Vampires are fictional mythological creatures said to subsist by drinking the blood of their victims. The best known tale about vampires is Bram Stoker's 1897 story, Dracula, which drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar imaginary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of a [Victorian] age." Literary historian Brian Frost speculates that the "belief in vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself," and may go back to "p...
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Vampires are fictional mythological creatures said to subsist by drinking the blood of their victims. The best known tale about vampires is Bram Stoker's 1897 story, Dracula, which drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar imaginary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of a [Victorian] age." Literary historian Brian Frost speculates that the "belief in vampires and bloodsucking demons is as old as man himself," and may go back to "prehistoric times," although historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy." Numerous modern science-fiction writers since the 1950s have also used vampires in their stories where they have been described as products of such things as "bacteria, mutation, evolution, and extraterrestrials."
The vampire has existed in the folklore of "almost all cultures," according to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vampire characters exist in the records of Chinese, Indian, and Pre...
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