title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 2015 review found fair evidence to support tramadol use if other medications do not work. A 2018 review found little evidence to support the combination of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and tramadol over a single medication. Goldenberg "et al" suggest that tramadol works via its serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibition, rather than via its action as a weak opioid receptor agonist.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A large study of US people with fibromyalgia found that between 2005 and 2007 37.4% were prescribed short-acting opioids and 8.3% were prescribed long-acting opioids, with around 10% of those prescribed short-acting opioids using tramadol; and a 2011 Canadian study of 457 people with FM found 32% used opioids and two-thirds of those used strong opioids.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Capsaicin has been suggested as a topical pain reliever. Preliminary results suggest that it may improve sleep quality and fatigue, but there are not enough studies to support this claim.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Sodium oxybate increases growth hormone production levels through increased slow-wave sleep patterns. However, this medication was not approved by the FDA for the indication for use in people with fibromyalgia due to the concern for abuse.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: The muscle relaxants cyclobenzaprine, carisoprodol with acetaminophen and caffeine, and tizanidine are sometimes used to treat fibromyalgia; however, as of 2015 they are not approved for this use in the United States. The use of NSAIDs is not recommended as first line therapy. Moreover, NSAIDs cannot be considered as useful in the management of fibromyalgia.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 2013 review found moderate-level evidence on the usage of acupuncture with electrical stimulation for improvement of the overall well-being. Acupuncture alone will not have the same effects, but will enhance the influence of exercise and medication in pain and stiffness.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Nutrition is related to fibromyalgia in several ways. Some nutritional risk factors for fibromyalgia complications are obesity, nutritional deficiencies, food allergies and consuming food additives. The consumption of fruits and vegetables, low-processed foods, high-quality proteins, and healthy fats may have some benefits. Low-quality evidence found some benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Although dietary supplements have been widely investigated in relation to fibromyalgia, most of the evidence, as of 2021, is of poor quality. It is therefore difficult to reach conclusive recommendations. It appears that Q10 coenzyme and vitamin D supplements can improve pain and quality of life for fibromyalgia patients. Q10 coenzyme has beneficial effects on fatigue in fibromyalgia patients, with most studies using doses of 300 mg per day for three months. Q10 coenzyme is hypothesized to improve mitochondrial activity and decrease inflammation. Vitamin D has been shown to improve some fibromyalgia measures, but not others.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A review article including four studies with 98 patients found that melatonin treatment has several positive effects on fibromyalgia patients, including the improvement of sleep quality, pain, and disease impact. No major adverse events were reported.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Due to the uncertainty about the pathogenesis of FM, current treatment approaches focus on management of symptoms to improve quality of life, using integrated pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches. There is no single intervention shown to be effective for all patients. In a 2020 Cochrane review cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was found to have a small but beneficial effect for reducing pain and distress but adverse events were not well evaluated. CBT and related psychological and behavioural therapies have a small to moderate effect in reducing symptoms of fibromyalgia. Effect sizes tend to be small when CBT is used as a stand-alone treatment for FM patients, but these improve significantly when CBT is part of a wider multidisciplinary treatment program.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 2010 systematic review of 14 studies reported that CBT improves self-efficacy or coping with pain and reduces the number of physician visits at post-treatment, but has no significant effect on pain, fatigue, sleep, or health-related quality of life at post-treatment or follow-up. Depressed mood was also improved but this could not be distinguished from some risks of bias. A 2022 meta-analysis found that CBT reduces insomnia in people with chronic pain, including people with fibromyalgia. Sleep hygiene interventions, however, were not as effective.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Patient education is recommended by the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) as an important treatment component. As of 2022, there is only low-quality evidence showing that patient education can decrease pain and fibromyalgia impact.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 2021 meta-analysis concluded that massage and myofascial release diminish pain in the medium-term. As of 2015, there was no good evidence for the benefit of other mind-body therapies.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is the delivery of pulsed electrical currents to the skin to stimulate peripheral nerves. TENS is widely used to treat pain and is considered to be a low-cost, safe, and self-administered treatment. As such, it is commonly recommended by clinicians to people suffering from pain. On 2019, an overview of eight Cochrane reviews was conducted, covering 51 TENS-related randomized controlled trials. The review concluded that the quality of the available evidence was insufficient to make any recommendations. A later review concluded that transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation may diminish pain in the short-term, but there was uncertainty about the relevance of the results.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Preliminary findings suggest that electrically stimulating the vagus nerve through an implanted device can potentially reduce fibromyalgia symptoms. However, there may be adverse reactions to the procedure.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Noninvasive brain stimulation includes methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation and high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Both methods have been found to improve pain scores in neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 2021 meta-analysis of multiple intervention types concluded that magnetic field therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation may diminish pain in the short-term, but conveyed an uncertainty about the relevance of the result. Several 2022 meta-analyses focusing on transcranial magnetic stimulation found positive effects on fibromyalgia. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation improved pain in the short-term and quality of life after 5–12 weeks. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation did not improve anxiety, depression, and fatigue. Transcranial magnetic stimulation to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was also ineffective.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has shown beneficial effects in treating chronic pain. However, treating fibromyalgia with hyperbaric oxygen therapy is still controversial, in light of the scarcity of large-scale clinical trials. In addition, hyperbaric oxygen therapy raises safety concerns due to the oxidative damage that may follow it.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Although in itself fibromyalgia is neither degenerative nor fatal, the chronic pain of fibromyalgia is pervasive and persistent. Most people with fibromyalgia report that their symptoms do not improve over time. However, most patients learn to adapt to the symptoms over time. The German guidelines for patients explain that:


title: Fibromyalgia

text: An 11-year follow-up study on 1,555 patients found that most remained with high levels of self-reported symptoms and distress. However, there was a great deal of patient heterogeneity accounting for almost half of the variance. At the final observation, 10% of the patients showed substantial improvement with minimal symptoms. An additional 15% had moderate improvement. This state, though, may be transient, given the fluctuations in symptom severity.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A study of 97 adolescents diagnosed with fibromyalgia followed them for eight years. After eight years, the majority of youth still experienced pain and disability in physical, social, and psychological areas. At the last follow-up, all participants reported experiencing one or more fibromyalgia symptoms such pain, fatigue, and/or sleep problems, with 58% matching the complete ACR 2010 criteria for fibromyalgia. Based on the WPI and SS score cut-points, the remaining 42% exhibited subclinical symptoms. Pain and emotional symptom trajectories, on the other hand, displayed a variety of longitudinal patterns. The study concluded that while most patient's fibromyalgia symptoms endure, the severity of their pain tends to reduce over time.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Chronic widespread pain had already been described in the literature in the 19th century but the term fibromyalgia was not used until 1976 when Dr P.K. Hench used it to describe these symptoms. Many names, including "muscular rheumatism", "fibrositis", "psychogenic rheumatism", and "neurasthenia" were applied historically to symptoms resembling those of fibromyalgia. The term "fibromyalgia" was coined by researcher Mohammed Yunus as a synonym for fibrositis and was first used in a scientific publication in 1981. Fibromyalgia is from the Latin "fibra" (fiber) and the Greek words "myo" (muscle) and "algos" (pain).


