Every culture has a vampire story to tell.  And every vampire story that is told is considerably different from one to the next.

Ancient civilizations from the Babylonians, to the Mesopotamians, to the Hebrews, told stories of blood sucking creatures. The cultures of China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even Africa tell tales about vampires.

Serbia has the vampire, Greece the vrykolakas, Romania the strigoi, the Czech and Slovaks have the upir, Poland the wapierz, and Russia the upior.

What’s funny, is, unlike the modern vampires who are depicted as beautiful, pale, intelligent, and oh so irresistible, some (almost all) of the vampire legends dating back before the 19^th Century, described the vampires as ugly, scary, and at times—stupid.  I mean, one of the remedies to keep vampires out of your home is to spread poppy seeds on your roof top because the creature cannot resist the compulsion to stop and count the seeds!  By the time the being is done counting, the sun has come up and it’s time to head back to the coffin for a long night’s nap. How dense!  Complete ignoramuses. 

Causes for vampirism were just as numerous as the cultures that came up with them; anything from malevolent spirits possessing corpses, to naturally evil people who died and could not move on.  Witches were believed to turn into vampires.  Murder victims and suicides were also believed to turn into the undead.  And watch out for Moravian vampires because they were believed to only attack while naked—what is up with that?

Most of the stories from the 19^th Century and onward are sexual in nature.  Although the vampire, in most cases, cannot have sex because its body is dead, the blood sucking act in itself becomes the sexual component of the story.  Look at Anne Rice’s vampires; all are a-sexual.  They reproduce by turning others into creatures of the night like themselves.  More of the modern tales, such as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, do have the vampires having sex.  Which is—weird.  But who’s to say? Right?

Since this subject is so vast, we will be dealing with it in segments.  The website will have a page dedicated to the vampire lore, and there will be a section in the newsletter set aside for the blood suckers.