good myths live, this one certainly has.

Kristyn