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What are vampires?
Vampires are mythological or folkloric revenants who subsist byfeeding on the blood of the living. In folkloric tales, the undeadvampires often visited loved ones and caused m…ischief or deaths inthe neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They woreshrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or darkcountenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampirewhich dates from the early Nineteenth Century. Although vampiricentities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularised until the early 18th century,after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe fromareas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans andEastern Europe, although local variants were also known bydifferent names, such as vampir (вампиÑ) in Serbia, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. Thisincreased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to masshysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually beingstaked and people being accused of vampirism. In modern times,however, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity,although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures. Early folkloricbelief in vampires has been ascribed to the ignorance of the body'sprocess of decomposition after death and how people inpre-industrial societies tried to rationalise this, creating thefigure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyriawas also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received muchmedia exposure, but this link has since been largely discredited.The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction wasborn in 1819 with the publication of The Vampyre by JohnPolidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the mostinfluential vampire work of the early 19th century. However, it isBram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as thequintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modernvampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctivevampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books,films, and television shows. The vampire has since become adominant figure in the horror genre. In some films vampires are featured in comedy movies. (MORE)
