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Laura (the Narrator)

A nineteen-year-old woman of English parentage who has grown up in a remote Styrian schloss with her retired Austrian-service father. She is the story's first-person narrator, recounting events some years after they occurred. As a child she experienced a terrifying nocturnal visitation—a beautiful young woman who lay beside her and left a sensation like two needles piercing her chest—a memory she later connects to Carmilla. She is curious, lonely, and increasingly susceptible to Carmilla's supernatural influence.

Carmilla

A hauntingly beautiful young noblewoman of ancient but unnamed family, with dark lustrous eyes, extraordinarily thick dark-brown hair, and an air of languid melancholy. She arrives at Laura's schloss after a staged carriage accident and insinuates herself as a guest. She sleeps late, eats almost nothing, is repelled by hymns and religious forms, and makes passionate, unsettling declarations of possession to Laura. A sharp, needle-like tooth is noticed by the mountebank. She is strongly implied to be a vampire preying on the local population and is connected to the ruined Karnstein family.

Carmilla's Mother (the Lady in Black Velvet)

A tall, commanding, pale woman dressed entirely in black velvet who orchestrates Carmilla's placement in the schloss under the pretense of a carriage accident. She insists on secrecy regarding their identities, origin, and destination, and departs almost immediately, promising to return in three months. Her manner shifts from theatrical distress to cold, stern intensity in private conversation, suggesting calculating intent. Her true nature and relationship to Carmilla remain deeply ambiguous.

Laura's Father

A kind, aging Englishman who served in the Austrian military and retired to a Styrian schloss on a modest income. He is rational and paternal, quick to attribute the region's strange deaths to superstition and natural causes, and slow to perceive the danger within his own household. He warmly accepts Carmilla as a guest and maintains a patriotic habit of speaking English daily.

Madame Perrodon

A fat, middle-aged, romantic governess from Berne who has cared for Laura since infancy, partly filling the role of her deceased mother. She speaks French and broken English and is warm-natured, talkative, and poetically inclined. She is present at Carmilla's arrival and helps tend to her.

Mademoiselle De Lafontaine

A 'finishing governess' of German parentage who rounds out the household's small social circle. She has a mystical and metaphysical bent, discoursing on the spiritual influence of the full moon and relating anecdotes of lunar phenomena. She is observant, noting the sinister black woman watching from the departing carriage.

General Spielsdorf

A neighbor whose schloss lies nearly twenty miles from Laura's home. He had planned a visit and intended to bring his niece and ward, Mademoiselle Bertha Rheinfeldt, but instead sends a distraught letter announcing Bertha's mysterious death. He blames a monstrous guest he had welcomed into his home and vows to devote the rest of his life to tracking and destroying the creature responsible. He is a key figure in the wider vampire investigation.

Bertha Rheinfeldt

General Spielsdorf's beloved niece and ward, who died under mysterious circumstances strongly echoing a vampire attack. She never appears directly in the narrative but her death sets the plot in motion and parallels what is happening to Laura. The General describes her passing as innocent and peaceful, unaware of the true cause of her suffering.

Doctor Hesselius

A learned physician and occult researcher who does not appear directly in the excerpt but frames the entire narrative, having received Laura's account and written an elaborate scholarly note on the subject. He treats the events as a case study touching on what he calls 'the profoundest arcana of our dual existence.' He is the in-universe editor and scientific authority figure contextualizing the supernatural events.

The Mountebank (Hunchback Peddler)

A traveling entertainer and charlatan who visits the schloss periodically, selling amulets against the 'oupire' (vampire) he claims is ravaging the local woods. He carries a magic lantern, fabricated curiosities, conjuring apparatus, and dental tools. With his sharp eyesight he notices and comments on Carmilla's unusually sharp, needle-like tooth, provoking her furious reaction—the most overt hint at her true nature in the early chapters.

The Schloss (Laura's Castle)

A feudal Gothic castle set on a slight eminence in a vast Styrian forest, purchased cheaply by Laura's father upon his retirement. It features a moat stocked with perch and swans, a drawbridge never raised in living memory, multiple towers, a Gothic chapel, and a steep Gothic bridge over a forest stream. The interior includes a long drawing room furnished in carved oak with crimson velvet and hunting tapestries, and guest bedrooms hung with faded classical tapestries. The surrounding forest extends fifteen miles in one direction and twelve in another.

