What started the vampire legends?
The legend of vampires started because, as there are now, people have always been fascinated with blood. There have always been people who have a blood ‘fetish’, if you will, and back in past eras when science was not advanced and superstition ruled hand in hand with the church, people took it as something monstrous. Vlad the Impaler was a cruel lord who tortured people and placed their head, I believe, on spikes. He was known as a bloody man, his violence and bloodshed giving him a reputation as one who enjoyed blood. When a human dies their fingernails still grow for a short time, and when the skin contracts as it begins to decay, the hair appears longer because what had been growing in life, is now being pushed out by the contracting skin. Bram Stoker, though, was the one who really brought vampires into the lime-light. He basically stated that he had made the creature up; the idea of one who never dies and lived by night, feasting on blood being an appealing one for a writer with s
