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/being.
[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 interpretation of the vampire by the
Christian Church and the success of
vampire literature,
[9][10] namely
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,
[11] inspiring such works as
Varney the Vampire and eventually
Dracula.
[12] The Vampyre 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".
[13] 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".
[13]
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