Vampire Mythology: Blood

"Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace..." (Dracula, Ch. 3)

Nothing has so defined the vampire race than that which they take from humans to give them life: blood.



Since ancient times, humans have seen the connection between blood and life. Hunters observed the relationship between the spilling of blood and the subsequent loss of consciousness, the ceasing of breath, and eventual death of the animals they sought. Blood was identified with life, and scholars through the ages have produced endless speculations about that connection.

Some believed that by drinking the blood of a victim the conqueror absorbed the additional strength of the conquered (sounds pretty vampirey to me). By drinking the blood of animals, one took on their qualities. As late as the seventeenth century, the women of the Yorkshire area of England were reported to believe that by drinking the blood of their enemies, they could increase their fertility (creepy!).

Among blood's more noticeable qualities was its red color as it flowed out of the body, and as a result redness came to be seen as an essential characteristic of blood, the vehicle of its power. Red objects were often endowed with the same potency as blood. In particular red wine was identified with blood, and in ancient Greece, for example, red wine was drunk by the devotees of the god Dionysus in a symbolic ritual drinking of his blood.

In Dracula, when Lucy Westenra is hovering near death, Van Helsing suggests a blood transfusion, something that was very new at the time due to Dracula being written just as modern medicine was emerging. The idea of using a transfusion to counter the vampire introduced a new concern into the developing myth of the vampire through the twentieth century, especially as the supernatural elements of the myth were being discarded. If vampirism was not a supernatural state, and rather was caused ultimately by a moral or theological flaw of the original vampires, then possibly the blood thirst was the symptom of a diseased condition! Caused by a germ or a chemical disorder of the blood, either of which might be passed by the vampires bite (sounds a little like I Am Legend, doesn't it?).

In the mid 1960's there was a brief medical speculation that vampirism was the result of misdiagnosed porphyria, a disease that caused victims to be sensitive to sunlight and which could be cured or helped.

Anemia is a disease of the blood that was initially associated with vampirism. Anemia is caused by a reduction of either red blood cells or hemoglobin relative to the other ingredients in the blood. The symptoms include a pale complexion, fatigue, and in its more extreme instances, fainting spells. All are symptoms usually associated with a vampire attack. In Dracula, during the early stages of Lucy Westenra's illness, Dr. John Seward hypothesized that possibly she was suffering from anemia. He later concluded that she was not suffering from the loss of red blood cells, but from the loss of whole blood. Dr. Van Helsing agreed with his friend, "I have made careful examination, but there is not functional cause. With you I agree that there has been much blood lost; it has been, but is not. But the conditions of her are in no way anemic" (ch 9). While Stoker dismissed any association of anemia and vampirism, over the succeeding decades, attempts to posit anemia as the underlying explanation of vampirism occasionally occurred.

The traditional beliefs that surrounded blood, the medical exploration of its properties, and the analogies it harbored, facilitated the adaptability of the vampire myth to a seemingly endless number of situations. Scientific considerations of the vital function played by blood in the human body have, if anything given it an even more mystical place in human life and promoted its revitalization in this modern era.


I own none of the above. It belongs to those who have spent their lives researching vampires and have put this information together for us to learn from
-Buffyrules01

Vampire Mythology: Crucifixes

I'm back with some more tasty Vampire Mythology for you all to drain and devour. Today we will be talking about crosses/crucifixes and how they came about in Vampire Lore.

Crazily enough, the emergence of the crucifix came directly from Bram Stoker's Dracula, combining some popular ideas about the magical use of sacred objects by Roman Catholics and the medieval tradition that identified vampirism with Satanism. In addition, a significant amount of Roman Catholic piety focused around the crucifix, and among church members it could easily take on not just sacred, but magical, qualities. It was not just a symbol of the sacred, but the bearer of the sacred.

If the the vampire was of the realm of Satan, it would withdraw from a crucifix. For Stoker, the presence of the crucifix caused the vampire to lose its supernatural strength . Thus, with Dracula, in the case of Harker, Dracula lost his fury; Lucy could not escape her tomb; and when the men burst into Mina's bedroom, the weakened Dracula, faced with overwhelming odds, departed quickly.

