Compared to the East, the definition of western ghosts is more extensive. In addition to the soul of the deceased, it includes not only the charm of landscape and the oddness of scenery, but also the pination, astrology, witchcraft, etc. Its extension covers almost all the supernatural phenomena. Vampires are the horror that has spread in the West since ancient times. In recent years, due to a large number of films, many people believe that they do exist.

The earliest origin of vampires shall come from the Bible. After Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, their first child born was Cain, a farmer who lived with his younger brother, a shepherd. Once the two offered up a sacrifice to God. The younger provided meat as a tribute, while the elder presented vegetables and radishes, which incurred God’s dissatisfaction. Cain was so angry that he murdered his brother. God questioned Cain, said that his young brother’s ghost had cried out against Cain’s atrocity, and then punished Cain for immortality with the curse of living on sucking blood from living people. There came another story afterwards recounting that Judas, the disciple of Jesus, had betrayed him. Judas received a reward of 30 silver coins, but felt so remorseful that he hanged himself at sunset. God could not bear Judah’s betrayal and punished him for becoming an immortal vampire. 

In these stories, vampires are an ancient and mysterious race. They are far more powerful than the ordinary, and possess extraordinary talents. And on account of all those miraculous legends, we can tell that vampires are widely acknowledged in western countries.

1.2 Practical Significance of Ghosts in the Field of Literature

All traditional folk beliefs in China are mixtures of secular and sacred traditions. In accordance with the stream of realistic life, the image of ghosts is used as an opposite cultural concept of human life to disclose all sorts of absurdity and reluctance in life, and to dissect multiple aspects of alienation of life. The demonized transformation of the human body has not been viewed as a phantom in the narration, but an affirmative fact, which is a concrete manifestation of God’s intervention in human activities via the devil. Figures that have lost living space, manifesting as ghosts, are no longer in the light of old sayings like ‘people die to be ghosts’ or ‘ghosts are returned anima’, but an ugly morpha excluded from time.

Besides expressing rewards and comeuppance to reflect reality, literature on ghosts has its ironical significance in the era where Chinese feudalism is exceedingly strict with fictions.  In the shield of non-human world, by dint of fables and legends of ghosts, the author can thoroughly criticize social reality. Works such as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Firefly Window and Grass, XiaoDouPeng and others all resort to the ghost world to satirize the real life. Beneath the seemingly absurd appearance, the author’s sentiment and evaluation towards life, love, ideology, etc. are implied. 

It is a tradition in China to write phantoms with human feelings in ghost novels. On the basis of traditional skills, taking humanistic novels as realistic techniques to describe the world of ghosts as the secular one, writers disclose the truth of the society in a weird manner of transformation, make comments on humanity in virtue of ghosts, mirror the social reality with the nether world, and infiltrate the inner discontent and resentment into ghosts. Whether the cynicism in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the incisiveness in The Notes of Yuewei Cottage, or the understatement in Zibuyu, they are generally common in denouncing humanity and current social ethos via ghosts.

Although Anne Rice chose vampires as the creative elements, her vampire series are not vulgar novels that exaggeratedly render the atmosphere of terror and sci-fi plot, but literary works with profoundly practical significance.