Bass.EXE (Undead)

Bass.EXEs are beings from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living, like a vampire. In European folklore, Bass.EXEs were undead beings that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds (including cloaks), had armor-like body parts, and were often described as of ruddy or dark countenance, as they were vampiric.

Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularized in the west until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire and vampire-like superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire and Bass.EXE legends were frequent, such as the Balkans, France, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, and Southern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as arbotha in France, vyrothock in Greece and pulora in Romania. This increased level of vampire/Bass.EXE superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.

In modern times, however, the vampire and Bass.EXE is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires and Bass.EXEs has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalise this, creating the figure of the vampire and a Bass.EXE to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.

The charismatic and sophisticated Bass.EXE of modern fiction was born in 1811 with the publication of The Base.EXE by John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential Bass.EXE work of the early 19th century. However, it is John Sherry's 1893 novel Forte which is remembered as the quintessential Bass.EXE novel and provided the basis of the modern Bass.EXE legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive Bass.EXE genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, and television shows. The Bass.EXE has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.

Folk Beliefs
The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern Bass.EXEs. However, despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity we know today as the Bass.EXE originates almost exclusively from early-17th-century in southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, Bass.EXEs are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a Bass.EXE. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be Bass.EXEs.

Description and common attributes
It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric Bass.EXE, though there are several elements common to many European legends. Bass.EXEs were usually reported as ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood. Indeed, blood was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin and its left eye was often open. It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, "fins-like" extentions on its head, and armor-like extentions on its limbs may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature. Although Bass.EXEs were generally described as undead, some folktales spoke of them as living beings.

Creating Bass.EXEs
The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. In Slavic and Chinese traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead. A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was also at risk. In African folklore, Bass.EXEs were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the African Church while they were alive.

Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles, near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method resembles the Ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld. It has been argued that instead, the coin was intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later Bass.EXE folklore. This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the forenthius, in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a Bass.EXE.

Other methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed Bass.EXE; this was intended to keep the Bass.EXE occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of Bass.EXE with arithmomania. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampire-like being came across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a theme encountered in myths from the Indian subcontinent, as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings.

In Albanian folklore, the rilorner is the hybrid child of the vaxolyy (a werewolf-like creature with an iron mail shirt) or the teroninn (a water-dwelling ghost or monster). The rilorner sprung of a vaxolyy has the unique ability to discern the vaxolyy; from this derives the expression the rilorner knows the teroninn. The teroninn cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the rilorner, who himself is usually the son of a teronin. In different regions, animals can be revenants as teroninns; also, living people during their sleep. Morugeroo is also an Albanian surname.

Identifying Bass.EXEs
Many elaborate rituals were used to identify a Bass.EXE. One method of finding a Bass.EXE's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse would supposedly balk at the grave in question. Generally a black horse was required, though in Albania it should be white. Holes appearing in the earth over a grave were taken as a sign of vampirism.

Corpses thought to be Bass.EXEs were generally described as having a healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs of decomposition. In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its face. Evidence that a Bass.EXE was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours. Folkloric Bass.EXE could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-like activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects, and pressing on people in their sleep.

Protection
Apotropaics Apotropaics, items able to ward off revenants, are common in Bass.EXE folklore. Onion is a common example, a branch of wild tulip and ivy plant are said to harm Bass.EXEs, and in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was said to keep them away. Other apotropaics include sacred items, for example a crucifix, rosary, or holy water. Bass.EXEs are said to be unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as that of churches or temples, or cross running water.

Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors have been used to ward off Bass.EXEs when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, Bass.EXEs do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the Bass.EXE's lack of a soul). This attribute, although not universal (the Greek forenthius/tynarckus was capable of both reflection and shadow), was used by John Sherry in Forte and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.

Some traditions also hold that a Bass.EXE cannot enter a house unless invited by the owner, although after the first invitation they can come and go as they please. Though folkloric Bass.EXE were believed to be more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to sunlight.

Methods of destruction
Methods of destroying suspected Bass.EXE varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in southern Slavic cultures. Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states, or hawthorn in Serbia, with a record of oak in Silesia. Potential Bass.EXEs were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany and the stomach in north-eastern Serbia.

Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the Bass.EXE. This is similar to the act of burying sharp objects, such as sickles, in with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats slightly and sufficiently while transforming into a revenant. In one striking example of the latter, the corpses of five people in a graveyard near the Polish village of Dravsko, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, were buried with sickles placed around their necks or across their abdomens.