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Historical perspectives on the development of the fibromyalgia concept note the "central importance" of a 1977 paper by Smythe and Moldofsky on fibrositis. The first clinical, controlled study of the characteristics of fibromyalgia syndrome was published in 1981, providing support for symptom associations. In 1984, an interconnection between fibromyalgia syndrome and other similar conditions was proposed, and in 1986, trials of the first proposed medications for fibromyalgia were published.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: A 1987 article in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" used the term "fibromyalgia syndrome" while saying it was a "controversial condition". The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) published its first classification criteria for fibromyalgia in 1990. Later revisions were made in 2010, 2016, and 2019.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: People with fibromyalgia generally have higher healthcare costs and utilization rates. A review of 36 studies found that fibromyalgia causes a significant economic burden on health care systems. Annual costs per patient were estimated to be up to $35,920 in the US and $8,504 in Europe.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: Fibromyalgia was defined relatively recently. In the past, it was a disputed diagnosis. Frederick Wolfe, lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, stated in 2008 that he believed it "clearly" not to be a disease but instead a physical response to depression and stress. In 2013 Wolfe added that its causes "are controversial in a sense" and "there are many factors that produce these symptoms – some are psychological and some are physical and it does exist on a continuum". Some members of the medical community did not consider fibromyalgia a disease because of a lack of abnormalities on physical examination and the absence of objective diagnostic tests.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: In the past, some psychiatrists have viewed fibromyalgia as a type of affective disorder, or a somatic symptom disorder. These controversies do not engage healthcare specialists alone; some patients object to fibromyalgia being described in purely somatic terms.


title: Fibromyalgia

text: As of 2022, neurologists and pain specialists tend to view fibromyalgia as a pathology due to dysfunction of muscles and connective tissue as well as functional abnormalities in the central nervous system. Rheumatologists define the syndrome in the context of "central sensitization" – heightened brain response to normal stimuli in the absence of disorders of the muscles, joints, or connective tissues. Because of this symptomatic overlap, some researchers have proposed that fibromyalgia and other analogous syndromes be classified together as central sensitivity syndromes.


title: Vampire

text: A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. Vampiric entities have been recorded in cultures around the world; the term "vampire" was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism. Local variants in Eastern Europe were also known by different names, such as "shtriga" in Albania, "vrykolakas" in Greece and "strigoi" in Romania.


title: Vampire

text: In modern times, the vampire 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 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 rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.


title: Vampire

text: The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of "The Vampyre" by the English writer John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend, even though it was published after fellow Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel "Carmilla". The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, television shows, and video games. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.


title: Vampire

text: The word "vampire" (as "vampyre") first appeared in English in 1732, in news reports about vampire "epidemics" in eastern Europe. After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires". These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity. The English term was derived (possibly via French ) from the German , in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian ().


title: Vampire

text: The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian (), Bosnian: (), Croatian , Czech and Slovak , Polish , and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) , Ukrainian (), Russian (), Belarusian (), from Old East Slavic () (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). The exact etymology is unclear. Among the proposed Proto-Slavic forms are and . In Albanian the words and are used; the latter seems to be derived from the Gheg Albanian words 'tooth' and 'to drink'.


title: Vampire

text: Another less widespread theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar , although the first folk legends about it were recorded only at the end of the 18th century). Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb 'stick to, thrust into', or its hypothetical anagram (in Czech, the archaic verb means 'to thrust violently') as an etymological background, and thus translates as 'someone who thrusts, bites'. An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian ), dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of is reported.


title: Vampire

text: The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, Manipuri and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires 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 vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.


title: Vampire

text: It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire, though there are several elements common to many European legends. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood, which 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, hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature. Chewing sounds were reported emanating from graves.


title: Vampire

text: 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 Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the Russian Orthodox Church while they were alive.


title: Vampire

text: In Albanian folklore, the dhampir is the hybrid child of the (a lycanthropic creature with an iron mail shirt) or the (a water-dwelling ghost or monster). The dhampir sprung of a "karkanxholl" has the unique ability to discern the "karkanxholl"; from this derives the expression "the dhampir knows the lugat". The lugat cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the dhampir, who himself is usually the son of a lugat. In different regions, animals can be revenants as lugats; also, living people during their sleep. is also an Albanian surname.


title: Vampire

text: 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. The coin may have also been intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore. This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the "vrykolakas", 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 vampire.


title: Vampire

text: 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 vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampiric 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.


title: Vampire

text: Many rituals were used to identify a vampire. One method of finding a vampire'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.


title: Vampire

text: Corpses thought to be vampires 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 vampire was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours. Folkloric vampires could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-styled activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects, and pressing on people in their sleep.


title: Vampire

text: Apotropaics—items able to ward off revenants—are common in vampire folklore. Garlic is a common example, a branch of wild rose and hawthorn are sometimes associated with causing harm to vampires, and in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was used to keep them away. Other apotropaics include sacred items, such as crucifix, rosary, or holy water. Some folklore also states that vampires are unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as that of churches or temples, or cross running water.


title: Vampire

text: Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire's lack of a soul). This attribute is not universal (the Greek "vrykolakas/tympanios" was capable of both reflection and shadow), but was used by Bram Stoker in "Dracula" and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.


title: Vampire

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


title: Vampire

text: Reports in 1693 and 1694 concerning citings of vampires in Poland and Russia claimed that when a vampire's grave was recognized, eating bread baked with its blood mixed into the flour, or simply drinking it, granted the possibility of protection. Other stories (primarily the Arnold Paole case) claimed the eating of dirt from the vampire's grave would have the same effect.


title: Vampire

text: Methods of destroying suspected vampires varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in South Slavic cultures. Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states, or hawthorn in Serbia, with a record of oak in Silesia. Aspen was also used for stakes, as it was believed that Christ's cross was made from aspen (aspen branches on the graves of purported vampires were also believed to prevent their risings at night). Potential vampires 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 bloated vampire. This is similar to a practice of "anti-vampire burial": burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.


title: Vampire

text: 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 vampire's head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to prevent rising.


title: Vampire

text: 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 a female corpse has been interpreted as a vampire-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006. In Bulgaria, over 100 skeletons with metal objects, such as plough bits, embedded in the torso have been discovered.


title: Vampire

text: Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In the Balkans, a vampire 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 19th 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, a lemon was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires.


title: Vampire

text: 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. Almost every culture associates blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India tales of vetālas, ghoulish 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.


title: Vampire

text: 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 shapeshifting, 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 . An injured estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given to her by her attacker.


title: Vampire

text: Greco-Roman mythology described the Empusae, the Lamia, the Mormo 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.


title: Vampire

text: Many myths surrounding vampires originated during the medieval period. The 12th-century British 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. Vampiric beings were rarely written about in Jewish literature; the 16th-century rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) wrote of an uncharitable old woman whose body was unguarded and unburied for three days after she died and rose as a vampiric entity, killing hundreds of people. He linked this event to the lack of a "shmirah" (guarding) after death as the corpse could be a vessel for evil spirits.


title: Vampire

text: In 1645, the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work "De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus" ("On certain modern opinions among the Greeks"). Vampires properly originating in folklore were widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized. An early recording of the time came from the region of Istria in modern Croatia, in 1672; Local reports described a panic among the villagers inspired by the belief that Jure Grando had become a vampire after dying in 1656, drinking blood from victims and sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be driven through his heart. Later, his corpse was also beheaded.


title: Vampire

text: From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, a subject resumed by Otto in 1732, and then by Michael Ranft in 1734. The subject was based on the observation 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. Ranft described in his treatise of a tradition in some parts of Germany, that to prevent the dead from masticating they placed a mound of dirt under their chin in the coffin, placed a piece of money and a stone in the mouth, or tied a handkerchief tightly around the throat. In 1732 an anonymous writer writing as "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 cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen also address the topic.


title: Vampire

text: Some theological disputes arose. The non-decay of 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). In his opinion, while the incorruption of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear". In other words, vampires did not exist.


title: Vampire

text: During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in Eastern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings to identify and kill the potential revenants. Even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of vampires.


title: Vampire

text: Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in vampires increased dramatically, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe. The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg monarchy from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. Two infamous vampire cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Petar Blagojevich and Miloš Čečar from Serbia. Blagojevich was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Blagojevich supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.


title: Vampire

text: In the second case, Miloš, an ex-soldier-turned-farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was widely believed that Miloš had returned to prey on the neighbours. Another infamous Serbian vampire legend recounts the story of a certain Sava Savanović, who lives in a watermill and kills and drinks blood from the millers. The character was later used in a story written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić and in the Yugoslav 1973 horror film "Leptirica" inspired by the story.


title: Vampire

text: 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 "18th-Century Vampire Controversy", continued for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire 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. Dom Augustine Calmet, a French theologian and scholar, published a comprehensive treatise in 1751 titled "Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants" which investigated and analysed the evidence for vampirism. Numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and numerous supportive demonologists interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed.


title: Vampire

text: The controversy in Austria ceased when Empress Maria Theresa sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies, ending the vampire epidemics. Other European countries followed suit. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local folklore.


title: Vampire

text: Beings having many of the attributes of European vampires appear in the folklore of Africa, Asia, North and South America, and India. Classified as vampires, all share the thirst for blood.


