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Vampire
In folklore, animated corpse that sucks the blood
of humans. Belief in vampires has existed from the earliest times and has
given rise to an amalgam of legends and superstitions. They were most
commonly thought of as spirits or demons that left their graves at night
to seek and enslave their victims; it was thought that the victims
themselves became vampires. The vampire could be warded off with a variety
of charms, amulets, and herbs and could finally be killed by driving a
stake through its heart or by cremation. Sometimes the vampire assumed a
nonhuman shape, such as that of a bat or wolf. Probably the most famous
vampire in literature is Count Dracula in the novel Dracula.
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