G'day Seraphim333, Thank you for your question. The vampire in its modern form comes from Eastern Europe and dates from the middle ages. However, there are stories of the dead craving human blood in ancient civilisations. In Babylon, the Lilu were bloodsucking demons as were the Akhkharu of Sumeria. Lilitu one of the Lilu became Lilith in Jewish mythology. The ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet was full of bloodlust and only became sated by drinking alcohol looking like blood (not the start of the Bloody Mary as far as I'm aware). Most of the vampires in European mythology were of Slavic origin. The most famous Serbian vampire was Sava Savanovic, famous from a folklore-inspired novel by Milovan Glišić. The Russian anti-pagan work Word of Saint Grigoriy (written in the 11th or 12th century) claims that polytheistic Russians made sacrifices to vampires. There were vampire scares in Eastern Europe in the 18th century. The vampire started to be popular in literature with Goethe, Southey and Coleridge all writing works with vampiric themes.Lord Byron's poem The Giaour published in 1813 was a very popular work featuring a vampire. John Polidori, Byron's physician published the first novel The Vampyre shortly after with the vampire based partly on Byron. This was inspired in the same ghost story competition that led to Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. Bram Stoker re-invented the vampire and most of the vampire stories have been based on Dracula. I have attached sources for your reference. Regards Wikipedia Vampire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire Wikipedia Vampire Fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_fiction Vampire Myths in popular fiction http://www.eclipse.net/~srudy/myths/vampire_myths.html Open Directory Vampire Literature http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Genres/Horror/Vampires/

From what i have learned Vampires come from people from the middle ages such as Elizabeth Bathory who killed over 600 young women to bathe in there blood and The most famous story is where Vampires originated from The FIRST vampire Vlad The Impaler...he would kill his victims and dip his bread in there blood...his most famous move was to literally IMPALE people from the mouth to the anus on a stick... That is the most information i can gather...

I don't think anyone really know where the very FIRST story of vampires came from. There is a form of vampire in almost every culture. It may have been the Mayans, but I'm sure there are older vampire myths floating about there somewhere. EDIT: "The Vampire Encyclopedia" by Matthew Bunson is a very good resource for questions like this.

They come from a story book and urban myth. When a burial takes place and the body has been in the ground for a while you can hear noises coming from it's location. This is actually the sound of gases escaping as the body decomposes. This was not known many years and so people assumed that the dead came back to life (they could hear them) and some slept in coffins etc. In the same way, a corpse in a mortuary will, on occasion sit bolt upright - this again is chemicals and gases interacting but we did not always know this.

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula and situated the action in Transylvania - today Romania because: - Vlad Tepes (the impaler) was an historical character with a very evil image; there was already a myth developed about him - there were many vampire stories told in Transylvania This kind of stories are also found in many countries in the world. Slavic origin could be a good choice to describe the kind of vampires such as Dracula. Romania had received important slavic influences in history. A good anwer from "keithold". But there are also many people of hungarian culture in this region - it was at times a part of Hungary. Here an interesting source locating the origin of the myth of the vampire in the far east: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~vampire/vhist.html

I think there is some connections between the Dragons of old and Vampires. I've read about it somewhere but can't remember the connection. Try putting Dragon and Vampires in your search engine. I think you will find that at one time they were supposed to be one and the same thing.

Vampires as I understand them come from many cultures & times... Philippines: Aswang Europe: Nosferatue Americas: Vampire look here: http://gothlupin.tripod.com/vvampearly.html

The vampire as we know it comes from Romania. They started out as folk lore about how dead bodies would make sounds and still appear to have growing nails and hair long after death. Plus blood would seep from the corpse around the nose and mouth giving the apperance that they had just drank blood. And in some parts of Romania people still belive this. And there were two poeple in history from that area that because of their bloody and cruel ways became forever linked with the vampire lore, Vlad the Implaer and Elizabeth Bathroy. Vlad like to do things like impale people who ticked him and dine in a feild full of the dying while dipping his bread in their blood and walling people up in a room and then setting it on fire. Elizabeth Bathroy was convence that to stay young she had to bath in the blood of virgin girls. She was so cruel that her own subjects walled her up in her room and left her there to die. They used to slide food to her through a slit in the door. It was rumored that she would turn to vapor and slip out to drink the blood of unsuspecting girls and that's why she didn't eat the food they gave her. And it took 9 years after she died for anyone to get the courage to look through the slit to see if she was dead.

The first 'written' reference to the entity that we acknowledge as vampiric, was from Mesopotamia nearly 6,000 years ago. This came from cuneiform tablets found by the antiquarian Layard. There is also a cylinder seal (ancient way to create signatures, among other ways of documentation) which depicts a vampire in action. A female who has been be-headed but still in the posture of menacing a male. A priest has wielded the knife and there is an invocation against entities such as she. Ancient terms for vampires include Ekimmu, Akharhu, Gallu, Dimme, algul and Utukka. www.shroudeater.com is wonderfully scholarly in his research and approach. FYI: I am a history and linguistic major.

My best guess is the disease poryphyria(or it's something like that). Your body does not produce a certain mineral or something and it gives you vampiristic characteristics. Tjht's probably not the original- because there are so many myths everywhere.

And surely part of it is owed to parents who did not want there children out late at night. "Don't stay out late or the vampires and werewolves might get you."

TRANSYLVANIA. I thought everyone knew that!