Vampires: An Analysis of Myth, Reality, and Modern Popularity

This essay, titled "Vampires-Myth Busted," delves into the origins, evolution, and modern interpretations of vampire myths. The essay begins by establishing the historical context and linguistic origins of the term "vampire," tracing its roots in ancient folklore and its rise to popularity through television and cinema. It explores the general characteristics of vampires, particularly their blood-sucking nature, and references Bram Stoker's Dracula as a pivotal work in shaping the modern vampire archetype. The essay then examines various types of vampires and their associated legends, before shifting to a critical analysis of their existence, using scientific arguments to debunk claims about vampires. It highlights how the vampire myth has been exploited for commercial purposes by novelists and filmmakers, and how it taps into human psychology and fear. The conclusion summarizes that vampires are a modern creation, rooted in the human belief in evil and popularized for entertainment and financial gain. The essay uses several academic sources to support its arguments and includes a bibliography.

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Vampires-Myth Busted
Name
Institution

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Vampires
Thesis
“Vampires are mythical human look alike characters that roam and suck blood out of living
humans, especially at night, popularized by onset and constant growth of television and cinema
for public consumption with the sole intention of generating money. Vampires are just the
modern form of ancient evils that happened to be popularized with special blood sucking
functions based on human psyche of fear and obsession with blood.”
Introduction
According to Matthew Beresford, author of a famous book, ‘From Demons to Dracula: The
Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth’, existence of vampires is based on many ancient myths
and that it can never be proved when and how did the mythscame into existence. Matthew says,
“There are clear foundations for the vampire in the ancient word. There are suggestions that the
vampire was born out of sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some
other.”
One must remember that we, the folks of the 21st century, are fascinated with the term,
‘Vampire’ only because it has been popularized by means of television dramas, novels, movies
and horror shows. The term, ‘vampire’ is a Hungarian term adopted in English dictionary. In
other words, the popularity of vampire is mainly linguistic based and not functional based and
much of the popularity is owed to the onset and constant growth of televisions and cinema in
thelast part of twentieth century.
The general characteristic features and the most popular functions that people connect
vampires with is that they are blood sucking human lookalike creatures that suck blood out of
living humans till death (Harris, 2001). Vampires, however, got their first exposure to popularity

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through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a historical novel based on Vlad Tepes, or Vlad III (1431-1476),
a Romanian ruler who fought Ottoman Turks with valor, grit and determination. During one such
onslaught with Turks, he is said to have killed hundreds of rebels who he thought would join
enemy ranks and showcased their blood soaked de-capacitated heads as deterrencefor other
potential offenders (Radford, 2014). In the later novels that followed many writers drew a
parallel between Vlad, Vampires, and blood sucker and tweaked words to present Vlad as the
first known Vampires.
Types of vampires
There are a lot other vampire figures that revolve around this general blood sucking
characteristics with modifications. Vampires with impersonation skillsthat can impersonate into
wolves and bats are the popular ones while vampires with ability to leave no reflection are said
to have distinctive powers than others that leave reflection. The most commonly heard and the
most feared vampire species is the one that eat blood and turn a human into vampire which in
turn becomes human blood hunters and the chain goes on.Many legends also have that these
vampires (suck blood and turn human into another vampire) first originated after Vlad’s killing
of rebels and since then they have roamed in vengeance and turned humans into vampires by
sucking out blood till death (History.com, 2019).
Reality around existence of vampires
The question that comes to rational mind is not what their types are and how they go
about hounding, groping and sucking their human victims but about the legitimacy of their
existence. Can vampire like character exists in true sense? The world we live in defines almost
every aspect of our living precisely and accurately in scientific terms; it implies that science and
technology has taken us to a level of understanding and rationality that human minds simply

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refuse to accept unscientific facts or stuffs that have not been proven scientifically. Science and
technology in recent years, especially in the last twenty years, have debunked many unscientific
claims and proven that they cannot exist in scientifically. These vampire myths and the many
surrounding theories have also been under scientists’ study.
A physicist at University of Central Florida gave a mathematical logic to deny the
existence of ‘eat blood and turn a human into vampire’ vampires. He applied simple mathematics
to state that if such vampires existed since 1600 A.D, then by now the whole humanity would
have ceased to exist. One by one, vampires would have multiplied exponentially and humanity
would have simply existed no more (Goudarzi, 2008). It may be noted that blood suckers and
turners of humans into vampires are among the most commonly heard and most feared vampires,
the existence of which has been debunked so easily through simple mathematics. The same
mathematics may not be applicable to all other forms of vampires, but it raises a serious question
on their existence too.
Vampires- a business model for television and movies
The most important fact that arises out of all is that vampires have been made hugely
popular because it suited and still suits the business objectives of novelist, horror movie
directors, and producers. The popularization of blood drinking vampires is also based on
psychological reasons as we tend to fear blood spilling more than any other form of killings or
tortures (Little, 2018). Humans have believed in evil powers since ancient times and in those
times many other forms of evil characters like witches and sorcerers existed. For example, the
story of sorcery and evils performed through sorcery was very popular across Egypt in ancient
times. People believed that sorcerers had some extra-terrestrial powers and they drew influence
from outside world to harm people. It is just that functional definitions of modern day vampires

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differed from what we have come to know but overall creatures like sorcerers, witches and
vampires are perceived to be harmful to human beings.
Conclusion
In short, Vampires are just a modern world creation for public consumption and the root
of this creation lies in basic human belief of existence of evils as powerful creatures in religious
scriptures. Evils in mythological and religious scriptures are said to possess powers to cause
damages and deaths to humans. Based on this belief of humans on evil powers coupled by
advancement of psychological research, novelist and movie producers have designed the
characters of vampires to reap monetary dividends that have generated handsome revenues and
continues to do so and by every possibility will continue to do that.

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References
Goudarzi, S. (2008, 01 11). Live Science. Retrieved 04 02, 2019, from
https://www.livescience.com: https://www.livescience.com/4257-vampires-mathematical-
impossibility-scientist.html
Harris, T. (2001, 10 31). How Vampires Work. Retrieved 04 13, 2019, from Science:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/vampire.htm
History.com. (2019, 04 13). https://www.history.com. Retrieved 04 13, 2019, from History:
https://www.history.com/topics/folklore/vampire-history
Little, B. (2018). National Geographic. Retrieved 04 13, 2019, from
https://news.nationalgeographic.com: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/vampires-
europe-new-england-halloween-history/
Radford, B. (2014, 10 22). Live Science. Retrieved 04 03, 2019, from
https://www.livescience.com: https://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.html