Instructor: Dr. Daniel Heimmermann became the fifth Chancellor of the University of South Carolina Aiken on July 1, 2021. Originally from Wisconsin, Chancellor Heimmermann received undergraduate degrees in History and Spanish before earning a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in early-modern French history from Marquette University. Description: Two of the most widespread episodes of public hysteria in Europe were associated with the great witch craze and the vampire hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. Witches were persons (most often old women) who allegedly made a pact with the devil and were accused of blaspheming against God, doing harm to their neighbors, eating children, destroying livestock, spreading disease, and engaging in sex orgies with demons and were responsible for other mischief through their satanic rituals. The folkloric vampires, meanwhile, were deceased local persons who often died violently or mysteriously and were thought to have risen from the dead. Like the witch, vampires were blamed for bringing plagues and death to their former communities—in some cases killing by sucking the blood of victims—and haunting neighbors. The belief in witches and vampires provided early-modern Europeans with explanations for fairly common misfortunes that could not be explained by the science of the time. The retributions Europeans exacted against witches (often burning) and vampires (often staking) provided these preindustrial peoples with solutions to their supernatural and real problems. In this two-session course, we will explore why many preindustrial people believed in witches and vampires. We will account for the differences between the fictional and folkloric, or “real,” witch and vampire. We will investigate how early-modern people and the authorities confronted and dispatched suspected witches and vampires. Finally, we will account for why the beliefs in these supernatural beings gradually subsided during the eighteenth century.