Esoteric Hypnotic Vampires
by Terry O’Brien
Vampires are some of the most popular supernatural characters, and one of their most salient features (aside from living forever) is their hypnotic power.
But where did that power come from? Its not in any folklore of any kind, nor is it in Stoker or any other fiction of the time. (In fact, the hypnotist in “Dracula” was van Helsing, who hypnotized Mina to use her psychic connection with Dracula to track him as he fled across Europe.) But it was definitely seen in the 1931 movie with Bela Lugosi and it is now an accepted part of the canon. So somewhere in the approximately fifty years between the publication of “Dracula” and the Bela Lugosi movie the concept of vampire hypnotism was established.
Until recently, my best guess was that it had something to do with the popularity of hypnotism as a subject of investigation for the genteel upper-class society of Victorian England and the popularity of the novel “Trilby.” Just like :”Dracula”, “Trilby” also featured an Eastern European character, a character that was a sinister hypnotist. Even the illustrations in “Trilby” played up the stereotypical “eye contact” and “hypnotic gestures” inductions. It was only natural to consider that there was some cross-fertilization between “Trilby” and “Dracula” especially on stage. The problem was in trying to prove it.
However, after talking with Michelle Bellanger, who is an expert on vampires, I was led back to “Dracula” and especially the actor who portrayed him on stage.
That actor was Sir Henry Irving. This was the actor that Bram Stoker wrote the character for. Irving was reputed to be an extremely powerful charismatic individual, both on and off stage. So much so that Stoker himself was of two minds about him: Stoker wrote himself as both van Helsing the protagonist and as Renfield the sycophant. It was that charisma, suggests Michelle, that became the basis for vampire hypnosis.
If contemporary reviews of the plays in which Irving played Dracula mentions this, or if it was written into the stage directions in copies of the script from that time period, then this becomes a much easier theory to prove. Now all it needs is the research.
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