Dhampir

When you hear the word “dhampir”, you probably think of the comic books and video games that made the concept popular.

But dhampirs have a mythology of their own.

It started in Balkan folklore, where they believed that male vampires were thirsty for more than blood when it came to human women. If a man became a vampire, he would inevitably return to … Well.

That gets spicy, so let’s just say that becoming a vampire didn't diminish a man's enthusiasm for his wife—or any other woman he'd fancied in life.

Yeah. Same vampire. Told you—thirsty.

And apparently, they were so good at seducing them that there were cases in Serbia (according to The mythological world of the Serbs (27) by Aleksandar Laković) of Serbian men pretending to be vampires to seduce women who’d previously told them to hit the road.

There was also at least one case of a Serbian widow who claimed her late husband had come back as a vampire, and that’s why she was now pregnant. Okay, honey. Sure.

Honestly, supernatural explanations for “embarrassing” pregnancies are hardly unusual in history. But that's a whole other subject — I reckon we should just stick to the dhampir angle, yeah?

Yeah, glad you’re with me. 😉

Anyway, the Balkans said the offspring born of such a union wasn’t exactly a vampire, but they weren’t really human either.

The original legends claimed that dhampirs, especially male dhampirs, could see invisible vampires and often practised sorcery. Small wonder, then, that many became vampire hunters, passing their skills on to their children.

Well, technically, the legends said “from father to son”, but there’s no rule that said a daughter couldn’t do it, too!

Bloody historical misogyny. Again.

Moving on.

The point is, dhampirs had quite the reputation as vampire slayers in the Balkan region at one time. And they didn't necessarily hunt them the way you'd expect. Many used magic to do it.

Which makes sense, really. If Balkan vampires were invisible to everyone else, being able to see them was a pretty handy qualification for the job.

Anyway, women who suspect their children might be dhampirs have a list of symptoms to look for.

They might be:

• Very dirty (seriously - dirty kids.)

• Having a soft body (what the heck do Balkan children usually feel like?)

• Having no fingernails or toenails (okay, I’ll give them that one)

• A “deep mark on the back, like a tail” (whatever that means)

• Having no bones (seriously WTF? Actually, this one was apparently inherited from their vampiric parent, since it was thought vampires have no bones either. Like ice cream.)

But you might also be a dhampir if your nose was pronounced, or your teeth, ears, or eyes were larger than normal.

So you heard it here first: Gerard Depardieu, Emma Stone, and Jim Carrey are all probably dhampirs. 🤔😏

No, not really.

Actually, according to J. Gordon Melton’s book The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, a true dhampir possessed a “slippery, jelly-like body and only lived a short life” - which makes one wonder how they managed to have sons to carry on the tradition. 🤔

I guess maybe local women are into that? After all, boning boneless vampires seemed to be popular, so why not boneless dhampirs too?

Popular culture, however, has selectively taken the bits they like from these legends.

Modern dhampirs are regarded as similar to a normal human, but souped-up.

Strength. Speed. Immunity to sunlight.

Sometimes they drink blood; sometimes they don’t need to.

The modern legends seem to have all the benefits of being a vampire with none of the weaknesses.

Except…

In some modern versions, if you shoot a vampire with ordinary bullets, you’ll ruin their clothes, piss them off and probably make your death hurt more.

Do that to a dhampir, and they’re just as 💀as any other ordinary human.

I guess no one can have it all, right?