Okay now. Assuming you've read a lot of vampire stories, or at least (like me) watched a lot of vampire flicks and read vamp books:), you have some basic understanding of the vast VARIATION of vampire lore.
One of the most popular vampire "icons" is perhaps the immortal Bram Stoker's Dracula (the book, not the movie, that comes later). Perhaps THE definitive horror story, Stoker brought forth the myth of the vampire and heavily embellished it. He has, by his book's popularity and pop-culture acceptance, practically defined how modern society views the myth of the vampire.
The Stoker vampire transformed into a dark, gothic creature surrounded by a bevy of vampiric beauties. His primary victims were females, hinting darkly at a strongly sexual tone of vampirism. The theme of the dark stranger entering the woman's dreams and body in the emergence of sexuality to the typically virginal victim (like Lucy Westing or Mia). Religious overtures as means to destroy vampires, which became popular in the Middle Ages, became predominant. The crucifix became the best means to ward off vampires, depicted as the 'eternal true' light of salvation.
Amusingly, pre-Middle Ages vampires were very different. To one culture, a vampire was merely a child born with the blood barrier still surrounding it (the bloody untorn amniotic sac). To others, red hair denoted a vampire, someone with special powers beyond those of normal man/woman. A popular myth in Japan is of the Yuki no Onna, an almost vampiric woman of snow who took men from the snowstorms and drained them of life.
---More to come---
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