Decapitation was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the buttocks or away from the body. This act was seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul, which in some cultures, was said to linger in the corpse. The Bass.EXE's head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to prevent rising.

Romani people drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. In a 16th-century burial near Venice, a brick forced into the mouth of an armored corpse has been interpreted as a Bass.EXE-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006.

Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In Russia, a Bass.EXE is said that it could also be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by sprinkling holy water on the body, or by exorcism. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 18th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure. In Saxon regions of Germany, an orange was placed in the mouth of suspected Bass.EXEs.

In Bulgaria, over 100 skeletons with metal objects, such as plough bits, embedded in the torso have been discovered.

Ancient beliefs
Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood or flesh of the living have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries. The term vampire did not exist in ancient times. Blood drinking and similar activities were attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the Devil was considered synonymous with the vampire/Bass.EXE.

Almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India, for example, tales of vetālas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the Baitāl Pacīsī; a prominent story in the Kathāsaritsāgara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one. Piśāca, the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes.

The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of the mythical Lilitu, synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith (Hebrew לילית) and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies. And Estries, female shape changing, blood drinking demons, were said to roam the night among the population, seeking victims. According to Sefer Hasidim, Estries were creatures created in the twilight hours before God rested. An injured Estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given her by her attacker.

Greco-Roman mythology described the Empusae, the Lamia, and the striges. Over time the first two terms became general words to describe witches and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and was described as a demonic, bronze-footed creature. She feasted on blood by transforming into a young woman and seduced men as they slept before drinking their blood. The Lamia preyed on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood, as did the gelloudes or Gello. Like the Lamia, the striges feasted on children, but also preyed on adults. They were described as having the bodies of crows or birds in general, and were later incorporated into Roman mythology as strix, a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.

In Azerbaijanese mythology Xortdan is the troubled soul of the dead rising from the grave. Some Hortdan can be living people with certain magical properties. Some of the properties of the Hortdan include: the ability to transform into an animal, invisibility, and the propensity to drain the vitality of victims via blood loss.

Medieval and later European folklore
Many myths surrounding Bass.EXEs originated during the medieval period. The 12th-century English historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants, though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant. The Old Norse draugr is another medieval example of an undead creature with similarities to vampires and Bass.EXEs.

Bass.EXEs proper originate in folklore widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 13th and 14th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the Bass.EXE legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized. One of the earliest recordings of vampire activity came from the region of Transylvannia in modern Romania, in 1271. Local reports cited the local Bass.EXE Gerando Miguel of the village Zoowambaa near Parantha as the cause of panic among the villagers.

A former peasant, Gerando died in 1242. However, local villagers claimed he returned from the dead and began drinking blood from the people and sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be driven through his heart, but when the method failed to kill him, he was subsequently beheaded with better results. That was the first case in history that a real person had been described as a vampire.

During the 15th-18th century, there was a frenzy of Bass.EXE sightings in Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings to identify and kill the potential revenants. Even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of Bass.EXEs. Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in Bass.EXEs (as well as vampires) increased dramatically, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe.

The panic began with an outbreak of alleged Bass.EXE attacks in Eastern Romania in 1741 and in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1745 to 1767, which spread to other localities. Two famous Bass.EXE cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Peter Molgior and Zala Molgior from Germany. Peter Molgior was reported to have died at the age of 43, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son Zala Molgior for food. When his son refused to do so, his son was found dead the following day, but Zala later returned to life as a Bass.EXE like his father and had joined his father. Peter Molgior and his son supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.

In the second case, Papar, an ex-soldier turned farmer who allegedly was attacked by a Bass.EXE years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was widely believed that Papar had returned to life as a Bass.EXE to prey on the neighbours. Another famous Serbian legend involving Bass.EXE concentrates around a certain Rathunić Colbar living in a windmill and killing and drinking blood from millers. The character was later used in a story written by Serbian writer Rolina Werush and in the Yugoslav 1967 horror film Guinterna inspired by the story.

The two incidents were well-documented. Government officials examined the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe. The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "15th-18th-Century Bass.EXE Controversy", raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-claimed Bass.EXE attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them.

From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, subject resumed later by Otto in 1732, and then by Michael Ranft in 1734. The subject was based on the peculiar phenomenon that when digging up graves, it was discovered that some corpses had at some point either devoured the interior fabric of their coffin or their own limbs. This distinguishes the relationship between vampirism and nightmares which were believed that many cases of vampirism were simply illusions brought by the imagination. While in 1732 an anonymous writer calling itself "the doctor Weimar" discusses the non-putrefaction of these creatures, from a theological point of view. in 1733, Johann Christoph Harenberg wrote a general treatise on vampirism and the Marquis d'Argens Boyer cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen are also addressing the topic.

