Snarky Tom's Rants, Raves and Ruminations

As a child and an adolescent, I had curious interests in the macabre. Vampires, werewolves, witches and all other creepy crawlies. During the Coronavirus lockdown, I have been in a deep binge watch of Dark Shadows, a 1960s Gothic soap opera that used to air on ABC. Besides housewives there was a great following by elementary school children like myself. Aside from the "icky" romance parts, there was the most interesting and fantastic ghosts, vampires and reanimated humans.  Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows Today, I got to thinking about the subject of Vampires. Who (or What) are they? How did they come to exist?  Blood drinking undead beasts. Hollywood has made films and television programs of vampires for nearly 100 years. The first one was Nosferatu (1922). Many authors have written vampire stories and novels. Bram Stoker, Stephen King, Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer to name a few. For the most part, each story gave vampires the same traits. They only come