The Vampire
Vampiric creatures have existed in folklore for millenia, but in 1726 reports spread from Serbia of Arnold Paole, a man who killed his neighbours and sucked blood from their veins, weeks after his death.
Tales of ‘revenants’ such as Paole spread throughout Eastern Europe – creatures resembling the dead, with a marked hunger for blood.
Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) brought the dawn of the romantic vampire genre, epitomised with Dracula in 1872. The fear they instilled was not just of death but of their influence on society and transgressive sexuality.
Since Dracula the mythology of the vampire has developed within popular culture. From Nosferatu to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and What We Do in the Shadows, vampires have ranged from bestial villain to seductive, sympathetic, humorous, and heroic.
Skull of a vampire bat
Desmodus rotundus
The vampire bat was named by European taxonomists after the mythical monster, for their shared blood-sucking tendencies. However, they were often misidentified as it was presumed that larger species of bat, such as the flying fox, were the bloodsucking bats of tales. In reality, vampire bats are about the size of a teacup. Out of nearly 1,400 bat species, only three feed on blood.
With his “sharp, white teeth”, cloak, aversion to garlic, and ability to transform into a bat, Dracula in 1897 possesses the bat-like characteristics we associate with vampires. These traits were not included in descriptions of vampires until Charles Darwin’s account of his journey aboard HMS Beagle was first published, in 1839. Darwin’s observation of a vampire bat feeding on a horse caused a sensation within vampire literature.
