I'm like a lot of other people in the sense that I am intriegued by vampires. They fascinate me to an extent where I want to know everything about them.

But do some of us hold such a strong interest for them? Is it because they're mysterious? Is it because there's some kind of lust involved? Is it because it's something we don't know about so therefore we crave the knowledge? I'm here to discuss and discover a little more about these creatures of the night...

Vampires have not only existed in modern fiction but also in mythological folklore. They've been around a little while. The term for "vampire" started getting used mostly in the 18th century in south eastern European folklore. The idea was and still is that a vampire will use other living creatures from humans to animals to survive themselves. They live on the blood of the creature.

It is commonly accepted in modern cultural depictions that if you are to be bitten by a vampire, you will most certainly become one yourself. However, in original vampire folklore, the causes were far more varied. In Romanian folklore alone there were many causes of vampires other than being the victim of vampirism; if a pregnant woman was stared at by someone who was a vampire, there was a high risk of your baby becoming a vampire. Not only in Slavic but also Chinese tradition any corpse which had an animal, particularly a dog or cat, jump over it would also become one of the undead.

Throughout modern history, and indeed long before, vampires have captured people's imaginations in books, films and computer games and have developed the image of how we see vampires today. Vampires are mysterious creatures and there is so much information available to everyone about them. Different areas of the world believe different things about vampires and I think that's what partially makes them so interesting to learn about.

Here are some features to celebrate vampires! Enjoy