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with the publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori. A successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. However, it is the Bram 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the best known vampire story and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend. The vampire myth appears to have originated in Transylvania, according to the Bram Stoker novel, in the dark foreboding hills of Eastern Europe, The most common variation of the myth portrays the vampire as a dead person who rises from the grave and roams the dark of night seeking his victims. The novels of Anne Rice, including 'Interview With a Vampire', are also spreading varied twists in the definition of a vampire. Her vampires are immortal, jaded and mostly ordinary people caught in something they cannot understand.

The film versions of Bram Stoker's celebrated novel added a number of variations to the legends by the ability to fly like a bat, a lust for beautiful women who then become vampires when bitten; It also included the repelling powers of the odor of garlic and garlic plants, the symbol of the cross and death at sunset by a driven stake through the vampire's heart, a fitting end based on the fifteenth century warrior 'Vlad the Impaler'.

The concept of drinking blood to create immortality is not a foreign one to the human mind. Indians, Greeks and Christians have all had a part in this conception. Drinking the blood of another is sometimes understood as obtaining the "life-blood" of someone else for oneself. Therefore, the idea of the vampire stems from cannibalism, and the concept of putting someone's body inside your own to obtain more life. One theory of the origins of the vampire myth lie in the mystery cults of oriental civilizations The Nepalese Lord of Death, The Tibetan Devil, and the Mongolian God of time. (D.P. Varna 'The Vampire in Myth and Legend")
The myth of the fury, or a creature in the guise of a woman that sucks the life from a sleeping victim, was created in Greek times to represent the wrath of the Gods. The 'Chupacabra, a blood-sucking alien creature that feasts on animals, is another vampire-like myth that originated in the hills of South America, and still exists today. The 'Drauger of Icelandic saga and lore is an animated corpse that comes from its grave mount and creates evil all about. Throughout the Adriatic and Aegean regions the 'Vrykolakes' travels by night and knocks on doors on dwellings and calling out the name of householder; if the person

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