The Evolution of the Vampire Myth

Real Life Vampires

Throughout history, there have been reports of actual vampires. In 140 AD, Rome was believed to have been ruled by a vampire, the Emperor Longinus. In 773 AD, Charlemagne allegedly defeated Quadilla the Vampire. The outbreak of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century was believed to have been caused by vampires.

Gilles de Rais lived in the 1400s where after his retirement he began a gruesome campaign of slaughtering 50 to 100 young boys in hideously conceived, blood-soaked sacrificial ceremonies. At the time he was believed to be a living vampire.

Vlad Tepes Dracula, the Prince of Wallachia, was known as Vlad the Impaler. He lived from 1431 to 1476 killing people for his own pleasure. He impaled thousands on oiled posts and watched them slowly and painfully die. On St. Bartholomew's Day, he impaled 30,000 merchants for disobeying trade laws and left their bodies to rot outside the city walls as a warning for others. He also reportedly ate the flesh and drank the blood of his enemies. He had peop0le decapitated, had their eyes gouged out, had them skinned alive, boiled, burnt, dismembered, eviscerated and disfigured for his amusement. It is Vlad Tepes Dracula whom many believe Bram Stoker used as his main character in his Dracula novel.

Countess Erzsebet Bathory from Hungary (1560-1614) was known as the Blood Countess. She would kill young girls to drink and bathe in their blood, believing this owuld make her look young and beautiful forever. She has responsible for the death of more than 650 young girls before her arrest.

Peter Plogojowitz was a Serbian peasant who died in 1725. A week after his death, nine villagers of varying ages died of a mysterious 24 hour illness. Before they died, there were many reports of Peter visiting them from his grave. When they dug up Peter's body, they found what they believed were the typical signs of a vampire -- lack of decomposition, ruddy complexion, fingernails and hair showing growth, and the presence of fresh blood.

In the 1980's Richard Trenton Chase was known as the Vampire of Sacramento. His six victims suffered from his delusion that he needed to drink and bathe in their blood, and eat their raw organs to prevent Nazis from transforming his own blood into powder.