A journal editor is offering $500 to anyone who can find the earliest use of the word vampire in English.
Anthony Hogg, president of the Vampire Studies Association and editor of the Journal of Vampire Studies, announced the competition in the latest volume of the journal dubbing it “The Daily Post-Boy Challenge.”
“I believe the earliest use of vampire—or vampyre as it was then written—in English was a reference to a Serbian vampire epidemic in a news item titled ‘Extract of Another Letter from Vienna’ in the March 10, 1732 issue of The Daily Post-Boy,” said Hogg. His find is discussed in “The Oxford English Dictionary‘s Earliest Evidence for Vampire,” an article published in the same volume.
Hogg serendipitously found the news item while researching a different news item in a database accessed through the National Library of Australia’s website. “I was cross-referencing a keyword, ‘Hadnagi,’ used in the same story published in the London Journal‘s March 11, 1732 issue. At the time, I thought the London Journal item contained the word’s earliest English use. The keyword search happened to yield the earlier result,” he said.
His find predates two examples cited by the Oxford English Dictionary: a definition of vampires in John Swinton’s The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, Being the Grand Tour of Germany, in the Year 1734, published in 1745; and Charles Forman’s metaphorical reference to “Vampires of the Publick, and Riflers of the Kingdom” in Some Queries and Observations Upon the Revolution in 1688, and Its Consequences, published in 1741.
Submitting the find to the dictionary on January 5, 2025, Hogg said: “I hope the OED recognises my find. However, if someone finds an earlier example, I’d be happy giving them recognition too. After all, the purpose of the prize is to challenge existing notions and encourage further research for accuracy’s sake.”
The competition’s terms and conditions of “The Daily Post-Boy Challenge” are outlined in Journal of Vampire Studies, volume 5, available through various online retailers.
Journal of Vampire Studies, volume 5, edited by Anthony Hogg
Released December 29, 2025
Available from various online retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop.org and ThriftBooks.
Media Contacts
Anthony Hogg
(He/Him/His)
President
Vampire Studies Association
info@vampirestudies.org
About
The Vampire Studies Association is a not-for-profit organisation founded at City Library, Melbourne, Australia, on October 31, 2018, “to establish vampire studies as a multidisciplinary field by promoting, disseminating and publishing contributions to vampire scholarship.” It publishes the Journal of Vampire Studies as a platform for vampire scholars to share their research. For more information about the association, visit https://vampirestudies.org/about.
Relevant Links
“The Daily Post-Boy Challenge,” Journal of Vampire Studies 5 (2025): 121–22, https://www.academia.edu/164867545/.
Anthony Hogg, “The Oxford English Dictionary‘s Earliest Evidence of Vampire,” Journal of Vampire 5 (2025): 37–71, https://www.academia.edu/164867092/.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “vampire,” accessed February 27, 2026, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vampire_n.
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