John William Polidori was a British writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), the first published modern vampire story. Although the story was at first erroneously credited to Lord Byron, both Byron and Polidori affirmed that the author was Polidori.
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods which they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. Vampiric entities have been recorded in cultures around the world; the term vampire was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in Southeastern and Eastern Europe that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism. Local variants in Southeastern Europe were also known by different names, such as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania, cognate to Italian 'Strega', meaning Witch.
Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood is a Victorian-era serialized gothic horror story variously attributed to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. It first appeared in 1845–1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The author was paid by the typeset line, so when the story was published in book form in 1847, it was of epic length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages and 232 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words.
Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and more recent examples such as Moto Hagio's series The Poe Clan (1972–1976) and Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) proving influential.
A vampire is a being from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence of the living.
In Balkan folklore, a dhampir is a mythical creature that is the result of a union between a vampire and a human. This union was usually between male vampires and female humans, with stories of female vampires mating with male humans being rare.
A psychic vampire is a creature in folklore said to feed off the "life force" of other living creatures. The term can also be used to describe a person who gets increased energy around other people, but leaves those other people exhausted or "drained" of energy. Psychic vampires are represented in the occult beliefs of various cultures and in fiction.
"The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. "The Vampyre" is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The work is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre."
Mark Benecke is a German forensic biologist.
Vampires are frequently represented in popular culture across various forms of media, including appearances in ballet, films, literature, music, opera, theatre, paintings, and video games.
Auto-vampirism is a form of vampirism that refers to drinking one's own blood, typically as a form of sexual gratification. As a mental disorder, this is also called as autohemophagia, which is derived from three Greek words: auto, which means "self"; hemo, for "blood"; and, phag, meaning "to eat". Although closely related to vampirism, the two differ in that vampirism is a sadistic act while auto-vampirism is on the side of masochism. Along with drinking their own blood, most practitioners of auto-vampirism also engage in self-harm in order to obtain the blood.
Vampire Secrets is a 2006 docudrama about the mythology and lifestyle of vampires, produced by Indigo Films for the History Channel, and narrated by Corey Burton.
Legends of vampires have existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic entities and blood-drinking spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century Central Europe, particularly Transylvania as verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or a living person being bitten by a vampire themselves. Belief in such legends became so rife that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.
Otherkin are a subculture of people who identify as partially or entirely nonhuman. Some otherkin believe their identity derives from spiritual phenomena, ancestry, symbolism, or metaphor. Others attribute it to unusual psychology or neurodivergence and do not hold spiritual beliefs on the subject.
"Fragment of Novel" is an unfinished 1819 vampire horror story written by Lord Byron. The story, also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme. The main character was Augustus Darvell. John William Polidori based his novella The Vampyre (1819), originally attributed in print to Lord Byron, on the Byron fragment. The vampire in the Polidori story, Lord Ruthven, was modelled on Byron himself. The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in the summer of 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley where a "ghost writing" contest was proposed. This contest was also what led to the creation of Frankenstein according to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1818 Preface to the novel. The story is important in the development and evolution of the vampire story in English literature as one of the first to feature the modern vampire as able to function in society in disguise. The short story first appeared under the title "A Fragment" in the 1819 collection Mazeppa: A Poem, published by John Murray in London.
Father Sebastiaan is an American fangsmith, published author and impresario. He is a former dental assistant working as a "fangsmith," crafting custom made fangs for consumers. He is the founder of the Sabretooth Clan, a fangmaking business and social network for the vampire subculture, and has worked as an author and co-author of several books on the occult and the vampire subculture.
Vampyre Sanguinomicon: The Lexicon of the Living Vampire is an occult book by Father Sebastiaan that explores the vampire subculture. The book was published in 2010 by Weiser and contains a foreword written by the occult writer Konstantinos.
Lydia Benecke is a German criminal psychologist and writer of popular science non-fiction.
Upiór (Tatar language: Убыр , Turkish: Ubır, Obur, Obır, is a demonic being from Slavic and Turkic folklore, a prototype of the vampire. It is suggested that the ubır belief spread across the Eurasian steppes through the migrations of the Kipchak-Cuman people, after having its origins in the regions surrounding the Volga River and the Pontic steppes. The modern word "vampire" derives from the Old Slavic language and Turkic form онпыр , with the addition of the sound "v" before a large nasal vowel, characteristic of Old Bulgarian, as evidenced by the traditional Bulgarian form впир.
A Field Guide to Otherkin is a 2007 book by the neopagan writer and psychologist Lupa. It discusses the otherkin community, a group of people who believe they are, in some sense, not entirely human. Lupa, who considered herself otherkin at the time of the book's publication, conducted a qualitative study of online otherkin communities between 2005 and 2006; she wrote A Field Guide to Otherkin based around its findings, synthesizing its conclusions about otherkin belief and its origins, common otherkin identities, and the religious and spiritual beliefs of otherkin.
