So, today I was curious about the history of the vampire (since it has become such a staple in contemporary fiction and pop culture) so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Their "Vampire" entry is rather extensive and it included information about what people in the 19th century actually did to prevent corpses from becoming vampires. One of the things they apparently did (and I verified this on one of the cited sources, a book by Paul Barber) was to take seeds, grain, or sand and distribute them on the ground near the grave site. The belief was that a vampire would be too busy counting or collecting the grains to attack anyone. In other words, there was a superstition that vampires had some kind of arithmomania. I suddenly thought, "Wait a minute, haven't I encountered a counting vampire before?"
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bigleaftropicals/8539517000
I was blown away. If the folks behind Sesame Street knew about this old superstition, then they are genius (not that I didn't believe that already). If they didn't, then this is an incredibly fortuitous discovery.
As a personal side note, I was diagnosed with OCD as a kid, and as part of that I experienced mild forms of arithmomania. I felt I had to repeat certain actions (flipping switches, closing doors) a certain number of times just perfectly or else I'd have to do it all over again. Some numbers were better than others (I liked 3, 5, 7, 11, and 17, for example). I have since grown out of these habits, although I still like to count the steps as I go up and down stairs.
Learn something new and exciting everyday!
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