Raymond T. McNally - A Clutch of Vampires

[dem bones]

Raymond T. McNally (ed.) - A Clutch of Vampires (NEL, 1974)

Introduction - Raymond T. McNally

Phlegon of Tralles - Philinnion
Philostratus - Menippus And Apollonius
Jan Jacob Maria de Groot - A Chinese Vampire
Walter Map - Vampire In A Knight’s Household
William Of Newburgh - Two Twelfth Century Vampires
Henry More - Sixteenth Century Vampire In Silisia
Erasmus Franciscus - Seventeenth-Century Vampire In An Austrian Province
Augustin Calmet - An Eighteenth-Century Look At Vampires
Letter by an Austrian Imperial Army Officer - Hungarian Antidote Against Vampires
John Polidori - The Vampyre
J. S. Le Fanu - Carmilla
Augustus Hare - Croglin Grange Vampire
New york World - Vampires In And Near Newport, Rhode Island
William Seabrook - Vampire From Brooklyn, N.Y.
Montague Summers - Vampires In Modern Greece
W. R. S. Ralston - A Russian Vampire
Madame Blavatsky - Another Russian Vampire
Ion Creanga & The Institute of Folklore, Bucharest - Five Romanian Vampires
Lawrence Durrell - Vampire In Venice
Robert Bloch - The Living Dead
Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) - The Drifting Snow
Richard Matheson - Drink My Red Blood
Bram Stoker - Dracula’s Guest
Montague Summers - are Vampires Less Frequent Today?
Raymond T. McNally - A Contemporary Romanian Vampire

Back cover blurb

Vampires — those horrifying creatures which are neither dead nor alive — have a history which stretches back into the dim past. Today their fascination is as strong as ever. They are the popular subjects of films, books and television programmes.
The myth is still strong, a myth which has been fed by 'facts' and stories for hundreds of years.
Some of the best vampires recorded or invented during the past two thousand years appear in this anthology. The book includes accounts by such people as a first-century Roman historian, a twelfth-century bishop, and a nineteenth-century Yankee journalist. The fictional representations include Carmilla by Le Fanu; a short story by Bram Stoker, originally intended as the first chapter of Dracula and several thrillers by such masterful writers as Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson.
Together, these portraits present a horrifying picture of that world of the undead.

Like Bernard J. Hurwood's Monsters Galore, McNally's collection spans fact, “fact”, folklore and out and out fiction, with many of the stories familiar from Peter Haining’s The Midnight People (note that Matheson's Blood Son has been retitled Drink My Red Blood after Haining) rubbing shoulders with Henry More, Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Philostratus.

It concludes with McNally telling us of his recent visit to Romania and an episode he witnessed at the funeral of a young girl who’d died by her own hand …