Dracula moves to England for a variety of reasons not made explicit in the text, but upon which a degree of informed speculation can be exercised. His collection of English books and maps is probably the result of a special quality England was seen to possess in the mindset of many Continental Europeans.

​The Victorian writer Bram Stoker spent several holidays here. He would stay in the Duke of York at the bottom of the 199 steps – the very spot where his undead protagonist would reach England’s shores aboard a shipwrecked boat in the 1897 classic Gothic novel.

Because London was one big All-You-Can-Drink buffet. In his home, he was an ancient and well-known evil, and the citizenry knew enough about his habits and strengths and weaknesses to take measures to protect themselves. In London, he could melt into the masses and prowl to his heart’s content.

A GOTHIC SETTING Bram Stoker arrived at Mrs Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, Whitby, at the end of July 1890. As the business manager of actor Henry Irving, Stoker had just completed a gruelling theatrical tour of Scotland. It was Irving who recommended Whitby, where he’d once run a circus, as a place to stay.

Church of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples could house tomb of the real-life Dracula. Vlad was long thought to have been interred at a monastery near Bucharest, but excavations there in 1933 found no tomb beneath the unmarked grave thought to be his.

So Dracula arrived in the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby; and the fact is, he’s never left. Dracula, the novel, was published in 1897. It was the brain-child of actor Henry Irving’s business manager, Bram (Abraham) Stoker (1847-1912).

By most accounts, Vlad III was born in 1431 in what is now Transylvania, the central region of modern-day Romania.

The first vampire started out as not a vampire at all, but as a human man named Ambrogio. He was an Italian-born adventurer who fate brought to Delphi, in Greece. You can read the full story here, but in a nutshell a series of blessings and curses transformed this young man into history’s first vampire.

Spotting a vampire According to vampire folklore, vampires display some tell-tale physical signs of their affliction: pale skin, an absence of a reflection in mirrors, fangs and red glowing eyes. These attributes are commonly assigned to the blood-sucking undead in popular culture.

Vampires are often depicted as being repelled by garlic, running water, or Christian implements such as crucifixes and holy water.

Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire’s lack of a soul).

Vampires have two features of interest to memory theorists. First, to the extent that they avoid angry mobs, they are immortal, allowing them to accumulate life experiences indefinitely. Second, they are immune to the effects of aging.

Cryonics holds out the hope that the dead can be revived in the future, following sufficient medical advancements. While, as shown with creatures such as hydra and planarian worms, it is indeed possible for a creature to be biologically immortal, it is not known if it will be possible for humans in the near-future.

Flight: The bruxsa, langsuir and aswang can fly; other vampires change shape to fly. Misting: Gives the vampires access to places that are hard to secure or reach.

Vampires are often handsome or beautiful, while most other monsters are grotesque and ugly (think of the Mummy, the Frankenstein monster, the Blob, the Alien, Freddie, etc.). There are large and arcane bodies of knowledge about them: How they are made.

After all, vampires have been around awhile. And, among other things, vampires are usually inherently hot — at least since the modern vampire era began 200 years ago. In 1816, an associate of Lord Byron named John Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” (published in 1819), possibly inspired by Byron himself.

The manananggal is an old mythical creature in the Philippines that separates from their lower part of body and their fangs and wings give it a vampire-like appearance.

Vampires are cold blooded, if once they touch the wound will go.

In one year, a 100-bat colony can drink the blood of 25 cows. During the darkest part of the night, common vampire bats emerge to hunt. Sleeping cattle and horses are their usual victims, but they have been known to feed on people as well. The bats drink their victim’s blood for about 30 minutes.

But the main characteristic of vampires (or vampyres) is they drink human blood.