Regardless of whether they are the heroes or villains of their story, vampires captivate our imaginations. These blood-sucking fiends (or, in some cases, friends) hide in the shadows, cloaked in the darkness of night. While vampires may hide from the sun, let us metaphorically shine a light on these ferocious, fanged creatures of the night.
Take a bite out of these vampire facts.
Vampire Facts
One vampire myth is that vampires are compelled to count things. One way to deter vampires, then, is to throw seeds at them; while they stop to count the seeds, you run away. Sesame Street uses this myth as the basis for the character Count von Count, a vampire who likes to count things.
Another myth is that only red-heads could become vampires.
In many vampire legends, vampires cannot enter a house or room without being invited in. However, once they have been invited in, they can return anytime they wish without being invited.
Vampires were blamed for the spread of the bubonic plague in Europe during the 1300s.
One of these myths is not like the others … Malaysian lore has many different types of vampires. One of those types of vampires is called the “Pelesit” that takes the form of a cricket or grasshopper, and can inhabit a body. You’ll know someone is possessed by a Pelesit if they can’t stop talking about cats.
And it’s not just bats — vampires can also turn into rats, owls, moths, foxes and wolves.
It was a common practice in 17th and 18th century Poland to bury corpses with a sickle across the neck if it was thought that the corpse could rise again as a vampire.
The same writing competition that produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein also produced the first vampire short-story. The Vampyre, written by John William Poldari (the physician of Lord Byron), was published in 1819.
Before The Vampyre, there are mentions of vampires in the eighteenth century. This includes Lord Byron’s epic poem, The Giaour.
The 1872 novella, Carmilla, and Irish vampire legends heavily influenced Bram Stoker as he wrote the 1897 novel Dracula.
The character of Dracula was based on a real person — Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler. He was a ruler of Wallachia, which is part of modern-day Romania, in the 1400s.
One of the first vampire movies, Nosferatu, is considered an unofficial (and unauthorized) adaptation of Dracula. Names and details were changed for the film, but Stoker’s heirs still sued the filmmakers for plagiarism. While the court ruled in favor of Stoker’s family and ordered all copies of Nosferatu to be destroyed, a few survived.
