Screenshot from “Internet Archive” of the movie Dracula (1931) – https://archive.org/details/Dracula1931-Trailer
12. Vampires Really Were Pierced With Wooden Stakes
Vampires, the terrifying undead creatures that Stephanie Meyer popularized with her Twilight series, have little to do with the pale beings who suck people’s blood in order to turn them into vampires. Beliefs about vampires have origins in the ancient Middle East and the Far East, but the creature that fascinates the modern imagination — the cultural legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula — tends to be the one that hails from Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans and Romania.
In these cultures, the vampire was largely seen as a particular type of corpse that, when unearthed, had not decomposed and had fresh blood on it. However, these cases of lack of decomposition can probably be attributed to certain medical conditions or the premature burial of someone who was still alive (perhaps in a coma). The fresh blood was likely the corpse’s own blood, which naturally flowed from the body’s orifices, the “shrieking” noises were from air escaping the glottis, and shiny fingernails were actually the nail undergrowth that exposed itself once the fingernails themselves fell off.
Nevertheless, the people would pierce the hearts of these corpses with wooden stakes to ensure that they remained in their final resting places. They wouldn’t be able to terrorize the villages by sucking people’s blood.