At home and abroad, vampire scares usually began when a person died and others in the vicinity began dying, too, usually of the same sickness. Dod Miller / Getty Images A little more than a century ...

When we think of vampires, we generally think of the Edward Cullen and Dracula types who have captured the popular imagination for centuries. Pale? Check. Fanged? Check. Totally fictional? Check. But ...

Since Bram Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897, vampires have seized the world's imagination. But traces of real-life vampires-or at least the belief in real-life vampires-predate Stoker's literary ...