Claim: Luke Evans has portrayed an undead character.

A vampire is a being from folklore that subsists by feeding on the life essence -LRB- generally in the form of blood -RRB- of the living . In European folklore , vampires were undead beings that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive . They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance , markedly different from today 's gaunt , pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century .   Vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures ; the term vampire , previously an arcane subject , was popularised in the West in the early 19th century , after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent , such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe ; local variants were also known by different names , such as shtriga in Albania , vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania . This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism .   In modern times , the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity , although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures . Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body 's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalise this , creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death . Porphyria was also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure , but has since been largely discredited .   The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori ; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century . Bram Stoker 's 1897 novel Dracula is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend . The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre , still popular in the 21st century , with books , films , and television shows . The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre .