Vampire

in popular legend, a bloodsucking creature, supposedly the restless soul of a heretic, criminal, or suicide, that leaves its burial place at night, often in the form of a bat, to drink the blood of humans. By daybreak it must return to its grave or to a coffin filled with its native earth. Its victims become vampires after death. Although the belief in vampires was widespread over Asia and Europe, it was primarily a Slavic and Hungarian legend, with reports proliferating in Hungary from 1730 to 1735.