The vampire, the concept and the character, has existed for millennia. Camazotz inhabited the caves of Mesoamerica, the Vetala dwelled in Indian cemeteries, and the Pālīs haunted the Persian desert; nearly every culture has produced its own sanguinary monster. In the popular imagination, the vampire has long fangs, pale skin, and red eyes. Or, in its more recent incarnation, skin that sparkles in sunlight. In Western culture, the most popular vampire, Dracula, is associated with immortality, blood as sustenance, shapeshifting, garlic, crosses, and stakes. These traits did not appear all at once. Instead, the concept of Dracula developed gradually from Roman folklore, Romanian cultural transmission, Serbian terminology, and Gothic literary adaptation.
The story begins in two main periods: Classical Rome and medieval Romania. The earliest known record of the strix, the ancient Roman vampire, appears in Plautus’ comedy Pseudolus, written in 191 B.C.E. Originally, the strix was conceived of as an owl with bat-like qualities; it was nocturnal, a harbinger of evil, and associated with a bat’s long hibernation and shrill sounds. It was considered, as one source puts it, “obviously, a bat at rest.” Over time, the strix shifted from a bird to a witch-like woman. No single reason for this shift is clear, but it may be mainly attributed to poetic interpretation, since an evil creature that could also change shape offered richer material for literature.
The legend then traveled eastward. In 106 C.E., Dacia, which covered parts of modern-day Romania, became a Roman colony, and Roman culture was layered onto the existing one. The Roman pagan pantheon became the dominant religion, and the Dacians adopted Vulgar (Colloquial) Latin. With religion came folklore, and the Dacians absorbed these tales. The strigoi emerged from there: undead creatures that rose from their graves to drain the life force of the living.
Centuries later, a historical figure from the same region would lend his name to the best-known vampire of all. Vlad III, also known as Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, was a Wallachian military leader in the mid-1400s who fought against the advancing Ottoman Empire. He was notorious for his use of brutal torture, and when he retreated from a battle in 1462, he left behind a field of thousands of impaled victims as a deterrent to pursuing Ottoman forces. He was killed in battle in 1476, having successfully, if temporarily, defended Wallachia from the Ottomans. According to one source, “recent analysis of his correspondence suggests [ … ] that a letter from 1475 was covered in retinal proteins, indicating that he may have wept tears partially composed of blood.”
Although Vlad III had no meaningful influence on the folklore surrounding the strigoi or vampires, some historians nonetheless believe his name inspired the title character of the most popular vampire novel in existence, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. No conclusive evidence ties Vlad the Impaler’s actions to the fictional count, but the name may be a nod to the Wallachian ruler. Stoker drew specifically on Romanian folklore about the strigoi, yet he used the Serbian-derived term for the creature: vampir.
That choice of word points to a distinction in language rather than in legend. The etymology of “strigoi” is clearly different from that of “vampire,” which derives from the Serbian vampir or upir. Both cultures had similar undead figures, yet it was largely language that set them apart. After reports reached central Europe in the eighteenth century of creatures returning from the dead, the term “vampire” entered the Western vocabulary. During the Gothic craze of the late 1700s and early 1800s, the vampire’s popularity grew rapidly, evolving into the legend we know today.
The traits that define the modern Dracula, an immortal being who is repelled by garlic, stakes, and crosses, have equally traceable roots. Garlic was likely linked to vampires because many ancient cultures associated strong, pungent smells with warding off evil. The stake and the cross also have cultural explanations. Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Romania was Christianized and cultural transmission continued alongside it. The strigoi came to be seen as demonic, and the cross, a symbol of holiness and goodness in the Christian faith, was believed sufficient to repel such evil creatures. Stakes, meanwhile, were used to pin a corpse to the earth so that it could not rise again.
The modern vampire is therefore the product of a long cultural process: Roman folklore, its transmission into Dacia, Romanian Christianization, Serbian terminology, and Gothic literary appropriation. In this way, Dracula is much like Frankenstein’s monster: a patchwork of many cultures which has formed the iconic figure known today.