VAMPIERS
Vampires are a perennial favorite around Halloween, but they can be found year-round in movies and on television, in books and on blogs. The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood. Modern writers of vampire fiction, including Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice, Stephen King and countless others, have a rich vein of vampire lore to draw from. But where did the vampires come from? The most famous vampire is, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula, though those looking for a historical "real" Dracula often cite Romanian prince Vlad Tepes (1431-1476), after whom Stoker is said to have modeled some aspects of his Dracula character. The characterization of Tepes as a vampire, however, is a distinctly Western one; in Romania, he is viewed not as a blood-drinking sadist but as a national hero who defended his empire from the Ottoman Turks.
The vampires most people are familiar with (such as Dracula) are revenants — human corpses that are said to return from the grave to harm the living; these vampires have Slavic origins only a few hundred years old. But other, older, versions of the vampire were not thought to be human at all but instead supernatural, possibly demonic, entities that did not take human form.
GHOSTS
In folklore, mythology, and modern media such as literary fiction, a ghost (sometimes known as aspectre [British English] or specter [American English], phantom, apparition, spirit, spook, or haunt) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an being less presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance.
The belief in manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life, though stories of phantom armies, ghost trains, ghost ships, and even ghostanimals have also been recounted.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost
ZOMBIES
From "World War Z" to "The Walking Dead" to "Shaun of the Dead" to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and countless brain-dead rip-offs, zombies — re-animated corpses with an unstoppable craving for human flesh, especially brains — have invaded pop culture like never before. For staggering, slow-moving monsters, zombies have become quite a force in the entertainment industry over the past decade.Though George Romero's 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead" is often considered to be the original modern zombie film, the first actually appeared nearly 40 years earlier in "White Zombie," starring Béla Lugosi as an evil voodoo priest in Haiti who zombifies a beautiful young woman. In the years since, only a handful of zombie films have returned to their Haitian origins — most notably "The Serpent and the Rainbow."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "zombie" first appeared in English around 1810 when historian Robert Southey mentioned it in his book "History of Brazil." But this "Zombi" was not the familiar brain-eating manlike monstrosity but instead a West African deity. The word later came to suggest the vital, human force leaving the shell of a body, and ultimately a creature human in form but lacking the self-awareness, intelligence, and a soul. It was imported to Haiti and elsewhere from Africa through the slave trade.
Ref: http://www.livescience.com/23892-zombies-real-facts.html
WEREWOLVES
The legend of the werewolf is one of the most ancient and wide spread. Stories of werewolves can be found as far back as history has been written. These shapeshifter myths can be found all over the word from China to Iceland and Brazil to Haiti.
This humanoid creature of myth and folklore had the incredible ability to shapeshift. They are said to shift into the form of a wolf or a human-wolf-hybrid. Some legends have them being able to shift at will and others after being cursed, scratched or bittenThe most widely know story of the werewolf would be “Little Red Riding Hood”. The origins of the Little Red Riding Hood story can be traced to a time, likely preceding the 17th century,and various European countries. Making this tale relevant to the werewolf-trials of the time (similar to the witch trials). There are many ancient were legends to worn the fragile, small and easiest of targets — children. “Little Red Riding Hood” features a wolf who talks to Little Red Riding Hood and then dresses in grandmas clothing to fool the innocent little girl. Not something any regular ‘ol wolf could doSome of the first accounts of werewolves come from Ancient Greek literature. Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, told of the Arcadian King, Lycaeon. King Lycaeon was visited by Zeus. Not believing him to be a true all-knowing god he decided to test Zeus by serving him human flesh in one of the many dishes served at a banquet in their honor. And not just any flesh — Lycaeon served up his own sons’ flesh. Yikes! His son Nyctimus was just one of 50, so I guess Lycaeon felt he had plenty more where that came from.
Unsurprisingly, this was not a very smart move… Murder and cannibalism was a major slight indeed. Upon discovering the tainted dish, Zeus changed King Lycaeon into a werewolf — since he obviously liked human flesh, the wolf form would be a more acceptable form to take part in such a vile activity. Zues then brought his son Nyctimus back to life.
Ref: http://mythicalrealm.com/humanoid-mythical-creatures/werewolf/
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