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Some people argue that vampire stories might have been influenced by a rare illness called porphyria. The disease disrupts the production of heme. People with extreme cases of this hereditary disease can be so sensitive to sunlight that they can get a sunburn through heavy cloud cover, causing them to be nocturnal and avoid all light. People with porphyria can also have red eyes and teeth, resulting from buildup of red heme intermediates ( porphyrins). However, the hypotheses that porphyria sufferers "crave" the heme in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based in ignorance.
Others argue that there is a relationship between vampirism and rabies. The legend of vampirism is known to have existed in the 19th century Eastern Europe, where there were massive rabies outbreaks. Rabies causes high fever, loss of appetite, and fatigue as initial symptoms. In later stages, patients try to avoid the sunlight and prefer walking at night. Strong light and mirrors can cause episodes characterized by violent and animal-like behaviors and a tendency to attack people and bite them. Concomitant facial spasms might give the patient an animal-like (or a vampire-like) expression. In a furious form of the disease, patients might have an increased urgency for sexual activity or occasionally vomit blood. Rabies is contagious.
As a body decomposes, the internal organs rot first because the food that is fermenting there continues fermenting and cannot get out. As a result, a body can swell like a balloon. Put pressure on this and the pressure seeks a way to escape.
When the coffin of an alleged vampire was opened, people sometimes found the cadaver in a "healthy state" and beautiful, meaning that the corpse was a well-fed vampire. Folkloric accounts almost universally represent the vampire as having ruddy or dark skin, not the pale skin of vampires in literature and film. Reasons for this appearance include:
The three species of vampire bat are all endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any Old World relatives within human memory. It is therefore unlikely that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the bat. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the Oxford English Dictionary records the folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. However, once the vampire bats became known in western culture, their existence certainly reinforced and shaped the vampire legend, and it is common for vampires to be represented as bat-like in one way or another and have the ability to transform into one when desired.
Ironically, Byron's own wild life became the model for the protagonist Lord Ruthven in the first vampire novel, The Vampyre (1819) by John William Polidori. An unauthorized sequel to this novel by Cyprien Bérard called Lord Ruthven on es Vampires (1820) was adapted by Charles Nodier into the first vampire stage melodrama.
Bram Stoker's Dracula has been the definitive description of the vampire in popular fiction for the last century. Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession), with its undertones of sex, blood, and death, struck a chord in a Victorian England where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. Before the Victorian era, the romantic connection between vampires and sex did not exist.
Dracula is believed to be based at least partially on legends about a real person, Vlad Tepes, a savagely cruel prince known also as Vlad III Dracula (Draculea, or "Dracula", meaning "son of the dragon"; his father was called Dracul (The Dragon) after being "inducted into the Order of the Dragon in 1431") also known as Vlad the Impaler, who lived in the late Middle Ages in what is now Romania. Stoker is believed to have seen a reference in an article by Emily Gerard who said that Dracula was a word meaning the Devil. (Emily Gerard, "Transylvanian Superstitions." Nineteenth Century (July 1885): 130–150). Oral tradition regarding Tepes includes his having made a practice of torturing peasants who displeased him and hanging them, or parts of them, such as heads, on stakes around his castle or manor house. Tepes may have suffered from porphyria. His rumored periodic abdominal agony, especially after eating, and bouts of delirium might indicate presence of the disease.
right Filmgoers met Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in 1931 in a landmark vampire film.
Stoker also probably derived inspiration from Irish myths of blood-sucking creatures. He also was almost certainly influenced by a contemporary vampire story, Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu. Le Fanu was Stoker's editor when Stoker was a theatre critic in Dublin, Ireland.
Much 20th-century vampire fiction draws heavily on Stoker's formulation; early films such as Nosferatu and those featuring Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee are examples of this. Nosferatu, in fact, was clearly based on Dracula, and Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement and won. As a result of the suit, most prints of the film were destroyed. She later allowed the film to be shown in England.
Though most other works of vampire fiction do not feature Dracula as a character, there is typically a clear inspiration from Stoker, reflected in a fascination with sex and wealth, as well as overwhelmingly frequent use of Gothic settings and iconography. A contemporary descendant is the series of novels by Anne Rice, the most popular in a genre of modern stories that use vampires as their protagonists.
Other vampire tales seen in several places include:
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