Vampire

Fun Facts About Vampires

• Legends of vampires existed for centuries. Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula, which depicted an aristocratic, cape-wearing vampire, only popularized the legend.
• Vampire legends originated primary from Eastern European and Balkan folklore around the 11th century, with roots in older Slavic, Greek and Mesopotamian tales.
• In Eastern European folklore, garlic was thought to possess purifying qualities. It was hung over doors to repel vampires, but also to protect against witches, werewolves, demons and the undead.
• The trope that vampires burn in the sunlight was invented for the 1922 film Nosferatu to create a dramatic climax.
• The "Vampire Panic" was a series of mass hysterias across Eastern Europe starting around 1725. People exhumed real graves and burned the bodies due to the fear of the undead.
• Folklore provides many different ways to stop vampires beyond the traditional wooden stake. This includes taking advantage of the fact that vampires were believed to have a compulsive need to count. So people would:
  • scatter seeds on the ground to escape a vampire since he would be compelled to stop and count them
  • drape fishing nets over homes so vampires would waste time counting the holes instead of entering
  • tying knots in the house so vampires would get preoccupied with untying them all
• It was also thought vampires feed on the dead in their graves by chewing through their own burial shrouds. So people sealed their mouths with brick, stones, iron objects, lemon or garlic.
• People also placed a body face-down to ensure that if the vampire tried to rise, it would only dig itself deeper into the ground. Additionally, tendons at the knees were severed to prevent the dead from walking, or a branch from a wild rose bush was placed in the grave to keep the vampire trapped.