People have always worried about things they did not understand or things they had no control over. Most especially, people have worried about what happens when you are dead and whether you can come alive again in some way. People also worry about the dark, because our eyes do not let us see clearly much of what goes on. Nocturnal animals have a big advantage over us in the dark. So we feel scared of things that might attack us suddenly. Bats, for example, fly about very quickly at night using ultrasound to guide them. All we glimpse is a dark shadow flitting past us. Spiders might entangle us in giant webs – the list of things that frighten us goes on. To help us see in the dark, people shine lights: street lights today and fires in the past. Fire – light – thus becomes a symbol of good, while dark is a symbol of evil.

If people want to do evil things, they most often do them at night. They camouflage themselves with dark clothes. They move in the shadows. In this way, black becomes a symbol of evil and, of course, white is a symbol of goodness.

Our most precious thing is our blood. Giving our blood is a sacrifice. But having it taken from us forcibly is a terrible sign of evil – or so we think.

We like to feel comfortable and safe. We feel less safe in surroundings or with people we do not know. Mysterious foreigners or the thought of foreign places can be unsettling.

We are at out most defenceless when we are held against our will, such as in a prison. Castles have been used as prisons for centuries. They have high towers and strong gates. And no-one really knows what goes on inside their forbidding walls.

Above all, we are afraid of people who seem to be kind and friendly but who really have evil deeds in mind. Victorian mothers, for example, would warn their children that if they did something wrong the ‘Bogey Man’ would get them.

So our own fears create images in our minds of darkness, blackness, blood, double-dealing and being defenceless. This is the world of vampires.

Because no-one knows what happens when we die, there is always a fear of the unknown. What happens if we do not die? This fear of being undead is made more dramatic because nobody likes looking in a coffin and seeing a rotted corpse. But what if the corpse were not rotted, but still had flesh, with growing fingernails and teeth, and with blood dripping from the mouth? That is truly terrifying.

Scientists will tell you that corpses often change that way before they finally decompose, and some kinds of coffins make decomposing a very slow process. But for those who are less knowledgeable, the idea of the undead can become fearful.

The vampire – one of the undead – becomes a night creature, a demon of the dark. It can only move about at night and must return to its coffin before daybreak.

The modern idea of vampires spread from Eastern Europe, the lands whose ancestors were Slavs. In the days before Christianity, Slav religions focused on ancestor worship and household spirits.

The Ancient Slavs believed that the soul could not be killed with the body. They believed that upon death the soul would go out of the body and wander for 40 days before moving on to the afterlife. During this time the soul could re-enter its dead body.

The Ancient Slavs believed that some spirits were good and could help people, while others were harmful and came from ancestors or dead people.

From this ancient religious idea came the vampire: an evil undead spirit which needs the blood of the living to keep its dead body from decomposing.

As books began to be written on superstitions from the East, so knowledge of vampires spread. Then, as people emigrated from Eastern Europe, so these superstitions migrated with them, so that even in the 19th century it was quite common for Americans to believe in vampires.