Asturian chronicles tell of the Guaxa, an ancient vampire who enters homes at night through locks or door slits and uses her only tooth to suck the blood of her victims.

If a vampire stared at a pregnant woman, it was once commonly believed that the child could be "marked" in its mother's womb.

When a person has a porphyria, cells fail to change body chemicals called porphyrins and porphyrin precursors into heme, the substance that gives blood its red color.

Aspen was also used for stakes, as it was believed that Christ's cross was made from aspen.

Items thought to ward off revenants are common in vampire folklore. Garlic is a common example, as are wild rose and hawthorn plant, and in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was said to keep them away.

In Greek mythology, Lamia was a woman who became a child-eating monster after her children were murdered by Hera. Unable to sleep because of her affliction, Zeus took pity on the poor woman and provided some relief by endowing her with removable eyes.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of the word vampire (as vampyre) in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen.

Gypsies placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. In Saxon regions of Germany, a lemon was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires. Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body.

Harker dined on roast chicken, read books in the library, and had a near-sexual excounter with three female vampires. But though Dracula told him of his servants, Harker came to realize he was the "only living soul within the place."

Jure Grando was a peasant from Istria, Croatia who died in 1656. He allegedly terrorized villagers in the area for 16 years after his death. Official documents from that time name him a "strigon," the local name for "vampire." (The characterization of Vlad Tepes as a vampire is a distinctly modern one. Historical Romanian accounts depict him not as a blood-drinking sadist but as a national hero who defended his empire from the Ottoman Turks.)