The Psychology of Vampires, Witches & Ghouls
Personality Traits of Popular Halloween Costumes & Characters
Sep 24, 2008
When you don a Halloween costume, you may be taking on new personality traits without even realizing it! Here are the personality traits of popular Halloween costumes and characters – including vampires, witches, ghouls, and zombies.
The Personality Traits of Vampires
It’s not true that vampires have no heart, says Lapin, author of The Vampire, Dracula, and Incest. "A vampire has a heart, but it is imploded [psychologically]," he says. That's the origin of a vampire's need to suck blood.
"Vampires may have a psychological need to control others," says Barbara Almond, MD, a Palo Alto, Calif., psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Vampirism could represent a fantasy – whether it’s a Halloween costume or a state of being. "The fantasy would be taking over and controlling others by bleeding them."
The Personality Traits of Witches
Witches may be the most psychologically healthy of all the creepy Halloween characters, says Stanley Krippner, PhD, professor of psychology at the Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco. Witches are seen as sinister characters who cast spells in the Middle Ages – but Krippner thinks their bad reputation is undeserved.
"In the Middle Ages, some of the witches were probably emotionally disturbed," he says. "But in my opinion, most of them were not. They were very good herbalists and midwives. Some of them were surgeons.
So, if you’re dressing up in a witch Halloween costume this year, you may want to focus on the positive characteristics of this character. For a stress-free Halloween, consider dressing up as “Glenda the Good Witch.”
The Personality Traits of Ghouls
If you want to dress up as a ghoul, you may be getting more than awkward personality traits. Ghouls have a troubling psychological profile, says Lapin. They tend to congregate in burial grounds, and they have an obsessive-compulsive desire to eat dead people.
"Unlike a psychotic, they know what they are doing, know the consequences, know it is wrong, and could turn themselves in," says Lapin. A ghoul may be a popular Halloween costume because it’s whole persona revolves around death, cemeteries, and corpses.
The Personality Traits of Zombies
James D. Adams, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy in Los Angeles and an expert in zombie history. He says that zombies could be considered innocent bystanders until someone decided they had done something wrong. "They then would go to a trial by ordeal," says Adams.
Here’s the test to determine if someone is guilty of the wrong-doing: rub a preparation of a solution that contains the motion sickness drug. If the person is innocent, they wouldn’t experience any symptoms.
Those who absorb the preparation quickly may start to hallucinate and experience visual and auditory changes. Their breathing becomes depressed – and they turn into "zombies." They can barely walk, barley see; they walk very clumsily, with their arms outstretched, and they have stiff arms and legs.
Adams says that those who absorbed the solution slowly went home and slept it off…and they were presumed innocent. So, if your Halloween costume this year is a zombie - people may think you're guilty of something!
The personality traits of popular Halloween costumes include both good and bad; the trick is to absorb the good, and leave the bad behind!
If you found The Psychology of Vampires, Witches & Ghouls: The Personality Traits of Popular Halloween Costumes helpful, try:
- Halloween Costumes for Introverts
- Creative Halloween Costumes for Women, Girls, and Couples
- 13 Tips for a Stress-Free Halloween
Source: Doheny, Kathleen. “5 Halloween Character Case Files.” October 25, 2007. WebMD.
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