who invented the idea of vampires?

Answer 1

Bram Stoker wrote the first major novel about a vampire. It is called Dracula. Which of course has fascinated people for generations since it's first publication. Many movies have been spun off from that one novel.
Bram's health had always been fragile and because of this he had lived a sheltered, cloistered life.
Due to his solitary life he spent his time researching and using his imagination.
His research led him to old folk tales and myths about strange creatures. He tied them together with historical facts about a man known as Vlad Tsepish or Vlad the impaler. A ruler in Transylvania which is a region of Romania.

It was said that Vlad drank the blood of those that he slew after he had impaled them.

He linked Vlad's historical facts with those people who had died from consumption/Tuberculoses. When sick with consumption/TB the patient coughs up blood sometimes alot of blood. Often times in tiny villages they actually believed that someone had actually drank someone elses blood because they did not realize the person was ill and dying. and that the blood from their mouth had actually come from within. One village dug up all of the graves and staked and burned all their dead that had died with blood coming from their mouths.

Another historical event he tied with these was about a Countess Erzsébet Báthory (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová (-Nádasdy in Slovak), Elżbieta Batory in Polish, August 7?, 1560 – August 21, 1614), the Bloody Lady of Čachtice (Csejte), was a Hungarian countess who lived in the Čachtice Castle near Trenčín, in Royal Hungary, in present-day Slovakia, relative of king of Poland and prince of Transylvania, Stefan Batory. The Countess believed if she bathed in the blood of virgins she would remain young looking forever. Many young ladies from the village she ruled disappeared.

There is a type of bat which is called a vampire bat.

Following is an excerpt from a website : Myths and legends from all over the world portray bats as blood-sucking demons. Vampire bats really do exist, but only three species in Central and South America.

The vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) have a wingspan of about eight inches and a body about the size of an adult's thumb. If not for their diet, people would not pay much attention to these small bats. Vampire bats feed on the blood of large birds, cattle, horses, and pigs. However, they don't suck the blood of their "victims".

Bram Stoker combined all the legends, all the history all the folk lore and wove it together to make a novel which has fascinated and horrified people for centuries. He himself died young from consumption/TB. Though he will never really be dead for he is alive, as long as his book is read and movies are made Bram Stoker is eternal!

Answer 2

While most people think that the idea stems from stories of Vlad etc etc, stories of vampires come to us from many different cultures around the world. The forms that the stories and creatures take may be slightly or vastly different (like the two tailed cat vampire thingy in some areas of China), the stories are often much older than Vlad. Folklorists have been known to trace the origin of certain stories and songs but tracing vampire legends would probably be much more difficult given their sheer number.

Cheers,

Answer 3

the seen vampires is an historical one. there have been myths of such beings surrounding The Vatican for hundreds of years, yet many different cultures have a sort of vampire creature they declare to have seen. In eire, that's the Banshee, interior the Philippines, that's the Aswang, Egypt and China have their very own besides yet i'm not sure of the call. Bram Stoker, i think, replaced into merely the 1st individual to place in writing an certainly tale approximately them, something different than recorded encounters.

Answer 4

The first known writer of this idea to be really well known by English speakers was Bram Stoker, with his novel DRACULA, loosely based on the life of Vlad the impaler. But there was another not as well known story, called 'Barney the Vampire' corney but true, which was written before Dracula. I think this was based on the true story of a Russian man who went around attacking women and drinking their menstrual blood (sick yes).

Answer 5

I watched a documentary about this a few weeks ago. First of all when someone would stumble onto a recently dead person they would take note of their appearance. A while later the body would bloat and morons who didn't know about dead bodies would think stupid thoughts like wow they must be feeding on something. And to add to it dead bodies secrete this red fluid out of their mouth. So the idiots would surmise that hey their bigger than they were and they have this red fluid coming out of their mouth wow they must of been eating blood. That combined with the nails and hair still growing added to the myth of vampires.

Answer 6

People in Europe began to believe in vampires because they observed that after a person was dead for a while, blood would form around his mouth (they didn't have morticians then). They began to wonder whether the dead person was up at night wrecking havoc. When they buried certain people then, they pinned them down with stakes to keep them from being vampires.

Answer 7

Most cultures have some sort of vampire myth, anthropologists believe that it is a combination of how the body looks like as it decomposes and a very human yearning to conquer death and live forever.

Answer 8

Vampires were not invented! Ever Heard of Countess Elzabeth Bathory??? She's very real and did infact feast and bath in the blood of young women. She's my hero. Even today there are a people known as vampires. People who find they hunger for blood. Like myself. The average human gets rather sick after attempting to drink a small amount of blood... unless you're like me and can drink it like it was beer.

Answer 9

This website looks like it provides some good information. I can't prove the accuracy of it though:

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~vampire/vhist.html

It claims that the European vampire stemmed from oriental myths.

Answer 10

I read just yesterday that it was the folklore way of explaining "consumption" or tuberculosis. Sufferers would cough up blood, look pale, have bloodshot eyes and an aversion to bright light. Other people in their families caught the disease, so it was said that they were vampires who sucked blood.