Believe it or not, Bram Stoker was not the first to bring the vampire to unlife. Vampires were popular for years prior to Stoker mainly because of country folk paranoia. Vampirism and the living dead were real fears in the small mountain villages of Europe, especially around the 1600s.

It was believed that the dead could come back for a variety of reasons and those reasons varied from place to place. It was believed that a person that killed themselves could come back, a criminal or heretic, someone buried at a crossroads and on and on and on. It was easier to become a vampire than a doctor during that time.

For many, becoming a vampire simply meant dying at the wrong time. If you happen to have died right before the crops died, locusts attacked or a sickness spread through the village, then you would likely have been branded a vampire. The local would have dug you up, put a stake through your chest and cut your head off.

Evidence of your vampirism would have included the sudden release of gas through the mouth when staked. Villagers would have considered this your last breath and not the buildup of methane from the decomposition process.

Your teeth would have been longer because of the recession of the gums and your limbs pliable since rigor mortis would have passed. All in all, many “vampires” have been dispatched through the centuries.