Fingernails

When Jonathan Harker first encountered Dracula early in the novel by Bram Stoker his "nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point." Above and beyond the role this description had in emphasizing Dracula's animal-like quality, these nails would become functional later in chapter 21 when they would be used to open a wound in his chest from which he would force Mina Murray to drink. The fact that his nails were noticed at all possibly derived from some of the widely circulated reports of the vampires of eastern Europe. Among the characteristics that vampire hunters looked for in the bodies that they exhumed, in the belief that they were possibly vampires, were nails that appeared to have grown since the burial of the person. Fresh nails, or occasionally no nails at all, were a common item mentioned in reports from Germany and both northern and southern Slavs

Fingernails have not been emphasized in most post-Dracula vampires. Graf Orlock the Dracula figure in the 1922 film Nosferatu Eine Symphonie des Garuens had extended fingers with elongated nails that added to his rodentlike appearance. However, when Bela Lugosi brought Dracula into a British home, neither hands nor nails appeared abnormal in any way. Occasionally, however, when only the audience could see him, he stuck his hands in front of him like an animal about to pounce on a prey. After Lugosi, only a few vampires that had been altered into a demonic form had clawlike alterations in the hands.

Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death.: Folklore and Reality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. 236 pp.