?
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the
life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless
of whether they are undead or a living person.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Although
vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures, and may go back to
"prehistoric times",[7] the term vampire was not popularized until the early
18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from
areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern
Europe,[8] although local variants were also known by different names, such as
vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire
superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in
corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
While even folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a wide
range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it
was the success of John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre that established
the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire; it is arguably the most
influential vampire work of the early 19th century,[9] inspiring such works as
Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula.[10] The Vampire was itself based on
Lord Byron's unfinished story "Fragment of a Novel", also known as "The Burial:
A Fragment", published in 1819.
However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the
quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire
fiction. Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar
legendary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of
late Victorian patriarchy".[11] The success of this book spawned a distinctive
vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, video
games, and television shows. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the
horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire
myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".[
