Modern Day Vampires

Why is it that we hear so much about modern day vampires?
Who and what are these creatures that paralyzes us with fear just at the mention of their name? Where did they come from? Why are they here and what could they possibly want with us? How do we protect ourselves from them and what will they do to us if they catch us in the middle of a dark, dark night...alone?

Well, these are great questions that need to be answered.
And we had better answer them before the sun goes down if we know what's good for us. (One Vampire legend tells us that vampires come out only at night and must sleep during the day in order to survive. They must never see sunlight or they will be burned to death). There are many stories about long living, blood-sucking vampires, so let's just see what they are all about.

Modern day vampires seem to come from a belief in creatures that live on the blood of other human beings.
What, no French-fries? Vampires are supposed to bite people on the neck and suck the blood from their bodies. Wow! Wouldn't that hurt? However, legend tells us that if you are wearing a necklace of garlic or holding or wearing a crucifix, then the vampire will not bite you. In fact, the vampire will run away. If the vampire does bite you, you will have to live forever as a vampire and have to live on other people's blood too. And, you will never see the light of day again. Doesn't sound too inviting.

The stories and legends of vampires may go back to prehistoric times, even before the pyramids were built, which is a long, long time ago. The stories were never proved but as time went along, the stories got better and better and better, so that people really believed that there were vampires among us. Some people believed the stories so much that they even thought the people living next door to them might be vampires. This led to a lot of trouble for some of the next-door neighbors, as you can imagine.

A lot of these vampire myths were handed down by storytellers sitting around campfires, verbally passing on the legend to everybody who was listening. Those people would tell their friends and then those friends would tell other people who in turn would tell others until just about everyone in Europe "knew" about vampires. Of course, no one had ever seen or met a real vampire, but since the stories were so good, they just figured that vampires really did exist. Some people who were accused of being vampires actually were punished by their community, even if there was no real proof of them being vampires.

The idea we have of modern day vampires came from several novels written within the last two hundred years or so. The most famous vampire book and the most famous Vampire of all time have the same name: Dracula. The book was a best seller, (people love to read scary stories), and the movies that were made from it really scared people out of their shoes.

There have been many other books and movies made about vampires with the Twilight series currently being the most popular. The vampires in the Twilight movies and books are mostly very likable and they seem to be pretty nice guys and girls who just want to get along with other people. It kind of looks like they have a hard life because they're different from others and they really want to belong and fit in, but they feel that they just can't because of their need for other people's blood. However, some regular, non-vampire people are friendly with them and actually love them for who they are and not what others tell them.