VAMPIRE
Drinks Blood To Survive
They may be defeated by the use of holy water, the use of a silver cross, pinning through the heart with a wooden stake, and allowing the sunlight to fall on them
This is the name of a monstrous humanoid being that has been transformed from wicked unrepentant mortal human into an immortal creature that must suck the blood of another in order to survive. These beings are found in most cultures around the world but do not necessarily take the form of a human when they hunt their prey. In many European traditions, they are the development from the dead WEREWOLF. They may take the form of a monstrous bat, fox, or a cat to mesmerize and drain the blood of their victim. The only ways in which they may be defeated is by the use of holy water, the use of a silver cross, pinning through the heart with a wooden stake, and allowing the sunlight to fall on them. Hawthorn and garlic were said to repel them, and they could be recognized from throwing no shadow, or a reflection in a mirror. During the middle ages and for sometime after, whole graveyards were exhumed when a catastrophe set the people looking for the VAMPIRE that was to blame.
The European Concept was developed from an eastern European tradition of the Balkan states where the Slavic word vampir exists with variants in the Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Russian languages. The legends of the VAMPIRE were current long before the Greek scholar Leone Allaeci mad his study in the middle 1600s. By 1734 some of the legends had been translated into English, and in 1746 the French Benedictine monk Augustine Calmet (1672-1757) published a study of the phenomenon. By the end of nineteenth century Europe had become fascinated by the horror story of the VAMPIRE, with both eminent authors such as Goethe and Baudelaire responding to the publics demand that spawned horror comics such as “Varney the Vampire” (1847). The major development of the theme came wit the publication of the classic horror novel Dracula (1897) by the Irish author Bram Stoker. It has been conjectured that much of the frisson gained in this type of horror comes from the sexuality involved in the “kiss”, usually depicted as piercing the neck with fangs, that drains the blood of the victim.
In other countries, the tradition of El Broosha has devolved into the traditions of Spain from the early Jewish settlers. This Vampire was derived from the legend of Lillith, the first wife of Adam in the book of Genesis. In Japan, the VAMPIRE is the ca of Nabeshima, which takes the form of the princess who was its first victim and then tries to kill the royal prince but is destroyed. In China, the VAMPIRES inhabit abandon temples and castles and attack travelers at night. In the beliefs of the Araucanian people of Chile there are COLO-COLO, the Invunche, and the Pihuechenyi; in Surinam the Azeman; in the Islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean it is the Sukuyan. In the US the Skatene is the VAMPIRE in the beliefs of the Choctaw Native American people of the southeastern US and the Stikini in the beliefs of the Seminole Native American People of Oklahoma. In Scotland, the VAMPIRE is Lammikin. In ancient Rome, it was Lamiaqa and the Strigae, which was the source of the modern greek VAMPIRE, the Stringes. The Vulkodlac is a VAMPIRE in modern Slavic folklore and the UPIR in modern Russia. In India, the Pey is the Vampire in Tamil mythology; in West Malaysia, he Pottianak is the VAMPIRE of the Malay people; while VIS is a Vampire in the beliefs of the Lakalai people of central New Brittan in Melanesia
Source: Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth