“A Question of Identity” (Strange Stories April 1939)

Bloch, Robert [Tarleton Fiske]. “A Question of Identity.” Strange Stories, April 1939, pp. 95-100.
​https://archive.org/details/Strange_Stories_v01n02_1939-04/page/n91/mode/2up 

The story opens inside a dark, confined space with the protagonist slowly rising to consciousness with no knowledge of who or where he is. He seems to be inside a box, one with the proportions of a casket, perhaps? In a panic, he smashes the sides and begins to push upwards through the dirt to the surface. He asks himself three questions over and over: Who was I? How had I died? How revived? Slowly, bits o his past find their way back into his memory. He think s about Viola, his love, and the séance where he died suddenly. He remembers details about his town including the way to Viola’s house. He is also aware that he now shuns daytime and the company of others, but he does not know why. In the middle of the night, he makes his way to Viola’s house and enters her bedroom. She recognizes him and is alarmed at his return. He does not explain nor does he speak in any way at all. Instead, he pursues his hunger directly to her neck and drinks her blood. His final realization, the answer to his third question, is that he is a vampire. 

The story grounds itself early in Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” an 1844 short story about a man afflicted with catalepsy, a malady that causes a death-like state. Poe’s character is consumed by fear of being buried alive, and he takes precautions. The climax features him awakening in what he thinks is a grave, but it is not. The happy surprise cures him of both his fear and of the catalepsy. In poking around research about this story, I came across a book I did not yet know: Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber (1988 Yale University Press). In it, Barber argues that it is possible that belief in vampires originated because of a widespread fear of being buried alive, that if one were to revive within one’s coffin six feet under, then bad things would happen. Interesting stuff! I just requested the book from my university library. I hope to apply its idea to future Bloch vampire stories. A good list of these is in the table of contents for the new book from Haffner Press: The Vampire Stories of Robert Bloch, which I highly recommend! http://www.haffnerpress.com/book/the-vampire-stories-of-robert-bloch/