Vampires and Garlic

Halloween.  That yearly tradition of kids dressing up as their favorite character all in order to gather copious amounts of candy from total strangers while their parents pull a wagon full of adult beverages.

We have a tradition of going over to some friends neighborhood that contains a lot more kids than our neighborhood and pull said wagon.   It is always a blast to see the costumes that the kids come up with – witches, werewolves, angry birds, and the assorted super hero.  Zombies also appear to be the “hot” character this year.  Every now and then you would see the classic vampire get up and that got me thinking about the whole vampires and garlic thing.  I mean why no garlic love from the Nosferatu?

Once upon a time in Serbia: The Tale of Sava Savanovic

In a small and quaint village, in the beautiful countryside of Serbia sits a lonesome windmill with a big story to tell. The windmill was once in use, but now it stands in disrepair, a dilapidated shell of its former glory.

The windmill was once the home of Sava Savanovic, a well-respected livestock trader. Unlike his brother, Stanko, Sava had never married and had never had children.

An Accurate Reporting on the Serbian Government Issuing a Vampire Warning

I have written about countless vampire cases over the years, reports of real vampires preying on villages and towns. All of those cases took place well over a hundred years ago, but now I’ve got a current one for you today. The local council in western Serbia recently issued a public health warning that a vampire was on the loose.

The warning came after an old crumbling mill, said to once have been the home of the vampire Sava Savanovic, collapsed.

Is it bad to drink blood?

Vampires are real, and they exist in all pockets of society. But is drinking blood safe? What does the science say about sipping on blood?

We humans, we're all just flesh and blood. And as we've already covered the costs of consuming flesh, let's have some banter about imbibing blood.

Inside your vessels (blood vessels that is, not drinking vessels), blood carries just about everything your body needs. It picks up oxygen from the lungs and nutrients from the gut and hand delivers them to your cells.

Text of Prince Dracula

Editor's Note: This text is a translation of one of the oldest surviving versions of the story of Vlad V, Prince of Wallachia--known to his friends as Vlad the Impaler, or Prince Dracole. It was printed in Nuremburg in 1488. The accounts of the atrocities here must be taken with a grain of salt, since this pamphlet and many other like it were prepared under the influence of a political enemy of Vlad V, King Matthias Corvinas of Hungary. The document was written within a few years of Vlad V's death, however, and some of the events described can be traced back to events in historical records.

Six copies of this particular pamphlet are known to exist. The only copy outside of Europe--from which this translation was made--is held by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. This translation is from a publication prepared by the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

Vampire myths originated with a real blood disorder

The concept of a vampire predates Bram Stoker's tales of Count Dracula—probably by several centuries. But did vampires ever really exist?

In 1819, 80 years before the publication of Dracula, John Polidori, an Anglo-Italian physician, published a novel called The Vampire. Stoker's novel, however, became the benchmark for our descriptions of vampires. But how and where did this concept develop? It appears that the folklore surrounding the vampire phenomenon originated in that Balkan area where Stoker located his tale of Count Dracula.

Video submission: The Strange Origin Of Vampires

Submitted by: Benjamin Michael

Have you ever wondered where vampire legends came from? It turns out the origin is pretty strange and unexpected, and the creature you're used to thinking of isn't much like how they began. Vampires weren't always the pale, gaunt figure we think of when we see them today. And they definitely weren't glittery teenagers. They were something much more primal, and ugly, and... Weird. The vampire you think of today was inspired by Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. But the first appearance of the word vampire was almost 200 years earlier, so what did they look like in that time? Keep watching to find out!

Fact or Fiction: Are Vampires Real?

Raise the stakes with this all encompassing guide on all things vampires.

Author: Leah Hall, for Country Living

It's not your imagination: Vampires are everywhere. They're in vampire movies (hello, Interview with the Vampire) and all over television (we see you, The Vampire Diaries). They're the subject of countless books. (Twilight may have spawned a million vampiric copy cats, but if you want to get good and scared, try a classic: Stephen King's Salem's Lot.)