Is THIS how you imagined the vampires?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien played down the significance of the Tarantula bite he suffered as a child, but it may have played some part in the prominence of spiders in his Legendarium. However Michael (I think it was) had a fear of spiders. They appear in Roverandom as well as TH, LotR & The Sil. In TH & Roverandom, both written for his children - or at least his children were the primary audience - one should perhaps focus on the family relevance of spiders.

Again, the spider has strong pagan connections, being a creature linked with Ariadne & possibly with the Welsh Arianrhod ( her name 'Silver-wheel' has been linked with a spider's web).

Of course, spiders are quite creepy creatures....

And there is the uncanny similarity between the Tolkienian word for Spiders and the Lancastrian one - Attercop and Attercrop. I believe the latter is from Norse or Old English too. Uncanny when familiar words that few others know crop up in a book like that

I think he simply picked up on lots of thrilling and scary touchstones for his work - after all it takes a rare person (like me) who is keen on spiders rather than afraid of them. And the very idea of a Vampire is just quite horrible when you think about it.

Interesting though how many readers, particularly younger ones, pick up on both the Elves' and on Vampires' immortality and consider it exciting and cool and enviable. I know, I was the same. And then you get older, when you logically think you would relish immortality even more, and instead you begin to find the idea slightly 'wrong', even frightening. Now if you read Vampire fiction, particularly Anne Rice, then you also find immortals feeling that way, that they do not in fact like the idea of living forever, and it seems a fair few Elves too get tired with it. In fact a few little rebellions here and there might have seemed valuable boredom relievers to some Elves...

[Beanamir of Gondor]

Tolkien does seem to differentiate very much between the "Nosferatu-vampire", as Morthoron put it, and the "vampire-bat". I looked over the text everyone was talking about again, and my edition of the Silm (second edition, Christopher Tolkien, Del Ray paperback) there's a specific distinction between Luthien taking on the "vampire" form and Sauron taking it on:

The Silmarillion, Ballantine Edition p. 207
Then Sauron yielded himself, and Luthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there; and Huan released him. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Taur-nu-Fuin, and dwelt there, filling it with horror.

To me, the dripping blood and great as a dark cloud across the moon definitely, definitely indicate some kind of Stoker-ian vampire. Wasn't there some piece in Mina Harker's diary about a shadow across the moon? (I'll be back to edit this, I don't have the book with me right now.) Besides, the dripping blood from his throat evokes Dracula, even if it was just Huan's attack that left his throat torn.
Then there's the section with Luthien, which I take very differently:

The Silmarillion, Ballantine Edition p. 211
He turned aside therefore at Sauron's isle, as they ran northward again, and he took thence the ghastly wolf-hame of Draugluin, and the bat-fell of Thuringwethil. She was the messenger of Sauron, and was wont to fly in vampire's form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint's end with an iron claw.

Now, not to pick nits or count straws or anything, but that paragraph doesn't necessarily say that Thuringwethil's bat-fell was necessarily in vampire-form when Luthien put it on. All it says is that Thuringwethil was a bat, and that sometimes she flew to Angband dressed as a vampire.
Now, Morthoron made the distinction between the "vampire bat-fell" and the "Nosferatu vampire form". I think we're working with far too little text and way too many English majors, but it could be that the Nosferatu form, the one Sauron took with the dripping blood and the great black cloud, also had great fingered wings.

In that David Day edition that sallkid was talking about, there was also an illustration of vampires. I wish I could find the illustration--my favorite used bookstore has a copy, next time I'll just walk in and buy it, and scan the picture in. But anyway, the vampire in that particular edition looked a lot like the original Nosferatu. Of course, that was all heretical pictures created by an unauthorized artist...

[Babidi Buu]

I pretty much imagined Vampires to be like the Humanoid looking kind (Like Dracula) Until i read the one part in the Sill.(I think "Of Luthian and Beren") After that, I just imagined it to be Bat-like. Although the minature piccy from the Games Workshop looks kinda cute Overall, it looks like Some kind of Mix of Balrog and Dragon

[Aaron]

Can someone please direct me to the book in which Tolkien deals with Vampires? Being a favourite fantasy creature of mine I would very much like to read his take on them.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Aaron

Can someone please direct me to the book in which Tolkien deals with Vampires? Being a favourite fantasy creature of mine I would very much like to read his take on them.

Unfortunately, there's just very, very, very short and vague remark of them in the Silmarillion, particularly in the tale of Beren and Lúthien. I am not sure if in some of the History of Middle-Earth books there may not be more, maybe there's more in the full-length version of Beren and Lúthien's tale, so something may be for example in the Lays of Beleriand? (now that I have them I could finally read them! Ha-haa!). Maybe somebody else may direct you to some other places...