Every year the same Samhain fakelore bobs up to the surface of the internet like something that will not flush. The idea of an Irish vampire from Waterford is one of the oldest examples of it because it comes from the early days of the internet.

Samhain fakelore: the origin of the dearg due

The obvious gobbledygook name ‘dearg due’ is a giveaway that its not Irish. The name comes from Peter Haining’s cash in on the vampire craze. The book “The Un-Dead”. Daniel Cassidy has a good series of posts about it. It became a meme in 1997 when vampires were huge and the Dearg Due has been lurking in the murk of the internets u-bend since then.

Samhain fakelore: hiding the real Samhain?

There are no vampires in Irish folklore but there’s plenty of fakelore that eclipses our genuine culture during Samhain about them.

Samhain is one of the most significant festivals in oulture from the beginning of our written history at minimum. People like Peter Haining never cared about our culture enough to think about what they’re doing.

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Cassidy, D. (2025) The Dearg-Due – Another Fake Irish Vampire. Available at: https://cassidyslangscam.wordpress.com/2025/04/01/the-dearg-due-another-fake-irish-vampire/ (Accessed: 8 Oct 2026)

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