title: Vampire

text: Various regions of Africa have folktales featuring beings with vampiric abilities: in West Africa the Ashanti people tell of the iron-toothed and tree-dwelling "asanbosam", and the Ewe people of the "adze," which can take the form of a firefly and hunts children. The eastern Cape region has the "impundulu," which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the Betsileo people of Madagascar tell of the "ramanga", an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles. In colonial East Africa, rumors circulated to the effect that employees of the state such as firemen and nurses were vampires, known in Swahili as "wazimamoto".


title: Vampire

text: The "Loogaroo" is an example of how a vampire belief can result from a combination of beliefs, here a mixture of French and African Vodu or voodoo. The term "Loogaroo" possibly comes from the French "loup-garou" (meaning "werewolf") and is common in the culture of Mauritius. The stories of the "Loogaroo" are widespread through the Caribbean Islands and Louisiana in the United States. Similar female monsters are the "Soucouyant" of Trinidad, and the "Tunda" and "Patasola" of Colombian folklore, while the Mapuche of southern Chile have the bloodsucking snake known as the "Peuchen". "Aloe vera" hung backwards behind or near a door was thought to ward off vampiric beings in South American folklore. Aztec mythology described tales of the Cihuateteo, skull-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them mad.


title: Vampire

text: During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was widespread in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for sickness and death in the family, although the term "vampire" was never used to describe the dead. The deadly disease tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was known at the time, was believed to be caused by nightly visitations on the part of a dead family member who had died of consumption themselves. The most famous, and most recently recorded, case of suspected vampirism is that of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown, who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb two months after her death, cut out her heart and burned it to ashes.


title: Vampire

text: Vampires have appeared in Japanese cinema since the late 1950s; the folklore behind it is western in origin. The Nukekubi is a being whose head and neck detach from its body to fly about seeking human prey at night. Legends of female vampiric beings who can detach parts of their upper body also occur in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There are two main vampiric creatures in the Philippines: the Tagalog "Mandurugo" ("blood-sucker") and the Visayan "Manananggal" ("self-segmenter"). The mandurugo is a variety of the aswang that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings and a long, hollow, threadlike tongue by night. The tongue is used to suck up blood from a sleeping victim. The "manananggal" is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge batlike wings and prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes. They use an elongated proboscislike tongue to suck fetuses from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails (specifically the heart and the liver) and the phlegm of sick people.


title: Vampire

text: The Malaysian "Penanggalan" is a woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local folklore to be dark or demonic in nature. She is able to detach her fanged head which flies around in the night looking for blood, typically from pregnant women. Malaysians hung "jeruju" (thistles) around the doors and windows of houses, hoping the "Penanggalan" would not enter for fear of catching its intestines on the thorns. The Leyak is a similar being from Balinese folklore of Indonesia. A "Kuntilanak" or "Matianak" in Indonesia, or "Pontianak" or "Langsuir" in Malaysia, is a woman who died during childbirth and became undead, seeking revenge and terrorising villages. She appeared as an attractive woman with long black hair that covered a hole in the back of her neck, with which she sucked the blood of children. Filling the hole with her hair would drive her off. Corpses had their mouths filled with glass beads, eggs under each armpit, and needles in their palms to prevent them from becoming "langsuir." This description would also fit the Sundel Bolongs.


title: Vampire

text: In Vietnam, the word used to translate Western vampires, "ma cà rồng", originally referred to a type of demon that haunts modern-day Phú Thọ Province, within the communities of the Tai Dam ethnic minority. The word was first mentioned in the chronicles of 18th-century Confucian scholar Lê Quý Đôn, who spoke of a creature that lives among humans, but stuffs its toes into its nostrils at night and flies by its ears into houses with pregnant women to suck their blood. Having fed on these women, the "ma cà rồng" then returns to its house and cleans itself by dipping its toes into barrels of sappanwood water. This allows the "ma cà rồng" to live undetected among humans during the day, before heading out to attack again by night.


title: Vampire

text: Jiangshi, sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 "pò") fails to leave the deceased's body. "Jiangshi" are usually represented as mindless creatures with no independent thought. This monster has greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or mould growing on corpses. Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia. Films like "Encounters of the Spooky Kind" and "Mr. Vampire" were released during the jiangshi cinematic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.


title: Vampire

text: In modern fiction, the vampire tends to be depicted as a suave, charismatic villain. Vampire hunting societies still exist, but they are largely formed for social reasons. Allegations of vampire attacks swept through Malawi during late 2002 and early 2003, with mobs stoning one person to death and attacking at least four others, including Governor Eric Chiwaya, based on the belief that the government was colluding with vampires. Fears and violence recurred in late 2017, with 6 people accused of being vampires killed.


title: Vampire

text: In early 1970, local press spread rumours that a vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters flocked in large numbers to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case, notably by Sean Manchester, a local man who was among the first to suggest the existence of the "Highgate Vampire" and who later claimed to have exorcised and destroyed a whole nest of vampires in the area. In January 2005, rumours circulated that an attacker had bitten a number of people in Birmingham, England, fuelling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. Local police stated that no such crime had been reported and that the case appears to be an urban legend.


title: Vampire

text: 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. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the mid-1990s.


title: Vampire

text: In Europe, where much of the vampire folklore originates, the vampire is usually considered a fictitious being; many communities may have embraced the revenant for economic purposes. In some cases, especially in small localities, beliefs are still rampant and sightings or claims of vampire attacks occur frequently. In Romania during February 2004, several relatives of Toma Petre feared that he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to drink it.


title: Vampire

text: Commentators have offered many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs and related mass hysteria. Everything ranging from premature burial to the early ignorance of the body's decomposition cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.


title: Vampire

text: Author Paul Barber stated that belief in vampires resulted from people of pre-industrial societies attempting to explain the natural, but to them inexplicable, process of death and decomposition. People sometimes suspected vampirism when a cadaver did not look as they thought a normal corpse should when disinterred. Rates of decomposition vary depending on temperature and soil composition, and many of the signs are little known. This has led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead body had not decomposed at all or to interpret signs of decomposition as signs of continued life.


title: Vampire

text: Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso and the increased pressure forces blood to ooze from the nose and mouth. This causes the body to look "plump", "well-fed", and "ruddy"—changes that are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. In the Arnold Paole case, an old woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbours to look more plump and healthy than she had ever looked in life. The exuding blood gave the impression that the corpse had recently been engaging in vampiric activity. Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition. The staking of a swollen, decomposing body could cause the body to bleed and force the accumulated gases to escape the body. This could produce a groan-like sound when the gases moved past the vocal cords, or a sound reminiscent of flatulence when they passed through the anus. The official reporting on the Petar Blagojevich case speaks of "other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect". After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the roots of the hair, nails, and teeth, even teeth that were concealed in the jaw. This can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels away, as reported in the Blagojevich case—the dermis and nail beds emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".


title: Vampire

text: Vampire legends may have also been influenced by individuals being buried alive because of shortcomings in the medical knowledge of the time. In some cases in which people reported sounds emanating from a specific coffin, it was later dug up and fingernail marks were discovered on the inside from the victim trying to escape. In other cases the person would hit their heads, noses or faces and it would appear that they had been "feeding". A problem with this theory is the question of how people presumably buried alive managed to stay alive for any extended period without food, water or fresh air. An alternate explanation for noise is the bubbling of escaping gases from natural decomposition of bodies. Another likely cause of disordered tombs is grave robbery.


title: Vampire

text: Folkloric vampirism has been associated with clusters of deaths from unidentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community. The epidemic allusion is obvious in the classical cases of Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole, and even more so in the case of Mercy Brown and in the vampire beliefs of New England generally, where a specific disease, tuberculosis, was associated with outbreaks of vampirism. As with the pneumonic form of bubonic plague, it was associated with breakdown of lung tissue which would cause blood to appear at the lips.


title: Vampire

text: In 1985, biochemist David Dolphin proposed a link between the rare blood disorder porphyria and vampire folklore. Noting that the condition is treated by intravenous haem, he suggested that the consumption of large amounts of blood may result in haem being transported somehow across the stomach wall and into the bloodstream. Thus vampires were merely sufferers of porphyria seeking to replace haem and alleviate their symptoms.


