ABSTRACT
Vampires continue to capture the human imagination. They are a common image in today's pop culture, taking the form of horror movie villains, video game protagonists, romantic leads, and dashing film heroes - just to name a few. I've offered a brief timeline on western history and how social changes have reflected on the vampire. It is my opinion that observing the history of the vampire in culture offers deep insight into the evolution of western society: more specifically, what we value and what we fear. The folk groups that have developed around vampirism show how vampires have gone from monsters to fear and hunt, to creatures we romanticize and even want to be. The groups that exhumed and destroyed the corpses of "vampires" gathered together to express their fear of death and the unknown and fight against it. Later, the folk group of Gothic authors would use the vampire to discuss piety, madness, horror, and romance - important topics of the era - in their works. Now, groups gather to express themselves and meet like-minded individuals who love pop culture or to perform blood-letting rituals that connect them to vampirism.
But why exactly has the vampire endured as a popular symbol despite such drastic shifts in society? I would argue that it is because of the adaptable nature of the creature and in how it resembles humanity. From it's beginnings in folklore, the vampire has always been a former man brought back to life to feed on the blood of innocents. In some tales, the creature can give in to the temptations and become entirely evil or, in others, it might detest it's fate and attempt to fight against the consequences of immortality. The vampire represents mankind at its darkest and most monstrous; it echoes our emotions, weaknesses, strengths, and fears. We can use the dead man's sad state to explore ideas such as passion, loss, pain, entrapment, hunger, fear, obsession, life, and death. As we have seen throughout the history of the vampire, there is very little that the vampiric curse cannot be a metaphor for.
The vampire is one of the most flexible folkloric creations in human history. It continues to be used to communicate our wildest fears, fantasies, and curiosities. By looking at vampire fiction at any given time - and place - through history, we reveal an intimate portrait of what those people feared and what excited them. Moving into the future, it doesn't seem as though the vampire genre is going to fade anytime soon. In fact it is likely that, as long as there is fiction and human curiosity, there will be vampire stories and the people who love them. The immortal vampire might not be as real as people once thought, but it's impact is just as powerful and undying.