Karnstein Village (Ruined)

A deserted village lying three miles westward of the schloss, notable for its roofless church and the moldering tombs of the extinct Karnstein family within its aisle. The nearby Karnstein chateau is equally desolate and lies in the thick of the forest overlooking the silent ruins. The cause of the village's abandonment is said to be bound up in local legend. This site is strongly linked to Carmilla's true origins.

General Spielsdorf's Schloss

A schloss of historic associations located nearly twenty miles from Laura's home, belonging to General Spielsdorf. It is the site of Bertha Rheinfeldt's mysterious death and the General's earlier, failed encounter with the vampire. It lies in the direction opposite the ruined Karnstein village.

The Karnstein Family

An ancient and proud noble family, now extinct, who once ruled the land around the ruined village that bears their name. Their tombs rest in the roofless church of the deserted village, and their chateau stands desolate in the forest. The family's name is intimated to be connected to Carmilla's identity and the vampire lineage active in the region.

Vampire Amulet (Vellum Charm)

Oblong slips of vellum covered in cabalistic ciphers and diagrams, sold by the traveling mountebank as guaranteed protection against the vampire ravaging the Styrian woods. They are meant to be pinned to the pillow of a sleeping person. Both Laura and Carmilla purchase one, though their efficacy is left entirely unproven in the text.

The Oupire (Vampire) Plague

A wave of mysterious deaths is spreading through the Styrian countryside, described by peasants as nocturnal attacks in which something seizes victims by the throat as they lie in bed. Victims languish and die within days or weeks. Laura's father rationalizes the deaths as superstition-fueled hysteria, while the local mountebank sells amulets against the 'oupire' and the peasants hold funeral processions through the forest. The pattern of illness—puncture wounds, wasting, death—mirrors the classic vampire legend and is covertly linked to Carmilla's presence.

Shared Childhood Dream / Psychic Bond

Both Laura and Carmilla independently claim to have seen each other's faces in vivid childhood dreams at around age six—twelve years before their meeting. In Laura's vision, a beautiful woman visited her nursery at night, lay beside her, and left two needle-like puncture wounds. In Carmilla's account, she found herself in an unfamiliar room, climbed into a child's bed, and was startled by a scream before losing consciousness and waking in her own nursery. This mutual psychic visitation suggests a supernatural bond between predator and prey and is a foundational piece of the story's horror.

Vampire Amulets and Folk Countermeasures

The mountebank sells oblong slips of vellum inscribed with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams as charms against the vampire, intended to be pinned to a pillow. Both Laura and Carmilla purchase one, the latter's purchase being darkly ironic. Local folk belief also associates the full moon with heightened spiritual and malevolent activity, and religious prayer and the presence of clergy are used to spiritually cleanse those attacked.

Vampire Nature and Weaknesses (Implied)

Carmilla's behavior implies several classic and original vampire traits: she sleeps very late and is lethargic during the day, eats almost nothing, is viscerally repelled by hymns and Christian religious forms, possesses a preternatural sharp tooth, and exerts a hypnotic, draining influence on her victims that blends desire and terror. She speaks cryptically of living in her companion's 'warm life' and of a sweetly mutual death, suggesting the vampiric feeding process is intertwined with erotic possession. She claims to have suffered from 'this very illness' herself, implying she was once a mortal victim.

Key Chronology

Approximately twenty-seven years before the main narrative, a six-year-old Laura experiences the nocturnal visitation in her nursery that leaves two puncture marks on her chest. About eight years before the framing present, the main events of the story occur when Laura is nineteen. General Spielsdorf's niece Bertha Rheinfeldt dies of mysterious causes in the weeks preceding Carmilla's arrival. Carmilla arrives via staged carriage accident on a summer evening and is installed as a guest for a planned three-month period. The regional vampire plague intensifies during Carmilla's residence. Doctor Hesselius's framing account is written after Laura herself has died.