title: Vampire

text: The theory has been rebuffed medically as suggestions that porphyria sufferers crave the haem in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based on a misunderstanding of the disease. Furthermore, Dolphin was noted to have confused fictional (bloodsucking) vampires with those of folklore, many of whom were not noted to drink blood. Similarly, a parallel is made between sensitivity to sunlight by sufferers, yet this was associated with fictional and not folkloric vampires. In any case, Dolphin did not go on to publish his work more widely. Despite being dismissed by experts, the link gained media attention and entered popular modern folklore.


title: Vampire

text: Juan Gómez-Alonso, a neurologist, examined the possible link of rabies with vampire folklore. The susceptibility to garlic and light could be due to hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of rabies. It can also affect portions of the brain that could lead to disturbance of normal sleep patterns (thus becoming nocturnal) and hypersexuality. Legend once said a man was not rabid if he could look at his own reflection (an allusion to the legend that vampires have no reflection). Wolves and bats, which are often associated with vampires, can be carriers of rabies. The disease can also lead to a drive to bite others and to a bloody frothing at the mouth.


title: Vampire

text: In his 1931 treatise "On the Nightmare", Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones asserted that vampires are symbolic of several unconscious drives and defence mechanisms. Emotions such as love, guilt, and hate fuel the idea of the return of the dead to the grave. Desiring a reunion with loved ones, mourners may project the idea that the recently dead must in return yearn the same. From this arises the belief that folkloric vampires and revenants visit relatives, particularly their spouses, first.


title: Vampire

text: In cases where there was unconscious guilt associated with the relationship, the wish for reunion may be subverted by anxiety. This may lead to repression, which Sigmund Freud had linked with the development of morbid dread. Jones surmised in this case the original wish of a (sexual) reunion may be drastically changed: desire is replaced by fear; love is replaced by sadism, and the object or loved one is replaced by an unknown entity. The sexual aspect may or may not be present. Some modern critics have proposed a simpler theory: People identify with immortal vampires because, by so doing, they overcome, or at least temporarily escape from, their fear of dying.


title: Vampire

text: Jones linked the innate sexuality of bloodsucking with cannibalism, with a folkloric connection with incubus-like behaviour. He added that when more normal aspects of sexuality are repressed, regressed forms may be expressed, in particular sadism; he felt that oral sadism is integral in vampiric behaviour.


title: Vampire

text: The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones. The aristocratic Count Dracula, alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers, appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry, is symbolic of the parasitic "ancien régime". In his entry for "Vampires" in the "Dictionnaire philosophique" (1764), Voltaire notices how the mid-18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now "there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces".


title: Vampire

text: Marx defined capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks". Werner Herzog, in his "Nosferatu the Vampyre", gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist Jonathan Harker, a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.


title: Vampire

text: A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims. Serial killers Peter Kürten and Richard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in the tabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. In 1932, an unsolved murder case in Stockholm, Sweden, was nicknamed the "Vampire murder", because of the circumstances of the victim's death. The late-16th-century Hungarian countess and mass murderess Elizabeth Báthory became infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth.


title: Vampire

text: Although many cultures have stories about them, vampire bats have only recently become an integral part of the traditional vampire lore. Vampire bats were integrated into vampire folklore after they were discovered on the South American mainland in the 16th century. There are no vampire bats in Europe, but bats and owls have long been associated with the supernatural and omens, mainly because of their nocturnal habits.


title: Vampire

text: The three species of vampire bats are all endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any Old World relatives within human memory. It is therefore impossible that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the vampire bat. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the "Oxford English Dictionary" records their folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. The danger of rabies infection aside, the vampire bat's bite is usually not harmful to a person, but the bat has been known to actively feed on humans and large prey such as cattle and often leaves the trademark, two-prong bite mark on its victim's skin.


title: Vampire

text: The literary Dracula transforms into a bat several times in the novel, and vampire bats themselves are mentioned twice in it. The 1927 stage production of "Dracula" followed the novel in having Dracula turn into a bat, as did the film, where Béla Lugosi would transform into a bat. The bat transformation scene was used again by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1943's "Son of Dracula".


title: Vampire

text: The vampire is now a fixture in popular fiction. Such fiction began with 18th-century poetry and continued with 19th-century short stories, the first and most influential of which was John Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819), featuring the vampire Lord Ruthven. Lord Ruthven's exploits were further explored in a series of vampire plays in which he was the antihero. The vampire theme continued in penny dreadful serial publications such as "Varney the Vampire" (1847) and culminated in the pre-eminent vampire novel in history: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, published in 1897.


title: Vampire

text: Over time, some attributes now regarded as integral became incorporated into the vampire's profile: fangs and vulnerability to sunlight appeared over the course of the 19th century, with Varney the Vampire and Count Dracula both bearing protruding teeth, and Count Orlok of Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) fearing daylight. The cloak appeared in stage productions of the 1920s, with a high collar introduced by playwright Hamilton Deane to help Dracula 'vanish' on stage. Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to be healed by moonlight, although no account of this is known in traditional folklore. Implied though not often explicitly documented in folklore, immortality is one attribute which features heavily in vampire film and literature. Much is made of the price of eternal life, namely the incessant need for blood of former equals.


title: Vampire

text: The vampire or revenant first appeared in poems such as "The Vampire" (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, "Lenore" (1773) by Gottfried August Bürger, "Die Braut von Corinth" ("The Bride of Corinth") (1797) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey's "Thalaba the Destroyer" (1801), John Stagg's "The Vampyre" (1810), Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Spectral Horseman" (1810) ("Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore") and "Ballad" in "St. Irvyne" (1811) about a reanimated corpse, Sister Rosa, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished "Christabel" and Lord Byron's "The Giaour".


title: Vampire

text: Byron was also credited with the first prose fiction piece concerned with vampires: "The Vampyre" (1819). This was in reality authored by Byron's personal physician, John Polidori, who adapted an enigmatic fragmentary tale of his illustrious patient, "Fragment of a Novel" (1819), also known as "The Burial: A Fragment". Byron's own dominating personality, mediated by his lover Lady Caroline Lamb in her unflattering "roman-a-clef" "Glenarvon" (a Gothic fantasia based on Byron's wild life), was used as a model for Polidori's undead protagonist Lord Ruthven. "The Vampyre" was highly successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.


title: Vampire

text: "Varney the Vampire" was a popular mid-Victorian era gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, which first appeared from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as "penny dreadfuls" because of their low price and gruesome contents. Published in book form in 1847, the story runs to 868 double-columned pages. It has a distinctly suspenseful style, using vivid imagery to describe the horrifying exploits of Varney. Another important addition to the genre was Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire story "Carmilla" (1871). Like Varney before her, the vampiress Carmilla is portrayed in a somewhat sympathetic light as the compulsion of her condition is highlighted.


title: Vampire

text: No effort to depict vampires in popular fiction was as influential or as definitive as Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897). Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. The vampiric traits described in Stoker's work merged with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.


title: Vampire

text: Drawing on past works such as "The Vampyre" and "Carmilla", Stoker began to research his new book in the late 19th century, reading works such as "The Land Beyond the Forest" (1888) by Emily Gerard and other books about Transylvania and vampires. In London, a colleague mentioned to him the story of Vlad Ţepeş, the "real-life Dracula", and Stoker immediately incorporated this story into his book. The first chapter of the book was omitted when it was published in 1897, but it was released in 1914 as "Dracula's Guest".


title: Vampire

text: The latter part of the 20th century saw the rise of multi-volume vampire epics as well as a renewed interest in the subject in books. The first of these was Gothic romance writer Marilyn Ross's "Barnabas Collins" series (1966–71), loosely based on the contemporary American TV series "Dark Shadows". It also set the trend for seeing vampires as poetic tragic heroes rather than as the more traditional embodiment of evil. This formula was followed in novelist Anne Rice's highly popular "Vampire Chronicles" (1976–2003), and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (2005–2008).


