How come whenever a fantasy novel or movie features a location themed around gothic horror tropes such as small superstitious peasant villages, forests, vampire filled castles etc. it’s always set in a vaguely Austro-Hungarian empire themed location. Why is there an association in the pop cultural imagination between gothic horror and the balkans/central-eastern europe? What about the Austrian-hunagarian and Russian empires led Europeans to utilize them this way?
Because at least vampirism, rather the myths and such, spread from there to the rest of Europe. (Know that there are also rumours from Greece about werewolf-vampires, but somehow they are never mentioned in the books from the 18th century who write about vampires) and it is really interesting that this is what happened with the fear from witchcraft but in reverse.
It began with the way of living in those parts of Austria-Hungary, but also Serbia, the Ukraine and such, small villages filled with people that were living alongside soldiers turned thiefs called Heiducken. Arnold Parle (or Pavel, he is named as both) was one of them who died sometimes in the 1730s in Meduegia, and said he had been attacked by a Vampire five years prior in Gossowa. Afterwards it was said he showed up and killed a few people until his corpse was dug up, beheaded and burned.
When rumours started to spread about vampires many people, mainly scholars and theologists, took an interest in them, to stop the burning of corpses since it went against the teachings of the bible, and even Empress Maria Theresia sent her own royal doctor Gerard van Swieten there, to stop and destroy those rumours.