VAMPIRE UNIVERSE:
THE DARK WORLD OF SUPERNATURAL BEINGS THAT HAUNT US, HUNT US AND HUNGER FOR US

VOLUME ONE

By
Jonathan Maberry
ISBN: 0-8065-2813-3
AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE!
Citadel Press
$16.95

Fully Illustrated

This is the first volume of Citadel Book’s four-volume comprehensive guide to the things that go bump in the night.

350 entries covering vampires, werewolves, cryptids, the living dead, vengeance ghosts, hellhounds and much more!

Color & BW Illustrations by some of today’s top horror and fantasy artists

 

FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

THE SHTRIGA by Ken Meyer

They are out there in the dark, always watching, always hungry. They have always been there, preying on humanity since before recorded history. Eternal. Patient. Ravenous.

Scary thought, isn’t it?

We humans have always believed in monsters, in strange beings whose exact nature is unknown and whose intent is decidedly alien. Prehistoric man painted cave walls with half-human half-animal figures. The walls and columns of ancient temples around the world are carved with semi-humans, monsters, demons and bestial gods. Clerics in the churches and temples of a thousand religions have warned of unnatural monsters that wanted to corrupt or destroy mankind. Stories of them have been handed down through the millennia, and are still told today, sometimes in jest…and sometimes with a tremble in the voice and a flick of the eye toward the nearest shadow. In the whole history of humanity on Earth there has not been one single culture that has not had legends of predatory supernatural monsters. They are everywhere.

LA LLORONA by Morbideus W Goodell

And they are certainly in here…in these volumes of the Vampire Universe series. In these pages, and in the books that follow, you will meet many hundreds of these weird and pernicious beings. Though there have been other single volumes out there which have attempted to collect all of these monsters but there are just too many of them. They exist in astonishing variety. However within that vast horde there are a number of recurring types of supernatural predator, and these categories or paradigms include vampires, theriomporphs (shape-shifters), revenants (the living dead), hags, imps, faeries, sea monsters, beast men, tricksters, and so on. Most people think that there is just a single example of each, that -for example—a vampire is a vampire, and that all vampires are alike. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Even within a major grouping there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of sub-species, each one unique. This creates a pretty severe problem for a monster hunter because what might stop one vampire might not stop another. It is vital to understand as many of the monsters as possible, otherwise the intrepid vampire slayer might become the main course of a gruesome feast.

BLUE WITCHES by Andy Jones

Vampires, you see, come in all shapes and sizes, and they exist in such exotic variety that the term ‘vampire’ itself is only used here for convenience. Vampirism isn’t limited just to the blood-sucking living dead because only about a third of the world’s vampires are hematophageous, meaning that they hunt for blood. Many vampires attack humans in order to feed off life essence, breath, or sexual essence; some even feed off emotions such as hope or love, or qualities like fidelity. Some vampires possess no physical form and prey on their victims as a flashing ball of light, or come in the form of a destructive plague. Some are even necrophageous (flesh eaters).

REVENANT by Robert Papp

One aspect of this book that will surprise many readers is that nearly everything the average person knows about vampires is wrong. Most of the qualities of the vampire and the methods of destroying them in the popular consciousness is not drawn from any of the world’s many cultural beliefs, but are instead the creation of writers of horror fiction, such as Bram Stoker and his many successors. For example, vampires, as a rule, do not fear sunlight or the cross, they are not prohibited from entering a house unless invited, they can cross running water, they don’t always sleep in their graves, and very few of them can be killed by a stake through the heart.



HAMRAMMR MASK by Steve Belden

Also, vampires come in all shapes and sizes (though generally they do not appear in the form of Eastern European nobility, wearing tuxedos and opera cloaks). Many species of vampires can shapeshift; but they generally don’t turn into wolves or bats (birds, insects, cats and balls of light are far more common). Not all vampires are resurrected corpses --some have never died, some are immortal beings, and some are created through sorcery. Vampires are not created by an exchange of blood between the vampire and its victim --that is pure fiction. And, not all vampires are evil. In short, if the average person living in modern times were confronted by a vampire, that person would be armed with all the wrong knowledge. “Oops!” hardly covers it.

Werewolf Transformation by Lee Moyer

Vampire Universe presents vampires in all their many forms and types; just as it does with the different species of werewolves, vengeance ghosts, wildmen, and others. It is the ultimate survival guide for anyone wishing to either take a stand against evil --or successfully flee from it.

The Ghul by Jason Beam

For students of the weird and terrible, the book and its sequels have an additional benefit in that even some of the well-documented monsters presented here are seen from a different point of view. Often the entries include information from older and rarer sources than are commonly referenced in occult encyclopedia, which means that scholars, writers, and anyone fascinated by monsters will have some new information to chew on. Even more information on monsters can be found on the official website for this book (www.vampireuniverse.com).