Vampires

There are almost as many different characteristics of vampires as there are vampire legends. But the main characteristic of vampires (or vampyres) is they drink human blood. They typically drain their victim's blood using their sharp fangs, killing them and turning them into vampires. In general, vampires hunt at night since sunlight weakens their powers. Some may have the ability to morph into a bat or a wolf. Vampires have super strength and often have a hypnotic, sensual effect on their victims. They can't see their image in a mirror and cast no shadows.

Creatures with vampiric characteristics have appeared at least as far back as , where stories were told of creatures that attacked people in their sleep and drained their bodily fluids. Tales of walking corpses that drank the blood of the living and spread plague flourished in Europe in times of disease, and people lacking a modern understanding of came to believe that those who became vampires preyed first upon their own families.

Research from the 20th and 21st centuries has posited that characteristics associated with vampires can be traced back to certain diseases such as , which makes one sensitive to sunlight; , which causes wasting; , a disease that thins the skin; and , which causes biting and general sensitivities that could lead to repulsion by light or garlic.

Vampire were especially popular in eastern Europe, and the word vampire most likely originates from that region. Digging up the bodies of suspected vampires was practiced in many cultures throughout Europe, and it is thought that the natural characteristics of decomposition—such as receding gums and the appearance of growing hair and fingernails—reinforced the belief that corpses were in fact continuing some manner of life after death.

Also possibly contributing to this belief was the pronouncement of death for people who were not dead. Because of the constraints of medical at the time, people who were very ill, or sometimes even very drunk, and in a coma or in shock were thought dead and later "miraculously" recovered—sometimes too late to prevent their burial.

Belief in vampires led to such rituals as staking corpses through the heart before they were buried. In some cultures the dead were buried facedown to prevent them from finding their way out of their graves. The modern incarnation of vampire seems to have stemmed largely from of the 18th and 19th centuries, about the time vampire was peaking in Europe.