“I think it’s almost infinitely flexible,” says the cultural historian Christopher Frayling, on why the myth of the vampire has gripped our imaginations for so long. It’s been around in some form or other for millennia, but the modern bloodsucker stems from reports of eastern European peasants rising from the grave in the early 18th century. Since then, according to Frayling, vampires “shape-shifted” to “lounge-lizard aristocrats seducing people” a century later. “Then, with the movies, they eventually shed their cloaks, and from the mid-20th century onwards, addicts, psychopaths, lovelorn outsiders, cult leaders, lesbian and gay icons… you name it, the vampire has become it.”