title: Vampire

text: Considered one of the preeminent figures of the classic horror film, the vampire has proven to be a rich subject for the film, television, and gaming industries. Dracula is a major character in more films than any other but Sherlock Holmes, and many early films were either based on the novel "Dracula" or closely derived from it. These included the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film "Nosferatu", directed by F. W. Murnau and featuring the first film portrayal of Dracula—although names and characters were intended to mimic "Dracula"s. Universal's "Dracula" (1931), starring Béla Lugosi as the Count and directed by Tod Browning, was the first talking film to portray Dracula. Both Lugosi's performance and the film overall were influential in the blossoming horror film genre, now able to use sound and special effects much more efficiently than in the Silent Film Era. The influence of this 1931 film lasted throughout the rest of the 20th century and up through the present day. Stephen King, Francis Ford Coppola, Hammer Horror, and Philip Saville each have at one time or another derived inspiration from this film directly either through staging or even through directly quoting the film, particularly how Stoker's line ""Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!"" is delivered by Lugosi; for example Coppola paid homage to this moment with Gary Oldman in his interpretation of the tale in 1992 and King has credited this film as an inspiration for his character Kurt Barlow repeatedly in interviews. It is for these reasons that the film was selected by the US Library of Congress to be in the National Film Registry in 2000.


title: Vampire

text: The legend of the vampire continued through the film industry when Dracula was reincarnated in the pertinent Hammer Horror series of films, starring Christopher Lee as the Count. The successful 1958 "Dracula" starring Lee was followed by seven sequels. Lee returned as Dracula in all but two of these and became well known in the role. By the 1970s, vampires in films had diversified with works such as "Count Yorga, Vampire" (1970), an African Count in 1972's "Blacula", the BBC's "Count Dracula" featuring French actor Louis Jourdan as Dracula and Frank Finlay as Abraham Van Helsing, and a Nosferatu-like vampire in 1979's "Salem's Lot", and a remake of "Nosferatu" itself, titled Nosferatu the Vampyre with Klaus Kinski the same year. Several films featured the characterization of a female, often lesbian, vampire such as Hammer Horror's "The Vampire Lovers" (1970), based on "Carmilla", though the plotlines still revolved around a central evil vampire character.


title: Vampire

text: The Gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows", on American television from 1966 to 1971, featured the vampire character Barnabas Collins, portrayed by Jonathan Frid, which proved partly responsible for making the series one of the most popular of its type, amassing a total of 1,225 episodes in its nearly five-year run. The pilot for the later 1972 television series "" revolved around a reporter hunting a vampire on the Las Vegas Strip. Later films showed more diversity in plotline, with some focusing on the vampire-hunter, such as Blade in the Marvel Comics' "Blade" films and the film "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". "Buffy", released in 1992, foreshadowed a vampiric presence on television, with its adaptation to a series of the same name and its spin-off "Angel". Others showed the vampire as a protagonist, such as 1983's "The Hunger", 1994's "Interview with the Vampire" and its indirect sequel "Queen of the Damned", and the 2007 series "Moonlight". The 1992 film "Bram Stoker's Dracula" by Francis Ford Coppola became the then-highest grossing vampire film ever.


title: Vampire

text: This increase of interest in vampiric plotlines led to the vampire being depicted in films such as "Underworld" and "Van Helsing", the Russian "Night Watch" and a TV miniseries remake of "Salem's Lot", both from 2004. The series "Blood Ties" premiered on Lifetime Television in 2007, featuring a character portrayed as Henry Fitzroy, an illegitimate-son-of-Henry-VIII-of-England-turned-vampire, in modern-day Toronto, with a female former Toronto detective in the starring role. A 2008 series from HBO, entitled "True Blood", gives a Southern Gothic take on the vampire theme. In 2008 "Being Human" premiered in Britain and featured a vampire that shared a flat with a werewolf and a ghost. The continuing popularity of the vampire theme has been ascribed to a combination of two factors: the representation of sexuality and the perennial dread of mortality.


title: Vampire

text: The role-playing game "" has been influential upon modern vampire fiction and elements of its terminology, such as "embrace" and "sire", appear in contemporary fiction. Popular video games about vampires include "Castlevania", which is an extension of the original Bram Stoker novel "Dracula", and "Legacy of Kain". The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons features vampires.


title: Vampire

text: "Vampire lifestyle" is a term for a contemporary subculture of people, largely within the Goth subculture, who consume the blood of others as a pastime; drawing from the rich recent history of popular culture related to cult symbolism, horror films, the fiction of Anne Rice, and the styles of Victorian England. Active vampirism within the vampire subculture includes both blood-related vampirism, commonly referred to as "sanguine vampirism", and "psychic vampirism", or supposed feeding from pranic energy.


title: J. Cole

text: Jermaine Lamarr Cole (born January 28, 1985) is an American rapper and record producer. Born on a military base in Germany and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cole initially gained recognition as a rapper following the release of his debut mixtape, "The Come Up", in early 2007. Intent on further pursuing a musical career, he went on to release two additional mixtapes, "The Warm Up" (2009) and "Friday Night Lights" (2010) both to critical acclaim, after signing to Jay-Z's Roc Nation imprint in 2009.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole released his debut studio album, "", in 2011. It debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200. His next album, "Born Sinner" (2013), also topped the "Billboard" 200. Moving into more conscious themes, "2014 Forest Hills Drive" (2014) topped the "Billboard" 200 and earned Cole a Best Rap Album nomination at the 2015 Grammy Awards. His jazz influenced fourth album, "4 Your Eyez Only" (2016), debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200. Cole's fifth album, "KOD" (2018), became his fifth number-one album on the "Billboard" 200 and featured a then-record six simultaneous top twenty hits on the "Billboard" Hot 100, tying with the Beatles. His sixth studio album, "The Off-Season", which earned him his sixth number-one album, was released on May 14, 2021.


title: J. Cole

text: Self-taught on piano, Cole also acts as a producer alongside his rap career, producing singles for artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Janet Jackson, as well as handling the majority of the production in his own projects. He has also developed other ventures, including Dreamville Records, as well as a non-profit organization called the Dreamville Foundation. Dreamville's compilation album "Revenge of the Dreamers III" (2019) debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. In January 2015, Cole decided to house single mothers rent-free at his childhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole has won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song, a "Billboard" Music Award for Top Rap Album, three Soul Train Music Awards, and 8 BET Hip Hop Awards. All five of his albums have been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as "Revenge of the Dreamers III".


title: J. Cole

text: Jermaine Lamarr Cole was born on January 28, 1985, at an American military base in Frankfurt, West Germany. His father is an African American veteran, who served in the U.S. Army, and his mother, Kay, is a European American who was a postal worker for the United States Postal Service. Cole's father later abandoned the family during his youth. At the age of eight months his mother moved with him and his older brother Zach to the United States, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Cole grew up in a multi-ethnic environment, and when asked about how closely his ethnicity impacts him, Cole commented, "I can identify with white people, because I know my mother, her side of the family, who I love. But at the end of the day, [I've] never felt white. I can identify [with white people] but never have I felt like I'm one of them. I identify more with what I look like, because that's how I got treated [but] not necessarily in a negative way". During his youth, Cole expressed an affinity for basketball and music, and served as a first-chair violinist for the Terry Sanford Orchestra until 2003.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole began rapping at the age of twelve, and saw it as an ideal profession in 2000, when his mother purchased an ASR-X musical sampler as a Christmas gift. During this period, Cole heightened emphasis on improving his production skills, later beginning initial production under the pseudonym Therapist. Cole later collaborated with local group Bomm Sheltuh, rapping and producing as a member of the group.


title: J. Cole

text: Upon graduating high school with a 4.2 GPA, Cole decided that his chances of securing a recording contract would be better in New York City. He moved there and accepted a scholarship to St. John's University. Initially majoring in computer science, Cole later switched to communication and business after witnessing the life of a lonely computer science professor. At the college, Cole was the president of Haraya, a pan-African student coalition. He graduated "magna cum laude" in 2007, with a 3.8 GPA. Despite graduating, Cole would officially receive his degree during a homecoming concert in 2015, revealing that he had owed money for a library book, causing the university to hold back from granting him his degree.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole later worked in various part-time jobs in Fayetteville, including a working ad salesman for a newspaper, a bill collector, a file clerk, and a kangaroo mascot at a skate rink.


title: J. Cole

text: After becoming musically inspired by Canibus, Nas, Tupac and Eminem, Cole and his cousin worked on developing their basic understanding of rhyming and wordplay. As well as this, they began to learn how to interpolate storytelling within their lyrics. By 14, Cole had various notebooks filled with song ideas, however, was unable to produce beats further than sampling. Cole's mother later purchased him the Roland TR-808 drum machine in order to further Cole's understanding of production. Over the next three years, he began posting songs on various internet forums under the moniker "Blaza", but later switched to the name "Therapist".


