Abstract

This paper explores the cognitive foundations of vampirism beliefs. The occurrence of beliefs of the dead rising from graves and returning to harm the living across many cultures indicates that this concept has features that make it successful in the process of cultural transmission. Comparing ghost- and vampire-like beliefs, it is argued that bodiless agents and animated but dead bodies represent two divergent cognitive attractors concerning concepts of dead humans. The inferential potential of the classic idea of a bodiless ghost is based on intuitions produced by the mental system of Theory of Mind, while the traditional concepts of a vampire attribute to the dead only minimal intentionality. The inferential potential of a vampire is based on the system of disease avoidance and the emotion of disgust related to the dead body. Vampirism beliefs represent a cognitively attractive combination of a hazard and relevant actions to eliminate it: they postulate a threat of an animated corpse and relevant behavioral reaction, namely fatal interventions on vampire’s body.