Vampires
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Some of the most frightening and iconic monsters in the history of the horror genre are vampires. Vampires have a history that is both ancient and modern. For thousands of years, various cultures around the world have had stories of vampire-esque beings who would prey on humans. However, in the last two centuries, these stories have coalesced into a very specific type of creature with a unique backstory and set of powers and weaknesses.

Learn more about vampires, how they were created, and where they came from on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Next weekend, ramen. Find the detail that moves you with immersive dining experiences from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphirereserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC. Subject to credit approval. When you hear the word vampire, you probably have a very specific thing that comes to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is probably Dracula. Or maybe the vampire Lestat from an Anne Rice novel.

Or maybe an incredible fighter like Blade. Or maybe Edward Cullen from the Twilight movies. Or maybe the vampire assassin Selene from the Underworld series. Or maybe Stefan Salvatore from the Vampire Diaries TV show. My point in bringing all these up is that there are a lot of different versions of vampires that are floating around popular culture. While the vampires are all slightly different, there is a commonality which binds them all together.

Before we get into the specifics of how the modern portrait of a vampire came to be, we first need to look at the earliest origins of vampires. Vampire lore is one of the most enduring and fascinating elements of folklore, dating back centuries and spanning into numerous cultures around the world. The history of vampires reflects societal fears, religious beliefs, and the evolution of supernatural legends.

Unlike other monsters I've covered in previous episodes, vampires, or vampire-esque creatures, have always been portrayed as monsters. They were the stories that were told to frighten and serve as a check on behavior. Some of the earliest vampire-like creatures can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia and Greece. The Mesopotamian Lamashtu was a female demon who preyed on newborns and pregnant women, often depicted as bloodthirsty. The ancient Greeks had Empusa.

Empusa was a monstrous, shape-shifting creature often associated with Hektate, the god of witchcraft and crossroads. Empusa was described as having one brass leg, one donkey leg, symbolizing her otherworldly and terrifying nature. She was believed to lure travelers, particularly men, and then feed on their flesh and blood. Her appearance could shift to that of a beautiful woman to ensnare her victims, after which she revealed her true form to attack.

Egyptian mythology included such creatures as the goddess Sekhmet, who was sent to punish humanity but went on a killing spree, drinking the blood of her victims. Lilith in Jewish mythology is often considered a vampire-like figure. She was believed to seduce men and harm infants, with stories depicting her as drinking blood or possessing vampire-like qualities. The Jiangshi of Chinese folklore is a hopping corpse that drains life force or qi rather than blood.

The Filipino Aswang and Manananggal are terrifying beings that prey on humans, often consuming flesh or blood, reflecting fears around the supernatural and death. In African folklore, creatures like the Asanbosam of the Ashanti in Ghana have iron teeth and hunt humans and eat them. Indigenous South American cultures have their own versions of blood-drinking spirits, often tied to forest spirits and fears surrounding the jungle.

What all of these stories have in common around the world was that the creatures would steal the life force from unsuspecting people, which often took the form of drinking their blood. While all of these legends share features with vampires, they aren't what we think of as vampires. The vampire myth that we know today largely originates from Eastern European folklore.

The classic Slavic vampire, often referred to as the Vampyr, is rooted deeply in Eastern European folklore, particularly amongst communities in regions like Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Unlike the refined, charismatic vampire of modern fiction, the Slavic vampire was portrayed as a bloated, reddish corpse with blood oozing from its mouth, a visual marker of its unholy return to the world of the living.

These beings were thought to rise from their graves to harm and drain the life force, typically in the form of blood, from friends, family, or livestock. Legend holds that the vampires were created in several ways. People believed that improper burial rites, violent deaths, curses, or sins could cause a person's soul to become restless, preventing it from peacefully moving on and turning them into vampires.

Vampires were feared not only for their physical attacks, but for their misfortunes they could bring upon entire villages, including plagues, famine, and unnatural deaths. To prevent this, families took measures such as placing coins or roses in a corpse's mouth, turning the deceased face down, or even staking the body to the ground. Communities used various methods to protect themselves from vampires, including such things as garlic, holy symbols, and wooden stakes.

In some regions, suspected vampires were staked, decapitated, or even burned to prevent them from rising again. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, vampire panic swept through parts of Europe, particularly in the Balkans. Epidemics of plagues and diseases often left people looking for supernatural explanations, leading to widespread belief in vampire infestations.

Reports emerged of people exhuming corpses to confirm vampirism, finding the bodies unusually well-preserved. In some cases, vampire hunts were performed which were not dissimilar to witch hunts. Known cases took place in Hungary in 1725 and in Serbia in 1726, both of which had suspects who were believed to have returned from the dead, striking fear in local communities.

Vampires began transitioning from monstrous corpses to more seductive and sophisticated figures in literature during the 19th century. Believe it or not, the birth of the modern vampire can be traced back to the very same contest that Mary Shelley used to create the novel Frankenstein.

