When placed in the wider context of a seemingly universal need to ensure that the dead stay in their graves, it’s highly suggestive. The subtitle of the medieval historian John Blair’s Killing the Dead is a tease, since vampire fiction is almost an afterthought. Why is St Cuthbert’s miraculously preserved corpse proof of sainthood when a similarly intact corpse is suspected of being under demonic control? Above all, what’s so threatening about young women and children, surely the most blameless and harmless members of a patriarchal society? A literary exemplar Blair does have time for is Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novella Carmilla, because it captures so well the archetype of the dangerous female corpse.