ince the dawn of time, mankind have lived in fear that the dead may rise from their graves to plague the living. Strange sounds were heard from graves, corpses went missing, bodies found undecayed, and unexplainable deaths gave rise to such fears. The Egyptians believed that the dead would occasionally return to the world of light from their own world to plague its inhabitants. The Assyrian and Babylonian cultures held similar believes. In fact, such beliefs exists throughout all the different cultures in the world under different names with different characteristics.

The word Vampire first appeared in 1730s during the European vampire epidemic. It typically means as a ghost or reanimated corpse returning from their graves to suck the lifeforce of sleeping persons. The name was derived from the word "vampir" in Slavonia in the Magyar form. In Russian the word is vapir, in Bulgarian, upier and in Swedish, vampyr. The meaning of the name in most Mediterranean langauges is "vam", meaning blood and "pyr" meaning monster.

Vampires are generally defined by three categories: Folklore, Fictional and Modern vampirism. Each type of vampirism differ from each other by appearance, behavior and even defination. Folklore depicts vampires more as spirits or ghosts residing in the corpse of the deceased. Little mention is made about vampires sucking the blood of their victims. Fiction depicts vampires as an animated corpse that sucks the blood of its prey. This is the most common vampires that most people know of. Modern vampirism suggests many different new theories about vampires. One most fascinating theory is that vampires are actually living creatures; not the undead creatures of folklore or fiction.

Throughout the world, the Slavs have the richest vampire myths and legends. The Slavs migrated from their original homelands to Eastern Europe sometime during the 8th century. During this period, the Christians introduced their religion into these regions. Throughout the 9th and 10th Century, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic church warred with each other for supremacy. In 1054, the Serbians, Russians and Bulgarians stayed Orthodox while the Czechs, Poles and Croatians converted to Catholic. The Romans declared incorrupt bodies as saints while the Eastern Orthodox church declared them to be vampires. The Church added its protection like crucifix and holy wafer to the original vampire folklores of the Slavic vampir.

The most notable instance of folklore vampirism took place in the 18th century. When Austrian troops took control of the lands that lie in the eastern borders of Europe, the soldiers began to notice and file reports on a local superstition. The peasants would exhume bodies and beheaded the corpses alleging that they were vampirs or upirs. Literate outsiders began to take interests in such reports and began to attend such exhumations in order to document it resulting in reports like the famous Visum et Repertum (Seen and Discovered).

The fictional vampire was first made popular by John Polidori's The Vampyre in 1816. The main character of the short story Lord Ruthven, was supposedly styled around on the poet Lord Byron. It was rumoured at that time that Lord Byron murdered his mistress and drank her blood from a cup that was made from her skull. The image of the aristocratic vampire began to take over the image of the vampires of folklore in the people's mind.

The greatest vampire novel ever written is without any doubt, Bram Stoker's Dracula published in 1897. Dracula was based on Vlad Dracul, Prince of Wallachia from 1456 to 1476. It was said that Bram Stoker had written the novel after having a nightmare about Prince Vlad rising from his grave in 1890. Dracula was reincarnated many times in stage plays and movies, setting the standards for the fictional vampire even until today.

Modern vampirism suggests many scientific theories and even spiritual theories. Occultists believe that vampires are people born with the ability to manipulate, channel and absorb pranic energy, which essentially means life force. Such vampires seldom take blood; instead they feed on the psychic emanations of human beings. Fresh blood is the biggest known source of pranic energy and vampires can directly absorb the energy from the blood. It is due to this that vampires are attracted to fresh blood.

Scientists have suggested certain medical reasons behind vampirism. A rare disease known as catalepsy puts its victims into a death-like condition, which could last for certain periods of time. During the times when medical standards were not as advanced as it is now, people suffering from this disease may be considered dead and buried by their relatives. When the person arouses from his/her comatose, they would find themselves trapped and buried in a coffin. The sounds coming from the coffin (commonly seen as the corpse trying to escape) is actually the sound of the entrapped victim trying to escape. The victim would eventually die of suffocation or starvation. This would also explain the contorted positions of such an unfortunate soul when the coffin is finally opened.

A congenital blood disorder known as iron-deficiency porphyria was also offered as an explaination for vampirisim. People suffering from this deficiency are unable to efficiently combine iron with porphyrins to yield haem, which is an intrinsic component of the blood pigment haemoglobin. People suffering from this condition are extremely sensitive to the sunlight, which may cause skin disfiguration. Such people may be forced to drink the blood of normal people to increase iron intake (they didn't have iron tablets in those times), giving rise to legends of vampirism. Missing corpse were blamed on grave robbers and outbreaks of vampirism blamed on plague and other contagious diseases.

Now that you have some idea of the different types of vampirism, proceed to the physical aspects of vampires.