The person who developed the modern vampire wasn't Lord Byron or Percy Shelley, the two biggest names in literature who took part in the contest. Rather, it was Lord Byron's physician, William Polidori, who also happened to be a writer. In 1819, Polidori published his short story, The Vampire. The Vampire is considered the first English vampire story and marks a significant shift in vampire lore by introducing a sophisticated aristocratic vampire as its central character.

The story follows the mysterious and sinister Lord Ruthven, who is a charismatic but morally corrupt nobleman with an insatiable appetite for destruction. Polidori's work established the vampire as an alluring yet benevolent figure, inspiring later literary vampires and establishing many tropes that would shape vampire fiction for over 200 years. The next big advance in the development of the vampire was Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897.

Stoker's novel introduced the archetypal vampire, Count Dracula, with all the tropes now associated with vampires. Fangs, vulnerability to sunlight, shapeshifting, and hypnosis. Dracula took inspiration from Vlad the Impaler, a real historical figure on which I've done a previous episode, although Dracula's depiction bears little resemblance to Vlad beyond the name.

As with other modern-day monster stories, the vehicle that truly brought them into popular consciousness was film. The first vampire film to impact the modern vampire myth was 1922's Nosferatu, written by F.W. Murnau. The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The film's vampire is Count Orlok, a haunting, rodent-like creature with elongated fingers, pointed ears, and sharp, claw-like nails, a stark contrast to the suave, aristocratic vampire popularized later. Unlike the seductive vampires of Gothic literature and Hollywood, Orlok is a grotesque, almost animalistic figure preying on townsfolk and spreading the plague.

Because the movie was unauthorized, all copies of the film were almost destroyed, despite today being considered a classic of early cinema. One of the major things that Nosferatu added to the vampire canon was the idea that Count Orlok had to sleep during the day as sunlight would kill him. In the original novel, Dracula could walk about during the day, although it would just weaken him.

The film that really set the mythos for modern vampires was Universal Studios' 1931 film Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Dracula is one of the most influential vampire films ever made, and it established numerous tropes that have since become hallmarks of vampire lore.

The film included Dracula as an elegant, well-dressed aristocrat, complete with a black cape, a widow's peak, and a hypnotic, intense gaze, transforming the vampire from a monstrous figure into a suave, sophisticated predator. Lugosi's thick European accent and measured speech created the enduring image of the vampire as both foreign and alluring.

The film also popularized the vampire's vulnerability to stakes through the heart and aversion to religious symbols like crosses and garlic, which were only hinted at or absent in earlier vampire lore. Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula pretty much became the default for what a vampire was supposed to be throughout the 20th century, including transforming into a bat and being immortal. However, that didn't prevent a large number of fictional works to create new ways to look at vampires.

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series, beginning with the book Interview with the Vampire in 1976, explored vampires as complex, even sympathetic figures. Rice's vampires, such as Lestat, were no longer purely evil, but deeply flawed, struggling with morality and immortality. One of the characters in the book was a young girl named Claudia, who was turned into a vampire as a child, and then remained a child forever.

Characters such as this subverted the entire notion of the suave aristocratic vampire. The late 20th and 21st centuries saw a resurgence in vampire stories with a mix of horror, romance, and young adult themes. In Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, vampires were totally reimagined. Meyer's vampires, like Edward Cullen and his family, retained human characteristics, emotions, and morality, with many choosing to abstain from human blood and instead feeding on animals.

Physically, they're marked by supernatural beauty, incredible strength and speed, and unlike most vampire lore, they sparkle in the sunlight rather than burning, which leads them to avoid daylight in public just to remain secrecy. Each vampire in Twilight may also have a unique power, like mind-reading or seeing the future, adding another layer to the vampire lore. By framing vampires as immortal beings capable of love and restraint, the series popularized the quote, vegetarian vampire concept.

TV series like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries brought fresh twists to vampire lore by placing vampires in complex modern settings and exploring their coexistence with humans. True Blood, based on Charlene Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels, presents a world where vampires could have come out of the coffin, living openly in society and subsisting on synthetic blood.

This integration of vampires into human society allows the show to address contemporary themes of discrimination, acceptance, and identity, portraying vampires as a marginalized group. The Vampire Diaries, adapted from J.L. Smith's books, modernizes vampires by placing them in a high school setting, highlighting themes of romance, identity, and conflict. In the late 20th century, vampires jumped from fiction to fact with the creation of a vampire subculture.

The vampire subculture began as an offshoot of the goth subculture. Its members often embrace and emulate aspects of vampire lore, aesthetics, and lifestyle. This includes individuals who identify as, quote, real vampires, which can mean that they consume small amounts of human blood. With consent, of course. Vampires have come a long way from their ancient origins, which can be found all over the world.

Out of all the cultures with similar mythical beings, it was the Slavic vampire from Eastern Europe which became the one which formed the basis of today's modern vampire. The vampire has evolved from a hideous creature of folklore to a complex symbol of power, mystery, and immortality. Despite all its transformations, the vampire myth remains a reflection of human fears, desires, and questions about the nature of life, death, and what lies beyond.

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