Throughout history, there have been several supernatural crazes, such as the infamous witch craze of the 16th century that led to the Salem Trials and New England’s vampire craze of the 19th century. Humanity has always been fascinated with telling tales of supernatural creatures and endeavors as a means to entertain and fill time, but what happens when these stories lead to massive hysteria? And, most importantly, why?
Witch hunting first began in 15th century Europe. While there isn’t one single explanation for the mass hysteria, political uncertainty, as well as the Protestant Reformation might have led to a general superstition. This was all exacerbated by the widespread print of the “Hammer of Witches” or the “Malleus Maleficarum”, which was originally written by the German Heinrich Kramer in 1486. This book represents the pioneer of demonology and is, at its core, a handbook for the torture and the execution of witches. In the book, Kramer suggests that all witches worship the Devil, that sorcery is heresy and should be prosecuted as such, and that torture in order to get confession was the only way to end the evils of witchcraft. These beliefs spread to the UK and Scandinavia thanks to King James VI, who strongly believed that witches were conspiring against him after his ship nearly sank during a storm. Soon enough, witches became the primary explanation to devastating events such as famine, crop destruction, epidemics, natural disasters, infancy death and other “inexplicable'' events. However, witchcraft also became the explanation for events worthy of envy, such as a family’s abundance of food in a time of poverty. At this point, religion in Europe had been divided thanks to the reformation into Protestant and Catholic, and while both parties practiced witch hunts, protestants were much more zealous in their execution, in an attempt to prove that their version of Christianity was “better”. In fact, Protestant countries such as Scotland and Sweden had a much higher incidence of witch executions than Catholic dominated countries such as Spain.
Later, in the 18th century, New England was confronted with a vampire panic, which similarly to the witch craze, originated as an explanation to an unfortunate event, this time a tuberculosis epidemic. People believed that their relatives who were infected with this disease actually had their health sucked out by a vampire. Other gaps in medical knowledge at the time, namely the bloating of the body in the second stage of human decomposition, were also explained away with vampirism. While vampirism was used to explain a mysterious disease in the 18th century, nowadays vampires are often used as symbols of collective anxiety, (anti-capitalists such as Karl Marx literally describe capitalists as “vampires.”) Moreover, the popularity of vampires tends to coincide with times of economic crisis, such as the 1990’s recession, during which works such as “Bracula” and “Interview with a Vampire” came out and became immensely popular.
Many will say that such supernatural crazes no longer exist, but that is entirely false. Modern witch hunts still take place in African countries such as Kenya, and minor cases of vampire panic have occurred in Malawi and even in Romania in the past two decades. It is safe to say, however, that the majority of the world no longer engages in such practices, but the fascination with these imaginary beings is still present: whether they are simply a way of expressing one’s imagination or represent a personification of global anxieties, or maybe an answer to inexplicable events remains to be debated.
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