Vampire

[21][a] After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires".

Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood, which was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin, and its left eye was often open.

Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles,[33] near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin.

This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the vrykolakas, in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire.

Folkloric vampires could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-styled activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects,[42] and pressing on people in their sleep.

Garlic is a common example;[46] a branch of wild rose and hawthorn are sometimes associated with causing harm to vampires, and in Europe, mustard seeds would be sprinkled on the roof of a house to keep them away.

This is similar to a practice of "anti-vampire burial": burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.

In India tales of vetālas, ghoulish beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the Baitāl Pacīsī; a prominent story in the Kathāsaritsāgara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one.

Someone inhabited by a vampire constantly experiences hunger, becoming increasingly aggressive when unable to find sustenance, ultimately resorting to drinking human blood.

"[79] As various regions of the continent converted to Christianity, the vampire was viewed as "a dead person who retained a semblance of life and could leave its grave-much in the same way that Jesus had risen after His death and burial and appeared before His followers.

[90] An early recording of the time came from the region of Istria in modern Croatia, in 1672; Local reports described a panic among the villagers inspired by the belief that Jure Grando had become a vampire after dying in 1656, drinking blood from victims and sexually harassing his widow.

[96] A paragraph on vampires was included in the second edition (1749) of De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione, On the beatification of the servants of God and on canonization of the blessed, written by Prospero Lambertini (Pope Benedict XIV).

[97] In his opinion, while the incorruption of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear".

[100] The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them.

[108] The eastern Cape region has the impundulu, which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the Betsileo people of Madagascar tell of the ramanga, an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles.

[37] Aztec mythology described tales of the Cihuateteo, skull-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them mad.

[118] The manananggal is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge batlike wings and prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes.

[118] The Malaysian Penanggalan is a woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local folklore to be dark or demonic in nature.

[124] In Vietnam, the word used to translate Western vampires, "ma cà rồng", originally referred to a type of demon that haunts modern-day Phú Thọ Province, within the communities of the Tai Dam ethnic minority.

The word was first mentioned in the chronicles of 18th-century Confucian scholar Lê Quý Đôn,[125] who spoke of a creature that lives among humans, but stuffs its toes into its nostrils at night and flies by its ears into houses with pregnant women to suck their blood.

[126] Jiangshi, sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims.

[135] The chupacabra ("goat-sucker") of Puerto Rico and Mexico is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of domesticated animals, leading some to consider it a kind of vampire.

[138] Author Paul Barber stated that belief in vampires resulted from people of pre-industrial societies attempting to explain the natural, but to them inexplicable, process of death and decomposition.

[d] Werner Herzog, in his Nosferatu the Vampyre, gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist Jonathan Harker, a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.

Serial killers Peter Kürten and Richard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in the tabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered.

[162] The late-16th-century Hungarian countess and mass murderer Elizabeth Báthory became infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth.

[175] Varney the Vampire was a popular mid-Victorian era gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, which first appeared from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as penny dreadfuls because of their low price and gruesome contents.

[177] Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common.

is delivered by Lugosi; for example Coppola paid homage to this moment with Gary Oldman in his interpretation of the tale in 1992 and King has credited this film as an inspiration for his character Kurt Barlow repeatedly in interviews.

[185] The Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, on American television from 1966 to 1971, featured the vampire character Barnabas Collins, portrayed by Jonathan Frid, which proved partly responsible for making the series one of the most popular of its type, amassing a total of 1,225 episodes in its nearly five-year run.