The vampires

THE VAMPirees

Do you know anything about vampires? Are you believed in them?

Well, Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence or generally calledblood, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person.

The vampirism has existed for millions of years; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales ofdemons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. However, despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity we knowtoday as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th century Southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published.

In most cases,vampires are of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became sopervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.

Some examples of vampires's creations in original folklore are; in Slavic and Chinesetraditions, any dead body which was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead. A body with a wound which had not been treated with boiling water wasalso at risk. In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the Church while they were alive.

Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, aswas placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles, near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin.

Thismethod resembles the Ancient Greek practice of placing a charity in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld; it has been argued that instead, the coin was intended...