While the crucifix was a standard item in the vampire hunter's kit, it was not omnipresent in vampire books and movies. The relation to the holy was among the first elements of the tradition to be challenged as the vampire myth developed. Writers who were not Roman Catholic or even Christian found no meaning in the crucifix and the eucharistic elements, and simply dropped them from consideration. For instance, Anne Rice chose to acknowledge the sacred world but essentially deny its power, specifically mentioning the immunity of her vampires to holy objects.

The challenge to the effectiveness of the crucifix in vampire novels symbolizes a larger challenge to the role of the supernatural in modern life. While the lessening of the role of the supernatural in the novels of Rice has its supporters, the crucifix remains a popular protective object for fictional characters. Consideration of their reaction to sacred objects likely will continue to be a conscious element in the development of new vampire characters in the future.

We know today with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the a cross can protect people from vampires. If a cross so much as touches a vampires skin, it burns them. A perfect example of this would be when Buffy kisses Angel in the first season at the end of the episode "Angel." The cross she wears around her neck burns into his neck, forming a perfect crucifix in his skin. I know with the more recent vampire craze, a lot of those fictional vampires don't shy away from the cross; it has no effect on them. So does this mean that they are less evil than those vampires who are effected by the cross?

Who knows. All we know is, it's up to the writer to decide the effects of the cross.

Vampire Mythology: To Stake or Not to Stake?

That is the question.

Ever the preferred method of killing or immobilizing a vampire; stakes are possibly the most widely recognized way by which a vampire can be dealt with (unless you count sunlight-but you can't carry it around with you).

The stake driven through the heart is said to strike a killing blow to the undead; it is a technique by which a vampire may be put down while other, more permanent, means are used, such as: decapitation and burning. We recognize stakes today as the weapon of choice for any Vampire Slayer, and my personal favorite way to watch vampires meet their ends-in a pile of dust.

So, how did the method of staking come about? Like many other vampire myths, killing with a stake has its own historical significance.

Throughout central and eastern Europe, this method was taken very seriously. Not just any table leg or tree branch would do; the stake had to made of specific materials. In Russia, and through the Baltic, stakes had to be crafted from ash because of it's "magical qualities" (what's so magical about ash isn't said). In Silesia, the stakes were carved from oakwood, while Serbia had theirs crafted from hawthorn because of it's thorny shrub quality.

Vampirism was taken so seriously, in fact, that in Hungary and Romania bodies were staked after death to prevent the dead from coming back.

Most often vampires, or suspected vampires, were staked through the heart, though in Russia and northern Germany, the mouth was targeted for staking. In northeastern Serbia, the stomach was the appropriate place to stake a vampire. It was believed that staking a vampire was a way to relieve the bloated body of the devil spirit.

Staking is still, today, a widely used technique for doing away with vampires. Fictionalists utilize this technique over any and all others for the destruction of vampires. Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are just a few examples of that fact.

Forgive me for not posting last night. You may all stake me if you'd like.

Vampire Mythology: Bats baby!

No discussion of vampires is even thinkable without talking about bats. They are integral to the modern day concept of the vampire, but this was not always the case.

Many cultures have various myths about bats. In South America, Camazotz was a bat god of the caves living in the Bathouse of the Underworld. In Europe, bats and owls were long associated with the supernatural, mainly because they were night creatures. On the other hand, the Gypsies thought them lucky-they wore charms made of bad bones. And in England, the Wakefield crest and those of some others have bats on them.

So how did bats end up becoming associated with vampires? There are only three species of vampire bats in the entire world, all of which occur in Central and South America. During the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors first came into contact with them and recognized the similarity between the feeding habits of the bats and those of their mythical vampires. It wasn't long before they began to associate bats with their vampire legends. Over the following centuries the association became stronger and was used by various people, including James Malcom Rhymer who wrote "Varney the Vampyre" in the 1840's. Stoker cemented the linkage of the bats and vampires in the minds of the general public with what we now know as "Bram Stoker's: Dracula."

