The past century’s vampires have often been a bit dashing, even romantic. That’s not how the myth started out.
Medical volunteers have been a common sight in African countries like Zambia since the colonial era.
Engraving from The Illustrated London News, volume 96, No 2654, March 1, 1890/Getty Images
Fear of a disease that seemed to turn people into beasts might have inspired belief in supernatural beings that live on in today’s creepy Halloween costumes.
The Nightmare by John Henry Fuseli.
Detroit Institute of Arts
Written in the same house party as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Polidori’s creature was based on the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron.
Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 horror film is influenced by John Polidori’s tale of terror, ‘The Vampyre,’ first published — suggestively — on April Fools’ Day 1819.
Universal Pictures
One of the reasons the myth of vampires endures and captures the popular imagination is that vampires are a powerful metaphor for a wide range of cultural practices and social problems.
Darcy, played here by Colin Firth in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, has morphed from dreamboat to vampire in recent fiction.
BBC
Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.
Sophia Forrest as Eli in Let the Right One In.
Photo credit Daniel J Grant