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The Cultured Vampire A dark figure stands concealed among the shadows of a young girl’s room. He peers at the beautiful young woman lying there across the room so innocently, completely defenseless. Suddenly, he lunges forward with ease and stealth to the girl. He leans over the unsuspecting body and sinks his pearly white fangs into an artery in her exposed neck. This dramatization is the typical scene associated with vampires today. When we first got this assignment, I had no clue what I was going to choose for my topic. I decided to use Vampires as my topic because I already knew a little bit about them, but I was curious about their origin and history. Before I began I had no idea about where they came from and figured they were merely part of an exciting story made up to entertain and appeal to others. However, legends of vampirism and vampire-like creatures have been passed on through cultures around the world for centuries for various reasons. I was able to uncover the beliefs of different peoples across the globe and find out different theories about the vampire’s origin. Yet, the ultimate question prevailed, whether vampires truly existed. Some sources said yes while others said know, but I looked deeper into vampire folklore to form my own opinion about the existence of vampires in our world. At the start of the project, I already knew the basics concerning vampires. I knew that a stereotypical vampire was a creature that rose from the dead and drank blood. Also, they had two fangs and a pale complexion, not surprising considering they were dead. To my knowledge they had an aversion to garlic, crosses, holy water, and sunlight. I also knew that vampires had no reflection in mirrors, I didn’t know why though. Count Dracula was the vampire’s leader and creator, and he would travel to towns during the twilight and would attack young women, biting them and making them vampires. As far as I knew, the only way a vampire could be killed was by impalement through the heart with a wooden stake; this I found to be untrue. I also knew that vampires slept in their coffins and had the ability to transform into wolves, mist, and even bats. Even though I probably knew more about vampires then the average person, I still didn’t comprehend half of the truths concerning vampire folklore. As I researched, I discovered that there are three main theories on the origins of vampires in mythology. The first theory involves the one and only dark lord himself, Dracula. However, the Dracula that is known by most people is a fictional character created by Bram Stoker, an author of the early 1900’s. Stoker used ideas from European folklore about vampires and a fifteenth century prince of Wallachia to model his story of an evil dark lord named Dracula (Sterling 14). The prince’s that he modeled his story after was Vlad Tepes, more commonly known as Dracula. Vlad Tepes was the prince of a province of modern day Romania called Wallachia. I had heard of Vlad previously, but I didn’t comprehend what an evil man he was. He was born around 1431 in Transylvania as the second son of his father Vlad Dracul. Dracul lead his country in hopes f keeping peace with both the Christian nations in the north and the Turks in the south.
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