Now as we very well know, vampires in media over the past decade don't even turn into bats like the vampires of the olden days. In a ways, it's sort of become taboo. Why would any vampire want to turn into a bat and fly away when they can just run at incredible speeds? The last time I ever saw a vampire turn into a little bat in the media was the movie, "The Littlest Vampire," and that was a kids movie.

Bats and vampires have changed. In movies like Underworld; where Marcus was all bat and his brother was all wolf, and Van Helsing, where Dracula turned into a bat; these bats were ginormous. Not the little tiny bats we see flying around nowadays. These guys were huge and human sized. You would wet your pants if they flew at you.

So there you have it. Bat's influence in the vampire world, even though it's short and sweet-they are still important.

Vampire Mythology: Vampire Controversy?!

Believe it or not, there was an actual controversy involving vampires during the 18th century. Shocking? I thought so too!

As we very well know today, everyone is familiar with vampires. How can you not? There's vampire media and merchandise everywhere! But in Britain very little was known about vampires prior to the 18th century.

What brought the attention of vampires to the general public?

During the 18th century there was a major vampire scare in Eastern Europe. Even government officials frequently got dragged into the hunting and staking of vampires (seriously, people back then were nuts!).

This controversy was directly responsible for England's current vampire myths. In fact,the word Vampire only came into English language in 1732 via an English translation of a German report of the much publicized Arnold Paole vampire staking in Serbia (who? I'll explain it later).

Western scholars seriously considered the existence of vampires for the first time rather than just brushing them off as superstition. It all started with an outbreak of vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1725-1734.

Two famous cases involved Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole. Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of times after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the next day. Soon Plogojowitz returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.

In the other famous case Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who had been
attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After death people began to die and it was believed by everyone that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbors.

These two incidents were extremely well documented. Government officials examined the cases and the bodies, wrote them up in reports, and books were published afterwards of the Paole case and distributed around Europe. The controversy raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural people having an epidemic of vampire attacks and digging up bodies all over the place. Many scholars said vampires didn't exist - they attributed reports to premature burial, or rabies which causes thirst. However, Dom Augustine Calmet, a well respected French theologian and scholar, put together a carefully thought out treaty in 1746 which said vampires did exist. This had considerable influence on other scholars at the time.

Eventually, Austrian Empress Marie Theresa sent her personal physician to investigate. He said vampires didn't exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies. This was the end of the vampire epidemics. But by then everyone knew about vampires and it was only a matter of time before authors would preserve and mold the vampire into something new and much more accessible to the general public.

Can you believe they don't write this stuff in History books? Real people actually believed in vampires and had "vampire epidemics". I'm pretty sure all of us wish vampires could really exist, but these people seriously believed it! What a scary time period to live in!

Vampire Mythology: Gypsies-say what?

Yeah, I bet you didn't know gypsies had anything to do with vampires (unless you're a Buffy fan, then you know exactly what I'm talking about *coughSOULcough*). Gypsies have actually been in fiction and on screen for quite some time. In Bram Stoker's book Dracula the Szgany gypsies served Dracula, carrying his boxes of earth to guard him (talk about loyal).

In reality, Gypsies originated as nomadic tribes in northern India, but got their name from the early belief that they came from Egypt. By 1000 AD they started spreading westward and settled in Turkey for a time, incorporating many Turkish words into their Romany language.
By the 14th century they were all through the Balkans and within two more centuries had spread all across Europe. Gypsies arrived in Romania a short time before Vlad Dracula was born in 1431.

Their religion is complex and varies between tribes, but they have a god called O Del, as well as the concept of Good and Evil forces and a strong relationship and loyalty to dead relatives. They believed the dead soul entered a world similar to ours except that there is no death. The soul stayed around the body and sometimes wanted to come back (this so reminds me of the ensouled vamp. most of us know and love). The Gypsy myths of the living dead added to and enriched the vampire myths of Hungary, Romania, and Slavic lands.