title: J. Cole

text: Cole later expanded his production to create an entire CD's worth of instrumentals, and traveled to Roc the Mic Studio, hoping to play it for Jay Z while he was in recording sessions for "American Gangster". Cole waited for over three hours, before being dismissed by Jay Z. Cole later used the CD as the backdrop for his debut mixtape, "The Come Up".


title: J. Cole

text: J. Cole released his second mixtape, "The Warm Up", on June 15, 2009 to positive reviews. Cole appeared on Jay Z's album "The Blueprint 3" (2009), on the track "A Star Is Born." He is featured on both Wale's debut album, "Attention Deficit" (2009) and mixtape "Back to the Feature" (2009), respectively. In January 2010, Cole, along with label mate Jay Electronica and Mos Def appeared on Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek's single, "Just Begun" for the follow-up of Reflection Eternal's album "Train of Thought" (2000), titled "Revolutions Per Minute" (2010). Cole also appeared on B.o.B's mixtape "May 25" (2010), on the song "Gladiators", produced by The Alchemist.


title: J. Cole

text: In early 2010, Cole was chosen as one of "Beyond Race" magazine's "50 Great Breakthrough Artists," he ranked 49, resulting in the cover story of the publication's #11 issue, as well as a Q&A for the magazine's site. He was also featured in XXL Magazine's 2010 version of the Top Ten Freshmen, a yearly publication focusing on new rappers. Cole began a college tour from March 19, 2010 to April 30, 2010 concluding in New Brunswick, NJ at Rutgers University's annual Rutgersfest. The tour also featured a stop at Syracuse University for a show with fellow rapper, Wiz Khalifa. On March 31, he performed a new song titled "Who Dat" and released the song as a single on April 30, 2010. Cole was also featured on Young Chris' song "Still The Hottest" as well as Miguel's debut single "All I Want Is You." Additionally, Cole was featured on a track titled "We On", a song that failed to make the final track list for DJ Khaled's "Victory" LP.


title: J. Cole

text: To celebrate the anniversary of the release of "The Warm Up" mixtape, J. Cole released a freestyle entitled "The Last Stretch" on June 15, 2010. On June 21 of that year, J. Cole premiered the music video to his first single "Who Dat" on the BET program "106 & Park". In August 2010, Cole was awarded the UMA Male Artist of the Year thanks to his heralded "The Warm Up" mixtape and a high-profile deal with Jay Z's label Roc Nation at the 2010 Underground Music Awards. In a July 2010 interview, J. Cole revealed three songs that would appear on his debut album: "Dreams", "Won't Be Long", and "Never Told", which was produced by No I.D. On October 30, 2010, a demo titled "I'm Coming Home" was leaked onto the internet. Cole recorded the song as a reference track for Diddy, which later became "Coming Home" off "Last Train to Paris" (2010). On November 12, 2010, J. Cole released his third official mixtape titled "Friday Night Lights". The tape included features from Drake, Wale, and Omen with most of the production being handled by Cole himself.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole served as a supporting act for Drake on the Light Dreams and Nightmares UK Tour, from January 5–21, 2011. In April 2011, "HiiiPoWeR", a song Cole produced for Kendrick Lamar's "Section.80" (2011) was released. The single was the first of many collaborations to come from the two. On May 22, 2011, Cole released a song entitled "Return of Simba," the third in the "Simba" series of songs, following "Simba" and "Grown Simba." Cole purposely avoided releasing his debut album's title for fear of inconsistency, only announcing that Jay-Z would be featured on his debut album. Cole then released his follow-up single to "Who Dat", the album's lead single, "Work Out" on June 15, 2011, in honor of the second anniversary of his highly acclaimed mixtape "The Warm Up". The song, produced by Cole himself, samples "The New Workout Plan" by Kanye West and interpolates "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul. The song later became a hit single, topping several music charts.


title: J. Cole

text: On July 31, Cole took to Twitter to announce "Any Given Sunday", reminiscent of Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays, a weekly free music giveaway. Cole wrote "Every Sunday til the album drops I'll be back with something. Maybe just 1 song, maybe a video, depending on how I'm feeling." For the 3rd installment of the series, Cole took to Ustream to update fans about the album and play a select few tracks that didn't make the final track list. On August 15, the music video for "Work Out" premiered on YouTube, Vevo, and 106 & Park. On August 22, Cole released his debut album's cover art, designed by Alex Haldi for Bestest Asbestos, whom Cole recorded a song for, titled "Killers", for Haldi's mixtape "The Glorification of Gangster". For the fourth installment on August 29, he released his debut album's track list, once again through Twitter.


title: J. Cole

text: On August 30, after an unfinished version had previously leaked, "Can't Get Enough" featuring R&B singer Trey Songz was released as the album's second single. While in Barbados for his last performance as the official opening act for Rihanna's Loud Tour, Cole shot the music video for "Can't Get Enough" with Songz and Rihanna, who provided a cameo appearance. The video, directed by Clifton Bell, was released on September 14, 2011. In addition, early on September 25, two days before his album's release, Cole released the music video for the iTunes bonus track "Daddy's Little Girl".


title: J. Cole

text: "" was released September 27, 2011 debuting at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 chart, with 218,000 copies in its first-week of sales. , the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments and sales of 500,000 copies. On February 7, 2012, the third and final single from Cole's debut album was released. The song, titled "Nobody's Perfect", features renowned female rapper Missy Elliott, marking her return to music. , the album had sold 855,000 copies in the United States.


title: J. Cole

text: On October 24, 2011, during an interview with Hot 106's "Rise & Grind" morning show, Cole revealed he had begun working on his second studio album, with hopes of releasing it in June 2012. He also stated that the album would consist of songs that failed to make his debut, saying "I don't know how many, but I got songs that didn't make the last album that are automatically going to make this one," he said, revealing the release date: "June. End of June, maybe June." From November 6 to 8, Cole served as the supporting act for Tinie Tempah, appearing at Bournemouth International Centre; Liverpool Echo Arena, Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Cardiff, Wales; LG Arena, Birmingham, England; SECC Arena, Glasgow, Scotland; and MEN Arena, Manchester.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2012 Grammy Awards. Cole played for the Eastern Team in the 2012 NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game. On February 24, 2012, Cole reached two million followers on Twitter, and celebrated by releasing the song "Grew Up Fast." On March 1, 2012, Cole returned to his home town, Fayetteville, North Carolina. To celebrate his return, he released the song "Visionz of Home", and launched an event titled "Dreamville Weekend" to inspire the youth of his hometown to achieve great things. Cole performed for the first time in Africa during the Big Brother Africa 7 opening ceremony on May 6, 2012, alongside Camp Mulla, P-Square, Naeto C, Flavour N'abania, Davido, and Aemo E'Face.


title: J. Cole

text: On May 14, Cole announced that he was working on a collaborative album with Kendrick Lamar, saying in an interview with Bootleg Kev that "I just started working with Kendrick the other day. We got it in, finally, again. We got maybe four or five [songs] together", also saying that the project would be more focused on and eventually released once "Born Sinner" had been released. On July 26, he returned to Twitter after a 100-day absence and went on to reveal and release his new song, "The Cure", in which he hinted at a new album. On October 20, he announced at a live show that his second album was complete and that he was waiting until after Lamar released "good kid, m.A.A.d city" to reveal it.


title: J. Cole

text: On November 5, Cole revealed the title of his second album, "Born Sinner", as well as a scheduled release date of January 28, 2013, via Ustream. On November 13, 2012, Cole released a promotional single for the album, titled "Miss America." Cole stated that he hoped "Miss America" would shift music in a different direction, adding that he knew it wouldn't be a big radio hit. He elaborated further, saying, "To me, 'Miss America' shifts things a little bit, it changes the conversation, it takes it in a more aggressive direction, more raw, more social commentary... Any type of commentary is good compared to what a normal single is these days. That's my aim, is to shift culture slightly, change the conversation. Nobody expects that for your first single."


