The vampires we have now are a creation of literature, conscious borrowings, and deliberate de- and reconstructions. Ancient beliefs were varied and inconsistent, as you'd expect from a vague category comprised of "various folklore people used to believe about dead bodies getting up and being pests to the living"; in some ways, ancient vampires are closer to what we'd call zombies, and ancient zombies are closer to what we'd consider robots, in terms of being used for slave labor.
>This article is AWFUL. I'm trying to do some research on comparative mythology of vampires, by culture, and am literally seeing Count Chocula in the same list as this broad-stroke "European" generalization.
