Also, a long time ago - like a loooong time ago, it was believed that it the family did not sacrifice blood at the funeral of an important family member (i.e. a father or husband) then that member would come back to claim his blood. Therefore at burial ceremonies it was not uncommon to see women scratching at their faces to produce blood for this offering.

People would also go into cataleptic state, maybe after having epileptic seizures or whatever. These people would be pronounced dead because they had no response to outside stimuli, were breathing so lightly people did not notice, and their pulses were hardly recognizable. Because some people were buried like this but still alive, they would awaken and turn over in their coffins before suffocating to death. Of course, when weird things started happening around villages, the folk began digging up the most recent graves to see if anyone had come back from the dead and of course, bodies were occasionally found turned over and the person was thought to had come back from the dead.

Yes, Nirah is correct, the myth of the vampire has been around for ages. Probably even before literature in the written form has even existed. It has just evolved and change in various cultures.

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