Urban Legend Research Paper

The myth of the vampire existed in a multitude of civilizations and cultures under various names such is strigoi (for the Romanian territory), Apotamkin, etc. But no matter the name, vampires will always refer to gothic creatures that drain the blood of humans, thus being monstrous.

 The most famous vampire is Dracula who derived from the book Dracula written  by Bram Stoker on May 26, 1897 (http://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.html) To create this legendary character he combined old european folk tales with his own creative thoughts and turned his character Dracula into a world renowned legend. “It's a novel that used a mythological creature to tap into the fears of a generation and was so successful that the same exact mythological creature has been doing the same exact thing ever since.” The vampires that are popular today are much different from Dracula but they all owe something to Stoker's

The vampires many people image today are very different to those imagined in olden times. According to Michael Molina from the “Vampire: Folklore, Fantasy and Fact” video, many ancient societies had myths of vampire-like monsters. For example the Mesopotamians had myths about a creature called Lamashtu that drank blood, had a lion’s head and a donkey’s body. The Ancient Greeks also had myths about a creature that were described as “blood thirsty birds” called Striges. These ancient creatures differed greatly from different societies, but they shared one common characteristic: they all fed off of living organism (Molina). As the years went by, many of

In the late nineteenth century vampires started to evolve into to what is the modern day vampire. Although they were still seen as “evil”, the vampires of the late twentieth century were no longer creepy creatures that would crawl out of their coffins to seduce women and feed from their blood. This was the start of a new period of

These European legends were described as bloated corpse, being reanimated dead people and generally were oafish and of lower class. This contrasts with the literary version that were described upper class, tall and pale aristocrats. Both have in common drinking blood, returning from the dead and preying on people at night. Folk lore vampires may have longer finger nails, as they continue to grow when dead, while literary vampires will be well groomed. Hypnotic eyes and fangs were added in literary works as a way to sexualize the vampire. Vampires in legend and literature are able to transform into a mist in order to enter and leave dwellings and their grave nightly.

What are vampires? Well there are many myths out in the whole world of vampires. Vampires are creatures that are dead yet still walk among the living; all vampires have fangs, they are afraid of the sunlight, they can shape-shift and they drink the blood of their victims. People say vampires are human corpses that return from the grave to harm living and others say they are not humans at all that vampires are supernatural, demonic creatures and not human form. What is evil? Evil is what is morally wrong, sinful, or wicked. Vampires can be categorized as evil as said in the article “What’s Evil, Anyway?” by Cole Bowman. Vampires

Throughout history, many reports of vampirism were told in Eastern Europe. Beresford (2008) Writes that the vampire folklore and superstition

The generalization for vampires has been displayed in films and literature for hundreds of years. The stereotypical versions of vampires are that they have long fangs, sleep in coffins during the day, and suck the blood out of humans. Both novels contradict those stereotypes in different ways. To understand the diversity of the vampires described in both novels, one must examine the characteristics that the vampires display and the meaning and purpose behind them. David D. Gilmore’s book “Monsters” analyzes monsters and other mythical creatures. Gilmore describes why humanity invented the idea of

The superstitious and mythical figure of the vampire has been seen throughout all era’s off history. It is a figure of mythology that is transcendent in an abundance of cultures and regions. The most significant aspect of the vampire is its ability to redefine itself throughout history and continued to stay relevant to society. The most modern and commonly known definition of vampires is a preternatural being know to be a corpse that resurrects from the dead and lives of the living, by draining humans of their blood, until a it is impaled by a wooden stick or burned. In ancient history we see the myth of the vampire appearing in burial traditions, showing vast similarities to the modern day definition of the vampire. We see this appear in various cultures and regions like the Tibetans, ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Wotherspoon, 6-8).

Vast misconceptions regarding the existence of the vampire seem to possess myopic perceptions; for example, these creatures drink the blood of a human and resists sunlight in order

The legend of the vampire in history is boundlessly frightening to all and fascinating to people world-wide. Vampires are creatures of the night who live by feeding on the blood of human beings. Stories of vampire creatures have been told around the world from nearly the beginning of time itself. The way they look, their tendencies, purposes, and other characteristics of vampires, appear to differ based on the time period in which the vampire folklore originated or what culture it derived from. These cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and the Romans all have various folklores that explain how the vampire came to be.

When one hears the word vampire, one automatically thinks of the evil monster that sucks the blood and life out of people.

Besides the removal of the heart, unmistakably, the most important part of the legend is that the vampire attacks his victims by sucking out their blood. There are claims that the attack of the vampire shows consistency with some of the unconscious fantasies of schizophrenic

One such story that acted as a folktale, although today we know that it is not a folktale in the true sense, and nevertheless, mentions the characters of the original vampire is that of Croglin Grange. In the story of Croglin Grange, the vampire is described as a hideous, brown creature with flaming eyes that came scratching at the window of a girl that occupied the Croglin Grange house (Summers, Vampire in Europe 113-115). The Croglin Grange vampire was also insinuated to have supernatural strength or power, being that a gunshot wound to the leg did not hinder its ability to escape. Chinese folktales provide evidence that vampire hysteria spread to other cultures around the globe. Some Chinese folktales also give accounts of the original

His aunt recognized him and said that he had died and been buried four years ago. W. B. Seabrook told of a time when some zombies owned by the houngan Joseph were given salted biscuits by his wife, They then realized they were zombies and put themselves back in their graves, their animated flesh dissolving as they did so.(Man, Myth, And Magic) One of the most famous cases of vampirism was Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary. A noblewoman, one day, while beating a servant girl, accidentally spilled some of the girl’s blood on her arm. She immediately thought that the quality of her skin had improved, so she decided that bathing in blood would give her eternal youth. She did so for about ten years, drinking the blood in addition to bathing in it, until she decided that she needed “better” blood than the commoners she was using, so she started preying on nobility. Obviously, this didn’t sit too well with the nobles, who ordered her arrested. Since she was nobility, they couldn’t have her executed, but, without her bloodbaths (pun intended), she died a mere four years later, at the age of 50, despite the fact that at the time of her arrest she was in excellent physical condition.(www.choronzon.com) Florence Roque Fernandez broke into more than 15 women’s houses, bit them on their necks, and drank the blood in 1960 Argentina. (The Vampire Book) Alfred Kaser killed a boy and drank blood from his neck in 1963. (The Vampire Book) Stanislav Modzieliewski attacked a person and drank