title: J. Cole

text: On December 31, 2012, Cole revealed that "Born Sinner" would not be released on January 28, 2013, as previously expected. Cole said that he "needed a little more time than that to get things done." In promotion of "Born Sinner", Cole released an EP titled "Truly Yours" on February 12, 2013, the project consisted of five tracks Cole knew would not appear on "Born Sinner". On February 14, 2013, he released the artwork for the first single via Instagram. "Power Trip" was released on February 14, 2013, marking Cole's second collaboration with R&B recording artist Miguel.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole had announced a release date of June 25, 2013 for "Born Sinner". However, when it was announced that Kanye West's "Yeezus" would be released just one week earlier on June 18, Cole moved the release date of "Born Sinner" up a week in order to compete with West. He later commented, "This is art, and I can't compete against the Kanye West celebrity and the status that he's earned just from being a genius... But I can put my name in the hat and tell you that I think my album is great and you be the judge and you decide." Cole released the second installment in the "Truly Yours" series on April 30, 2013, the EP featured guest appearances from Bas, Young Jeezy and 2 Chainz. "Born Sinner" sold 297,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release, debuting at number two on the "Billboard" 200 chart, finishing approximately 30,000 copies short of Kanye West's "Yeezus". He released three more singles in support of the album, "Crooked Smile" featuring TLC, "Forbidden Fruit" featuring Kendrick Lamar, and "She Knows". , the album had sold 796,000 copies in the United States.


title: J. Cole

text: On August 15, 2014, Cole released "Be Free" in response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Three days later, he visited the city in order to meet with protesters and activists who were gathered at the site of his shooting, discussing the civil unrest that was taking place within the city. He performed the track with an additional verse at the "Late Show with David Letterman" on December 10.


title: J. Cole

text: On November 16, Cole released a video announcing that his third studio album, "2014 Forest Hills Drive", would be released on December 9. The video featured footage regarding the album's composition, as well as revealed that the album's name was derived from the address of Cole's childhood home. He announced that the album would include no lead singles and have little promotion, but was supported by four promotional singles; "Apparently", "Wet Dreamz", "No Role Modelz", and "Love Yourz". The album debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 upon release, selling 353,000 copies in its first week.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole announced the ""Forest Hills Drive Tour"" on February 13, 2015. The tour served as the backdrop for his first live album, "". The album recorded during the Fayetteville shows of the tour, and was released on Cole's 31st birthday.


title: J. Cole

text: On March 31, "2014 Forest Hills Drive" was certified platinum. , the album had sold 1.24 million copies in the United States. "2014 Forest Hills Drive" won Top Rap Album at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards and Album of the Year at the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards. The album was nominated at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album. The single "Apparently'" was also nominated for Best Rap Performance.


title: J. Cole

text: On December 15, 2015, Cole announced a documentary series titled "", ahead of his HBO special "". The series included five episodes as well as featuring guest appearances from Kendrick Lamar, Wale, Rihanna, Pusha T, Big Sean, Jay Z, and Drake. All episodes were released weekly and were available for free on Vimeo until January 9. The concert film "" aired on January 9, 2016, which was filmed during the final show of his Forest Hills Drive Tour at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, North Carolina. On January 28, 2016, Cole released "" as well as the music video for "Love Yourz", from concert film.


title: J. Cole

text: On July 29, 2016, DJ Khaled released his ninth studio album, "Major Key". Cole is featured on the track "Jermaine's Interlude". "Said all I could say, now I play with thoughts of retirement" is a direct quote from the track that caused some of Cole's fans to worry about him and his music career. In an interview with Genius, Doctur Dot of the Atlanta duo EarthGang explained that the song was originally a nine-minute posse cut, he said, "We were just trying to get Bas to fuck with the song, but Cole was like, 'I can't resist this beat,' so he hit the weed for the first time in a long time." "He overthinks on weed but we were in the garage smoking a blunt, the beat was running in the background. We stacked the hook up, we all had verses on it, it was a posse record and was like, nine verses long." On November 4, 2016, Cole performed at Jay Z and Beyoncé's Hillary Clinton Rally in Cleveland, Ohio, along with Big Sean and Chance the Rapper. On November 8, 2016, Spillage Village released the official version of "Jermaine's Interlude", called "Can't Call It". The song features Cole, EarthGang, Bas and JID.


title: J. Cole

text: On December 1, 2016, the artwork and a track list for Cole's fourth album, titled "4 Your Eyez Only", were shown on iTunes available for pre-order, with a release date for December 9, 2016. On December 2, 2016, Cole released a 40-minute documentary titled "Eyez", on Tidal. It features behind-the-scenes footage of Cole and collaborators working on the album, including two music videos for the tracks "Everybody Dies" and "False Prophets"; neither song was included on the album. On December 5, "False Prophets" and "Everybody Dies" were released as singles to iTunes store and other streaming services. "4 Your Eyez Only" debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 with 492,000 album-equivalent units, of which 363,000 were pure album sales, becoming Cole's fourth number one album. The track "Deja Vu" entered the US "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 7 without being released as a single, becoming J. Cole's highest charting song. All 10 songs from "4 Your Eyez Only" debuted in the top 40 of the Hot 100, after only having four top 40 hits as a solo artist. "False Prophets" and "Everybody Dies" both charted also. Cole achieved twelve simultaneous Hot 100 entries in a single week. "Deja Vu" was released as the album's first single on January 10, 2017. On January 12, 2017, "4 Your Eyez Only" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). On April 7, 2017 the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).


title: J. Cole

text: On January 16, 2017, Cole surprisingly released a track titled, "High for Hours" via his SoundCloud. The song was produced by Elite and Cam O'Bi. The song was released on the iTunes store as a single on January 18. Cole announced the 4 Your Eyez Only World Tour on February 21, 2017, the tour included 62 dates across North America, Europe and Australia. On March 24, 2017 HBO announced a documentary titled, "", the film aired April 15, 2017.


title: J. Cole

text: On April 16, 2018, J. Cole announced a surprise free event for fans at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City. The event turned out to be a listening session for his forthcoming album, titled "KOD", which was released on April 20, 2018. Cole held a second listening session in London the next day. The album's cover and tracklist show twelve tracks and two features, both by Cole's alter ego, Kill Edward. Cole had mentioned that "KOD" has 3 meanings, "Kids on Drugs", "King Overdosed", and "Kill Our Demons". The cover art for "KOD" was done by a Detroit artist named Kamau Haroon who goes by the name Sixmau. The album touches on many topics including drug abuse, addiction, depression, and greed.


title: J. Cole

text: In the United States, on the day of its release, "KOD" broke the previous record for "Views" by Drake in 2016 by receiving 64.5 million streams on Apple Music. It accumulated 36.7 million streams on Spotify in its first 24 hours as well. Additionally, the titled track also surpassed Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" by 0.4 million streams on its first day. The album debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200, earning 397,000 album-equivalent units, including 174,000 in pure sales, making it Cole's fifth number one album. J. Cole also became the first act to simultaneously debut three songs in the top 10 of the "Billboard" Hot 100, with "ATM" (at 6), "Kevin's Heart" (8), and "KOD" (10). The remainder of the album also debuted in the Hot 100, totaling to twelve songs on the chart. "KOD" was released as the album's first single, on May 8, 2018. Cole released music videos for the songs "ATM" and "Kevin's Heart", both of which were directed by Cole and Scott Lazer. "ATM" impacted US rhythmic contemporary radio on July 31, 2018, as the album's second single. Songs from the album were featured in the official 2018 NBA Playoffs and the NBA Finals promotion for ESPN. On April 27, 2018 it was announced that Cole was working on another project titled "The Fall Off", Cole said that he planned to release "The Fall Off" before he recorded "KOD". Cole also confirmed that he is working on a Kill Edward album. On May 14, 2018, "KOD" was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over 500,000 album-equivalent units in the US. The album has since been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with one million album-equivalent units in the United States.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole announced the KOD Tour on May 8, 2018, Young Thug, Jaden Smith, EarthGang and Kill Edward served as the supporting acts. The tour will include 34 North American dates, starting in Miami, on August 9 and concluding in Boston, on October 10, 2018. Cole performed "Intro" and "Friends" at the 2018 BET Awards on June 24, 2018. Singer Daniel Caesar performed part of "Intro" and the chorus to "Friends", rapper Wale was also part of the set.


title: J. Cole

text: On August 7, 2018, Cole released a single titled, "Album of the Year (Freestyle)". The single was accompanied by a music video, which premiered on WorldStarHipHop. Cole also announced a new project titled, "The Off Season", which he plans to release ahead of his next studio album, "The Fall Off". In the description to the video, it reads: ""The Off Season" coming soon... All roads lead to "The Fall Off" - Cole". In an interview for "Billboard" in September 2018, Cole said he plans to take off 2019 from touring to finish work on "The Off Season", "The Fall Off", and the Kill Edward project.