The ancient home of the Gypsies; India has many mythical vampire figures. The Bhuta is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wandered around animating dead bodies at night and attacked the living like a ghoul. In northern India could be found the brahmaparusha (say that five times fast), a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood (gross!).

The most famous Indian vampire is Kali who had fangs, wore a garland of corpses, and had four arms. Her temples were near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby winning the battle and killing Raktabija.

Sara or the Black Goddess is the form in which Kali survived among Gypsies. Gypsies have a belief that the three Marys from the New Testament went to France and baptised a Gypsy called Sara. They still hold a ceremony each May 24th in the French village where this is supposed to have occurred.
One Gypsy vampire was called a mullo (one who is dead). This vampire was believed to return and do malicious things and/or suck the blood of a person (usually a relative who had caused their death, or not properly observed the burial ceremonies, or who kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was proper.)

Female vampires could return, lead a normal life and even marry, but would exhaust the husband. Anyone who had a hideous appearance, was missing a finger, or had animal appendages, etc. was believed to be a vampire.

Even plants or dogs, cats, or farm animals could become vampires. Pumpkins or melons
kept in the house too long would start to move, make noises, or show blood.

To get rid of a vampire people would hire a dhampire (the son of a vampire and his widow) to detect the vampire. To ward off vampires, gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. Further measures included driving stakes into the grave, pouring boiling water over it, decapitating the corpse, or burning it.

In spite of the disruption of Gypsy lives by the various eastern European communist regimes, they still retain much of their culture. In 1992 a new king of the Gypsies was chosen in Bistritz, Romania.

There ya go! Gypsies have a part of vampire mythology too, and in modern day fiction, we know that they would often punish vampires for feeding off of one of their kin. I won't go into further details though, those vampires will be discussed later.

Disclaimer: The only thing I own is my wit. If any of you are gypsies and find this inaccurate, by all means, contact me and let me know.

Vampire Mythology: Different Species Part 2

Ah, yes, the continuation on the bombshell I dropped last week: different species of vampires?! Get ready to throw your original thoughts on vampires out the window! I'm going to take you back many years ago and talk about the real history of vampires from different lands rather than my own opinions (which I hope you all enjoyed last week). Here we go!

Different Species Part 2

Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world (I know what you're probably thinking; Buffyrules, you already told us this stuff-well I'm telling you again! Plus this is for those who are just now joining us). The vampires we know of today, although altered my fiction and film, are largely based on Eastern European myths. The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East and were transported from places like China, Tibet, and India with the trade caravans along the silk route to the Mediterranean. Here they spread out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans, and of course, the Carpathian mountains including places like Transylvania (now Romania) and Hungary (where my ancestors are from, go us!)

Our modern concept of vampires still retain threads, such as drinking blood, return from death, preying on humans, etc. in common with the Eastern European myths, but most of the stuff we're familiar with are just recent inventions. Vampires wearing capes for example or the fact that vampires are always highly attractive people. Sadly that is not the case, that is what fiction and film has given us. For instance, I bet some of you didn't know that in the old myths if you placed millet or poppy seeds in the graves of vampires they will spend all night counting them. Believe it or not, this is true and this very myth is what the Count on Sesame Street is based off of. In the words of Xander Harris: "Von, two, three-three victims, mwa ha ha!"

I'm going to give you two examples now of how vampire myths differ in different countries. The first vampires are Slavic-whoo!

Slavic Vampires

The Slavic people (including most east Europeans from Russia to Bulgaria, Serbia to Poland) have the richest vampire folklore and legends in the world. The origin of Slavic vampire myths developed during the 9th century as a result of conflict between pre-Christian paganism and Christianity. Christianity won out with the vampires and other pagan beliefs surviving folklore.

