Dracula’s origins, unearthed at long last

He has also edited and introduced collections of supernatural tales by authors including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edgar Allan Poe and Walter de la Mare. Vampires are fodder for books, movies, and Halloween costumes. But for hundreds of years, they were scapegoats for disease. The traits of modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They can be warded off with garlic, or killed with a stake through the heart.

Some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles. Scholars suspect that the modern conception of these Halloween monsters evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe.

Dracula’s origins, unearthed at long last: We've made an astounding discovery about

These beliefs centered around the fear that the dead, once buried, could still harm the living. Often, these legends arose from a misunderstanding of how bodies decompose. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living. Before people understood how certain diseases spread, they sometimes imagined vampires were behind the unseen forces slowly ravaging their communities.

Trying to kill vampires, or prevent them from feeding, was a way for people to feel as though they had some control over disease.