title: J. Cole

text: On January 6, 2019, Cole took to Twitter to announce Dreamville's compilation album "Revenge of the Dreamers III" by uploading a gold poster-like invitation. Recording sessions took place in Atlanta beginning January 6 through January 16, 2019. Throughout the 10-days of recording, invitations were shared by the entire Dreamville roster, among other artists and producers outside of Dreamville. A total of 343 artists and producers were invited to the sessions including, Big K.R.I.T., Mike Will Made It, DJ Khaled, Swizz Beatz, Tay Keith, T.I, Rick Ross, 9th Wonder and Wale, among others. On January 23, 2019, Cole released his first lead single since 2013 titled, "Middle Child". With only one day of tracking, "Middle Child" debuted at number 26 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. The following week, the song peaked at number 4, making it Cole's highest charting song. Cole performed at the 2019 NBA All-Star Game for its halftime show on February 17, 2019 in Charlotte. He performed "Middle Child", "A Lot", "ATM", "Love Yourz" and "No Role Modelz". On May 23, 2019, Cole was featured alongside American rapper and singer Travis Scott on American rapper Young Thug's single "The London", which would become the lead single from Thug's debut studio album, "So Much Fun".


title: J. Cole

text: On June 12, 2019, the first of two sets of dual singles from "Revenge of the Dreamers III" were released: "Down Bad" featuring Cole, JID, Bas, EarthGang, and Young Nudy, and "Got Me" featuring Ari Lennox, Omen, Ty Dolla Sign, and Dreezy. On July 1, 2019, the second set of dual singles from the album were released: "LamboTruck" featuring Cozz, Reason, and Childish Major and "Costa Rica" featuring Bas, JID, Guapdad 4000, Reese Laflare, Jace, Mez, Smokepurpp, Buddy, and Ski Mask the Slump God. Dreamville announced the album's release date on the same day and was selling limited merchandise on July 1, related to the album. On July 2, 2019, "" was released on the label's official YouTube account, a film documenting the album's recording sessions in Atlanta.


title: J. Cole

text: "Revenge of the Dreamers III" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with 115,000 album-equivalent units, of which 24,000 were pure album sales, earning Cole his sixth consecutive number-one album in the country. The album was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, while "Middle Child" and "Down Bad" were nominated for Best Rap Performance. Cole's collaboration with 21 Savage "A Lot" received a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song, making this his first Grammy Award win.


title: J. Cole

text: On June 16, 2020, J. Cole released his first song of 2020, "Snow on tha Bluff", a politically-charged track released soon after the murder of George Floyd that led to disagreements with and criticism from Noname and other rappers. On July 23, 2020, Cole released a promotional EP titled "Lewis Street" featuring two new songs, "The Climb Back" and "Lion King on Ice". The former later appeared on "The Off-Season".


title: J. Cole

text: On December 29, 2020, Cole took to Instagram to post a photo where he documented a list titled, "The Fall Off Era". On the list crossed out, was features and "Revenge of the Dreamers III". Also listed, but not crossed out was two projects, "The Off-Season" and "It's a Boy", which he announced would be released ahead of "The Fall Off". The caption of the post read: "I still got some goals I gotta check off for' I scram..." On May 4, 2021, J. Cole officially revealed the release date and album artwork of "The Off-Season", his sixth studio album. The album's lead single, "Interlude", was released on May 7.


title: J. Cole

text: "The Off-Season" was released on May 14, 2021. The album was co-executively produced by T-Minus and featured guest appearances from Morray, 21 Savage, Lil Baby, Bas, and 6LACK. It received positive reviews from critics and topped the US "Billboard" 200, selling 282,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, earning Cole his sixth consecutive number-one album in the country. Four songs from "The Off-Season" debuted in the top ten on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, with "My Life" (at 2), "Amari" (at 5), "Pride Is the Devil" (at 7), and "95 South" (at 8). "Interlude" debuted at number eight the previous week giving the album five top ten singles.


title: J. Cole

text: On September 21, 2021, J. Cole released a freestyle titled "Heaven's EP", remixing the beat of "Pipe Down" from Drake's "Certified Lover Boy". On March 31, 2022, the song later appeared on the Dreamville compilation "", with Cole also appearing on the songs "Stick" and "Freedom of Speech".


title: J. Cole

text: Cole played basketball at Terry Sanford High School in North Carolina. With an academic scholarship, he tried out as a walk-on at St. John's University and was one of 10 call-back players during his sophomore year. In 2012, Cole played for the Eastern Team during the NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game. In 2013, Cole told "Sports Illustrated", "Sports is where it started for me. It parallels my life. Rap is such a competitive thing. That's why I have to watch sports. I got to keep up. It's my life in just another form."


title: J. Cole

text: On July 20, 2020, Cole released an article for "The Players' Tribune", writing about his goals after graduating college to eventually playing professional basketball saying "if I can blow up in the next three years, that means I'll only be 27. That still might give me enough time to train and pursue a professional basketball career. I'll work hard enough to go play overseas and then try to work my way to the NBA." On July 31, 2020, Cole released his debut signature shoe in collaboration with Puma called the PUMA RS-Dreamer.


title: J. Cole

text: In September 2022, J. Cole was named as the cover athlete for "NBA 2K23" on the "Dreamer Edition", and was featured in the game as well as a character in the game's "MyCareer" mode. Cole said in a press release, "NBA 2K has long been a place to discover new musical talent through their game and continues to be a gold standard for showcasing all things basketball culture. It's been an amazing journey to not only appear on a cover of this year's game, but to be part of the MyCareer storyline, soundtrack and bring the Dreamer brand into NBA 2K."


title: J. Cole

text: On May 10, 2021, Cole signed a contract with the Rwanda-based Patriots Basketball Club in the Basketball Africa League. Cole was also featured on the cover of the American basketball magazine "SLAM", for their May 2021 issue. Cole made his professional debut on May 16 against the Rivers Hoopers, finishing with three points, three rebounds and two assists in 17 minutes. In three games with the team, he scored five points, had three assists and five rebounds in 45 minutes of gameplay. He was only under contract for a minimum of three games. He left the team after playing the three games.


title: J. Cole

text: On May 19, 2022, Cole signed with the Scarborough Shooting Stars of the Canadian Elite Basketball League. On June 8, 2022, in a social media interview released by the Shooting Stars, it was announced that Cole would take an indefinite leave from the team to fulfill his concert tour commitments. In 4 games with the Shooting Stars, Cole averaged 2.4 points, 0.6 rebounds, and 0.4 assists, while shooting 50% from 3-point range.


title: J. Cole

text: Cole has cited several hip-hop artists as influencing his rapping style, including Tupac, Jay-Z, Eminem, Nas, and Andre 3000. He described in an interview with Steve Lobel, "Jay [Z] was a mentor before I ever signed to him." "I studied his moves that much. ... I got to go on tour with him and steal a lot of gems. That's how you supposed to do it. You're supposed to learn and take pieces from the greatest. So, Jay was my mentor before I ever signed to him. And now that I signed to him it's just a blessing to be able to hit him for advice and get that real 20 years of experience or however long he been in the game. It's priceless." "My favorite rapper was Pac," he said. "He was my favorite rapper before I even started rapping. Before I even thought of—It went from Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown as a kid and artists like that. Even Kool Moe Dee. Just the cool dude that I looked up to. And then one day my stepfather came home from—I don't know if he was back from Desert Storm. ... I remember him coming home with that first Pac album. With 'Brenda's Got a Baby'. It was "2Pacalypse Now". And since then—When I was too young to know what he was talking about, but it connected. Cause that's the thing about art. It's just truth. It's straight–Whatever you feel. So, even as a seven-year-old kid, eight-year-old kid I could hear Pac's early albums and feel the truth." Cole drew comparisons to Nas following the release of "Friday Night Lights", stating that Nas served as the primary inspiration behind the creation of the mixtape. Cole later addressed their musical similarities on "Let Nas Down", a song written and composed due to his disparaging comments towards "Work Out". As a response to this record, Nas came out with the song "Made Nas Proud" shortly after.