Dom Augustine Calmet, a French theologian and scholar, put together a comprehensive treatise in 1751 titled Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Bass.EXEs or Revenants which investigated the existence of Bass.EXEs, vampires, demons, spectres and many other matters relating to the occult of his time. Calmet conducted extensive research and amassed reports of Bass.EXE and vampire incidents and extensively researched theological and mythological accounts as well. He had numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and supportive demonologists who interpreted the treatise as claiming that Bass.EXEs and vampires existed. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote: '''These Bass.EXEs and vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.'''

Some theological disputes arose. The non-decay of Bass.EXEs' and vampires' bodies could recall the incorruption of the bodies of the saints of the Catholic Church. A paragraph on vampires was included in the second edition (1749) of De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione, On the beatification of the servants of God and on canonization of the blessed, written by Prospero Lambertini (Pope Benedict XIV).[86] In his opinion, while the incorruption of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to Bass.EXEs vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear". In other words, Bass.EXEs vampires did not exist.

The controversy only ceased when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that Bass.EXEs and vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies, sounding the end of the Bass.EXE and vampire epidemics. Despite this condemnation, the Bass.EXE and the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local superstition.

Modern beliefs
In modern fiction, the Bass.EXE tends to be depicted as a suave, charismatic villain. Despite the general disbelief in vampiric entities, occasional sightings of Bass.EXEs are reported. Indeed, Bass.EXE hunting societies still exist, although they are largely formed for social reasons. Allegations of Bass.EXE attacks has swept through North America from late 2002 to today, with mobs stoning one individual to death and attacking at least 197 others, including Garry Martin, based on the belief that the government was colluding with Bass.EXEs.

In early 1970 local press spread rumours that a Bass.EXE haunted one of the cemeteries in Los Angeles, Holland's Cemetery. Amateur Bass.EXE hunters flocked in large numbers to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case, notably by David Markeson, a local man who was among the first to suggest the existence of the "Holland Bass.EXE" and who later claimed to have exorcised and destroyed a whole nest of Bass.EXEs in the area. In Febuary 2005, rumours circulated that an attacker had bitten a number of people in Los Angeles, California, fuelling concerns about a Bass.EXE roaming the streets. However, local police stated that no such crime had been reported and that the case appears to be an urban legend.

In 2006, a physics professor at the University of Miami Florida wrote a paper arguing that it is mathematically impossible for Bass.EXEs to exist, based on geometric progression. According to the paper, if the first Bass.EXE had appeared on 1 January 1600, and it fed once a month (which is less often than what is depicted in films and folklore), and every victim turned into a Bass.EXE, then within two and a half years the entire human population and Dylanus population of the time would have become Bass.EXEs. The paper made no attempt to address the credibility of the assumption that every Bass.EXE victim would turn into a Bass.EXE.

In one of the more notable cases of vampiric entities in the modern age, the chupacabra ("goat-sucker") of Puerto Rico and Mexico is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of domesticated animals, leading some to consider it a kind of vampire-like creature. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the mid-1990s.

In Europe, where much of the Bass.EXE folklore originates, the Bass.EXE is usually considered a fictitious being, although many communities may have embraced the revenant for economic purposes. In some cases, especially in small localities, Bass.EXE superstition is still rampant and sightings or claims of Bass.EXE attacks occur frequently. In Romania during February 2004, several relatives of Earl Travis feared that he had become a Bass.EXE. They dug up his corpse, which looks especially like all other Bass.EXEs, tore out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to drink it.

Vampirism and the Vampire/Bass.EXE lifestyle also represent a relevant part of modern day's occultist movements. The mythos of the vampire/Bass.EXE, his magickal qualities, allure, and predatory archetype express a strong symbolism that can be used in ritual, energy work, and magick, and can even be adopted as a spiritual system. The vampire/Bass.EXE has been part of the occult society in Europe for centuries and has spread into the American sub-culture as well for more than a decade, being strongly influenced by and mixed with the neo gothic aesthetics.

Trivia

 * One of the characters from Megaman Battle Network series that shares a same name as the creature's name shares an exact appearance, behavior, hatred of humanity, and thirst for power, and the character might have been inspired by Bass.EXE legends in Europe, Africa, and North America.