Are vampires real

A. Brrrr... spooky question there from mrjaneiro. Of course they are. Vampirism is defined as the act of drawing blood from someone for sexual pleasure. This and blood-drinking is a feature of sadomasochism, fetishism and psychosis. This is a family website, so I won't go into any more gory detail.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� So who started this all

A.� Vlad Dracula - the impaler. He was born in 1431, in the town of Schassburg in Transylvania - now northern Romania. His father, Vlad Dracul, was a Catholic knight and local ruler. He lost his throne in 1447�when Hungarian ruler Janos Hunyadi marched into Transylvania. Young Vlad was held hostage, regained his father's throne briefly in 1448, but was overthrown.

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Q.� Then what

A.� Vlad Dracula became Prince of Wallachia (Tara Romaneasca) when he married his cousin Ilona, on 25 August, 1456, and soon regained the throne.

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Q.� And then got more bloodthirsty

A.� Yep. He developed a taste for torture - impaling his enemies on sharpened stakes stuck in the ground. He also drank the blood of some of the victims - then a common enough practice for humiliating slain enemies, he even enjoyed dining in his 'forest of impaled' and gained the nickname Tepes (Romanian for impaler). Within a matter of years, Vlad Dracula slaughtered 100,000 people - 25,000 by impalement.

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Q.� And he died peacefully

A.� No. He lost his throne again, was imprisoned for 12 years, and then regained it for the last time in 1476. He went to war against the Ottomans, and within a month was killed in battle near Bucharest. Dracula was decapitated and his head put on display in Constantinople. His body was buried in a monastery near Snagov, in Romania.

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Q.� But the legend didn't rest

A.� Oh no. In 1488, a book called Dracule by Feodor Kuritsyn described him as a vampire. Source of this accusation were Vlad's wife Ilona, and their sons, Vlad and Mihnea. It is thought that Bram Stoker used this work as models for his 1897 horror tale, Dracula.

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Q.� Did vampires exist in other cultures

A.� Yes - the ancient Greeks, for example, where myths often portrayed the vampire as a woman who has died. She was called Lamai who lived in a cave and drank children's blood.

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Q.� What - like the bat-like Dracula

A.� No. She's half-woman, half-serpent.

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Q.� Any more

A.� In Africa, among members of the Ashanti tribe in Ghana, the vampire is known as an Asasabonsam. He has iron teeth, and catches victims by letting his hooked feet dangle from the treetops. In Malaysia the vampire Maneden lives in a wild panadus plant and sucks blood from a man's elbow.

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Q.� All a long way from the gothic vampire of Stoker's novel and ensuing Hammer horror films

A.� Those tend to be based more on the gipsy legends. This type of monster is known as a mullo (one who is dead); it returns from the dead and sucks blood from a relative that caused his or her death, or didn't observe burial ceremonies.

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Q.� What about the legend of Elizabeth Bathory

A.� Aha... the mother of all vampires. Bathory was born in 1560 to a powerful landowning family in Transylvania. She killed many young girls in the area - perhaps ups to 600 - and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth and beauty. She was tried, with accomplices and sealed up in a chamber to die. An account of the case also helped inspire Stoker's novel.

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By Steve Cunningham