Causes of vampirism included: being born with a caul, teeth, or tail, being conceived on certain days, irregular death, excommunication, improper burial rituals etc. Preventative measures included: placing a crucifix in the coffin, or blocks under the chin to prevent the body from eating the shroud, nailing clothes to coffin walls for the same reason, placing millet or poppy seeds in the grave because vampires had a fascination with counting, or piercing the body with thorns or stakes (that's right, wield your roses!)

Evidence that a vampire was at work in the neighborhood included: death of cattle, sheep, relatives, neighbors, exhumed bodies being in a lifelike state with new growth of the fingernails or hair, or if the body was swelled up like a drum, or there was blood on the mouth and if the corpse had a ruddy complexion.

Vampires could be destroyed by staking, decapitation, burning, repeating the funeral service, holy water on the grave, exorcism.


Romanian Vampires

Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising that their vampires are variants of the Slavic vampire. They are called Strigoi based on the Roman term strix for screech owl which also came to mean demon or witch. There are different types of strigoi: strigoi vii are live witches who will become vampires after death. They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches or with Strigoi mort, who are dead vampires. The strigoi mort are the reanimated bodies which return to suck the blood of family, livestock, and neighbors.

A person born with a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. As was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. Naturally, being bitten by vampire meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.

The Vircolac, which is sometimes mentioned in folklore, was more closely related to a mythological wolf that could devour the sun and moon and later became connected with werewolves rather than vampires. The person afflicted with lycanthropy could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.

The vampire was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in the house. Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar), the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St Georges Day is still celebrated in Europe.

A vampire in the grave could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing who didn't eat it.

Graves were often opened three years after death of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.

Measures to prevent a person becoming a vampire included: removing the caul from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle, especially on St George's and St Andrew's days.

To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and given to family members as a cure.
Fascinating isn't it? People went through all that trouble over myths! Can you imagine what life would be like if we still believed in all that stuff? I'm really glad we don't and we have all that stuff from fiction and films to help us sleep at night.
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Disclaimer: I'd like to thank the historians who have spent their lives researching all of this vampire mythology. Without them I would not be able to do the research for this column; everything belongs to them except for my wit.

Vampire Mythology: Different Species Part 1

That's right, I'm back! With some succulent info. on our fangy friends.

Different Species

Part 1

Now some of you are probably aware of this (and if you aren't, you better pay attention!), but in literature and the media everyone seems to have their own opinions and views on what vampires should be like. We know that vampires in the Buffyverse look like every day humans until it's time to feed, and then BAM! They morph into their true hideous natures before sinking their fangs into someone's neck. Then, if a Slayer happens to come along, all it takes is one swift jab in the heart for these monsters to collapse into a pile of dust and ash (the sun could also work too).

With Vampire Diaries (I'm using the TV show since it's there and it's visual) they get these weird vainy things beneath their eyes before their eyes turn red and they go in for the kill with their fangs. They too can be killed with stakes, but they don't turn into dust. Their entire bodies get all vainy and they lose their paleness to become grey statue-like corpses.

And then there is of course, Stephenie Meyer. She came out of nowhere in 2003 and brought us-vampires without fangs??? Sparkles in the sunlight? Can only be ripped to shred and burned in order for them to die? What is the world coming to?


Some vampire purists cried "FOUL!" when they heard about these Twilight wannabe-vampires (Twilight fans please don't hurt me, I'm just the messenger!) and some even said that Meyer ruined everything about vampires. Is that true though? Can we really sit here and say that Stephenie Meyer's vampires aren't really vampires? They feed on human blood, unless they choose not to, they can't go out in the sunlight, they're fast, have razor sharp teeth, and are practically indestructable (not to mention attractive like many other vampires we know *coughAngelSpikeLouisLestatStefanDamoncough*)

My take on all of this: If vampires really existed, there would be different species, different types of vampires.

It makes sense doesn't it? If there can be different races when it comes to humanity, why can't vampires have it too?

