fully understand . That ’ s why it fascinates us and terrifies us . In some ways , when Dracula was first written in 1896 it was accepted as a pot boiler like a gothic , mystery thriller . But he tapped in all kinds of mythic elements . It ’ s very much tied up in Christian symbology where the blood is the life . It ’ s tied up in sex - at a point in 1896 when Freudian ideas were beginning to reveal themselves . He just tapped right into a very potent brew and it ’ s fascinating .
Vampire myths are ancient ; they go back to the earliest recorded history , but mostly existed in Eastern Europe . Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a vampire story loosely based out of a poem he wrote called The Giour . John William Polidori , turned it into a novel called The Vampyre which was published in 1819 . This was kind of the first modern vampire ; one that ultimately developed into the Dracula we know from Bram Stoker .
Watch a documentary on the truth about the legend of Dracula