Tales of the dead craving blood are ancient. In Homer's Odyssey, for example, the shades that Odysseus meets on his journey to the underworld are lured to the blood of freshly sacrificed rams, a fact which Odysseus uses to his advantage to summon the shade of Tiresias.
Some Slavic peoples believed in vampires as early as the 4th century. In their mythology, a vampire drank blood, was afraid of (but could not be killed by) silver, and could be destroyed by cutting off its head and putting it between the corpse's legs, or by putting a wooden stake into its heart.
Medieval historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded the earliest stories of English vampiric activity in the 12th century.
In popular western culture, vampires are depicted as unaging, intelligent, and mystically endowed in many ways. The vampire typically has a variety of notable abilities. These include great strength and immunity to any lasting effect of any injury by mundane means, with specific exceptions. Vampires can also change into a mist, wolf, or bat; and some can control the minds of others. They typically have extended canines or fangs.
It is believed that vampires have no reflection, as traditionally it was thought that mirrors reflected your soul and creatures of evil have no soul. Fiction has extended this belief to an actual aversion to mirrors, as depicted in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula when the vampire casts Harker's shaving mirror out of the window.
