Who Was the First Vampire? From Ancient Myths to Modern Legends

The vampire has become one of the most enduring figures in folklore and popular culture. With pale skin, sharp fangs, and an insatiable thirst for blood, this creature has haunted nightmares for centuries. Yet the vampire as we know it today — elegant, immortal, and terrifyingly human — is the result of a long evolution. Tracing the first vampire leads us through ancient mythologies, medieval fears, and historical cases that blurred the line between superstition and reality.

Ancient Blood Drinkers and Night Demons

Long before the word “vampire” appeared, civilizations imagined beings that fed on human blood or life-force. In Mesopotamia, some of the earliest written myths speak of the Lamashtu and Lilitu, female demons who attacked children and pregnant women, sucking their vitality. The Jewish tradition later absorbed this imagery into the figure of Lilith, Adam’s rebellious first wife, who became a night demon preying on newborns.

The Greeks and Romans also feared nocturnal blood drinkers. The lamia was a monstrous woman who devoured children, while the strix was a witch-like bird that drank blood at night. These myths did not yet describe the vampire of Eastern European lore, but they established the association between blood, death, and supernatural predation. They also tied female sexuality and independence to danger, a theme that would resurface centuries later in vampire tales.

Slavic Roots of the Vampire

The modern vampire has its deepest roots in the folklore of Eastern Europe. Among Slavic peoples, the upir or vampir was believed to be a reanimated corpse that rose from its grave to drink the blood of the living. Such creatures were not elegant aristocrats but grotesque corpses, bloated and ruddy from their supposed feasts.

Fear of the undead was so strong that villages developed rituals to prevent corpses from returning. Suspected vampires might be buried with a stake through the chest, decapitated, or burned. Graves were sometimes found with heavy stones placed on the body to pin it down. These practices reveal how real the belief was for communities that struggled to explain sudden deaths, plagues, or mysterious illnesses. When livestock perished overnight or entire families fell ill, the vampire was often blamed.

The Slavic vampire was also connected to improper burials, suicides, and individuals who died violently. Their restless spirits were thought unable to move on, condemned to wander between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Historical Cases: The First Documented Vampires

While vampire folklore is ancient, the first recorded cases of “real” vampires appear in the early modern period, particularly in Eastern Europe. These cases often involved villagers convinced that the dead had returned to torment them, sparking official investigations.

One of the earliest known examples is that of Jure Grando, a Croatian villager who died in 1656. Locals claimed that for sixteen years after his death, he rose from the grave to knock on doors, and those he visited would soon die. Eventually, priests and villagers exhumed his body, reportedly finding it unnervingly intact. They attempted to drive a stake through his heart, but only decapitation finally ended his terror. For this reason, Jure Grando is sometimes called the first “historical vampire.”

A century later, the Serbian peasant Peter Plogojowitz died and was soon accused of rising from his grave to attack his family. When officials opened his coffin, they described the body as fresh, with blood at the mouth. Around the same time, another Serbian, Arnold Paole, was said to have become a vampire after falling from a horse and dying. Villagers testified that he returned to strangle the living, and his corpse too was found “uncorrupted.” These reports, documented by Austrian officials, helped spread vampire hysteria across Europe.

Vampires in the Age of Enlightenment

Ironically, the great age of reason and science in the eighteenth century was also a time of vampire panic. Reports of the Serbian cases circulated widely, and newspapers across Europe reprinted the stories. Scholars, theologians, and physicians debated whether vampires could be real. For peasants, the vampire explained sudden deaths in their communities; for intellectuals, it became a subject of fascination, straddling the line between folklore and medicine.

These debates reveal the cultural anxieties of the time. Epidemics, poor sanitation, and limited medical knowledge left people vulnerable to unexplained death. Vampires offered both an explanation and a ritual response: exhumations, stakings, and burnings reassured communities that action had been taken against the invisible threat.

The Transformation of the Vampire

By the nineteenth century, the vampire underwent a transformation from grotesque peasant corpse to aristocratic predator. This shift was largely due to literature. In 1819, John Polidori, a physician and companion of Lord Byron, published The Vampyre. His story introduced Lord Ruthven, a suave nobleman who fed on the living. This figure bore little resemblance to the bloated corpses of Slavic legend, but it captured the imagination of a Europe fascinated by Gothic tales.

Later, in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula cemented the image of the vampire that dominates today. Stoker drew partly on Eastern European folklore but also wove in history, borrowing the name of Vlad Țepeș, the fifteenth-century Wallachian ruler infamous for his cruelty. Dracula was not merely a monster but a character of charisma and cunning, blending horror with seduction.

Who Was the First Vampire?

Answering the question depends on how we define “vampire.” If we trace the figure back to its mythological roots, the first vampires might be Mesopotamian demons like Lilitu or Greek monsters like lamia. If we look for the first recorded “real” vampire, Jure Grando in 17th-century Croatia stands out. If we turn to literature, John Polidori’s Lord Ruthven and Bram Stoker’s Dracula shaped the archetype we recognize today.

The vampire, in truth, is not a single invention but a cultural evolution. It reflects humanity’s deepest fears about death, disease, and the boundary between life and the grave. It also embodies anxieties about outsiders, sexuality, and power.

Vampires as a Mirror of Society

The vampire myth has endured because it adapts to the concerns of each era. In agrarian villages, vampires explained plagues and sudden deaths. In the Enlightenment, they symbolized superstition versus reason. In Gothic literature, they reflected fears of aristocratic decadence and forbidden desire. In modern culture, vampires have become metaphors for addiction, consumerism, or the fear of eternal youth.

The first vampire, then, is not just a single figure but a collective creation. From ancient demons to Eastern European peasants and Victorian novels, the vampire continues to evolve, always lurking at the edges of human imagination.

Conclusion: The Eternal Vampire

While no single person can be identified as “the first vampire,” the figure’s long history reveals a constant human preoccupation with life, death, and the unknown. Vampires endure because they are not just monsters — they are mirrors, reflecting the fears and desires of the societies that imagine them.

From the Mesopotamian Lilitu to the Slavic upir, from Jure Grando to Count Dracula, the vampire has taken many forms. Each tells us something about how humans have tried to make sense of illness, mortality, and the night. And if history is any guide, the vampire will continue to change, feeding not only on blood but on our collective imagination.