Now everybody shake hands and make peace with each other. There's no sense in arguing over which type of vampire is the REAL vampire because everyone has their own preference. I love all vampires whether they sparkle in the sun or burn away in a huge ball of fire. I have favorite vampires of course (if you can't tell by my name, I'm a Buffy loyalist at heart) but that doesn't mean I don't like the Underworld vampires or Anne Rice's vampires any less (no worries Underworld and Rice fans, I got you covered). I've never seen Tru Blood, but I'm sure I would like their take on vampires as well.

I know I should be informing you about all the cool vampire history and mythology stuff and telling you what the Romanians thought vampires were as opposed to the Hungarians and the people of the UK, but I just wanted to get this all out there beforehand. It's okay for other people to disagree and have their own ideas on vampires. History shows that people who lived thousands of years before us already had their theories (reason for the Black Plague, anyone? Lilith ring a bell?)

So before I start on anymore history and mythology I ask you all to please think about vampires as several different species rather than the one you're so determined is correct or the one you heart loves most. I'm pretty sure they all want to suck your blood anyway.

Vampire Mythology: A Brief History

Before I even begin to boggle your minds with my brief history on vampire mythology, I'd like to say how excited I am right now to be the first to post for Rangdom Fangdom. The first post of many and I sincerely hope you will enjoy what we have to offer here as much as we like talking about it.

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A Brief History

Where did the ideas of Vampires originate?

When was the first myth cultivated?

These are the very questions that historians themselves have asked while studying the myths and legends of vampires. What these vampire historians have discovered though, is a bit of a bombshell....they have no idea! Historians have no clue as to what the exact date of origin is, they just have their theories (poor historians!). The evidence from their research; however, suggests that the vampire tale was born sometime in Mesopotamia during the age of Abraham. Now I know what you're thinking, I was a bit shocked as well when I discovered this; the idea of vampirism has been around for, well, forever basically! How ironic!

From Mesopotamia merchants, soldiers, and traders travelling on caravans spread the vampire tale and mythology from Asia and the Middle East to the western shores of England and Ireland. There weren't any evidence of vampires back then, just a story and a myth somebody had come up with and spread like wildfire through word of mouth. Here's something that's also interesting: according to evidence found by historians, vampire mythology originated back in the ancient days near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. There are Assyrian writings on stone that suggest the possibility of the existence of a vampire woman called Lilith!

Story time!

Modern historians say that Lilith is mentioned in the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. According to tradition, Lilith was the wife of Adam before Eve was created, but she was demonized because she refused to obey Adam and demanded that she get equal rights like her husband. Her demands were considered evil and so, her thirst for revenge turned her into a vampire. It really makes one wonder what they thought of us American women over 100 years ago when we demanded equal rights. We are all vampires ladies! Hooray!

Now as I said before, the mythology and story of vampires was spreading through the other countries like a plague. Much later, during the Middle Ages, the vampire mythology was introduced to the Slavic Empires and the Western world. The story of vampires was developed differently in each land and they've remained that way ever since. Every empire created a series of physical attributes of vampires that were relevant to their religion, culture and history. They even used the legend of vampires to explain catastrophic events!

By the high Middle Ages, the vampire mythology had gained a strong hold in all of Western Europe. When the Bubonic Plague broke out in the fourteenth century, many people actually believed that vampires were the cause of it! Now of course, we know that fleas and rats from merchant ships carrying goods from the East spread the Bubonic Plague throughout Europe, but back then people didn't know that. People believed anything back then, those who thought that vampires were the cause also thought that their deceased loved ones would return as a vampire and prey on their next victim. To prevent this from happening, family members would actually dig up the graves of the suspected vampires and mutilate their bodies (sick!).

So there you have it, folks! A brief history on what historians assume is how the story and mythology of vampires came about and how it effected the entire world. Vampires definitely kept themselves busy back then *wink wink*

Next blog or so, I'll delve deeper into the vampire myths and talk more about what each country believed their vampires did and what they looked like (oooh exciting). Until then though, I hope all of you ladies out there who would've fought 100 years ago for equal rights if you could remember; you are a vampire!