1. Vampires are immune to garlic
2. Vampires are immunic to wooden sticks
3. Vampires can be killed only by fire or the sun.

Some of them can't be killed with these either (it depends on how popular they are. Some Anne Rice vampires have suffered fire or sun or both but are still 'alive'

4. Vampires sparkle in sunlight
5. Vampires have glossy eyes
6. Vampires have either golden or blood-red or pitch black eyes. (Depends on their special diet)

So all in all. Vampires are immortal and sparkle in sunlight but sun kills them, except when not. Their eyes are glossy, except when they are black or red or golden.

And all other stupidites, etc...

How about real vampire stories?

Real vampire stories are more horrible. I guess neither dear Mrs. Rice nor Ms. Meyer have heard about.

The case of Petre Toma:

(taken from: [link])

The authorities in Craiova, south-west Romania, opened an investigation against six people alleged to have impaled the body of a villager who, according to them "had transformed himself into vampire" and "sucked blood from them during the night."

The body of Petre Toma had been unearthed six weeks later by his brother-in-law in the presence of several other members of the family, including his widow and her grand-daughter. According to several testimonies, they made an incision in the chest of Toma to extract his heart before burning it. One report states that, in accordance with a local custom to protect against vampires, they dissolved the ashes in water and drank it.

An autopsy carried out by the authorities in Craiova confirmed that "the heart was indeed taken."

The six people explained that after the death of Toma they had felt "weakened," as if they did not have "any more blood."

"One night I saw it in my room, and in the morning I could not arise; so much was I weakened", said the grand-daughter of Toma, Mirela Marinescu. According to her, as soon as the exorcism ritual was performed the dead body "did not come any more to haunt" its family.

The Sunday Times reported that several villagers affirmed that this exorcism ritual was known and practiced for a long time in the area, and that it each time had appeared "effective against vampires."

“For centuries we have had to protect ourselves against these creatures by finding the graves of the undead and risking our lives by ripping out their hearts,” said sixty-eight-year-old Tita Musca, a local farmer.

The village of the vampire slayers has become the focus of a police investigation that has highlighted not only local fears of the undead but a startling willingness to act on them.

The saga began when Petre Toma, seventy-six, was buried at new year. His nephew’s family fell ill with an unexplained sickness and a few days later a witness claimed to have seen Toma leaving their house before sunrise as a flock of crows flew portentously overhead.

“He sucked the life from us so that he could live,” said Mirela Marinescu. “We were all dying, my husband and my child, and we all saw him come to us in the same dream.”

Armed with hammers and chisels and fortified with home-made schnapps, four men led by Gheorghe Marinescu, the supposed vampire’s brother-in-law, set out for the cemetery.

“When we lifted the coffin lid his arms were not on his chest as we had left them but at his sides,” said Marinescu. “His head was turned to the side and his lips were stained with dried blood.”

After the corpse’s chest had been opened with a wooden stake the heart was removed. “It was full of fresh blood,” said Marinescu. “His body relaxed and we heard him sigh.”

The heart was burnt over the embers of a fire and the ashes stirred into a bottle of water from the village well to make a potion. The vampire’s “victims” recovered after drinking it but Toma’s daughter called the police.

Investigators soon discovered evidence of up to twenty vampire slayings in the past few years. At the regional police station the commissioner, Gheorghe Sandu, said: “I’d like to be able to say this village is unique, but unfortunately I can’t because I know just how strong belief in vampires is here.”

The Daily Telegraph reported that six men were jailed for ripping out the heart of a corpse they believed was undead. As Monica Petrescu in Bucharest writes, to many Romanians, vampires are not legend but terrifying reality.

It was just before midnight as Gheorghe Marinescu and five of his relatives crept into the graveyard in the small Romanian village of Marotinul de Sus. They knew which plot they were looking for – a simple earth grave with a wooden cross bearing the name Petre Toma – and quickly, but quietly, set about digging.

When they had dragged the body out, they waited. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Marinescu began the ritual that they had been planning for weeks, one that had passed from generation to generation in their family. They drove a pitchfork through Petre Toma's chest, opened it, drew out his heart and then put stakes through the rest of his body. They sprinkled garlic over the mutilated corpse and then, carefully, laid it back in its grave.

They left the cemetery with the heart impaled on the end of the pitchfork and went to a crossroads where Marinescu's wife, son and daughter-in-law were waiting. There the group burnt it, dissolved the ashes and then drank the solution.


The case of Mercy L. Brown:

Taken from Wikipedia: [link]

The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident, which occurred in 1892, is one of the best documented cases of the exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an undead manifestation.

In Exeter, Rhode Island, the family of George and Mary Brown suffered a sequence of tuberculosis infections in the final two decades of the 19th century. Tuberculosis was called "consumption" at the time and was a devastating and much-feared disease.

The mother, Mary, was the first to die of the disease, followed in 1888 by their eldest daughter, Mary Olive. Two years later, in 1890, their son Edwin also became sick.

In 1891, another daughter, Mercy, contracted the disease and died in January 1892. She was buried in the cemetery of the Baptist Church in Exeter.

Friends and neighbors of the family believed that one of the dead family members was a vampire (although they did not use that name) and causing Edwin's illness. This was in accordance with threads of contemporary folklore linking multiple deaths in one family to undead activity. Consumption was a poorly understood condition at the time and the subject of much urban mythology.

George Brown was persuaded to exhume the bodies, which he did with the help of several villagers on March 17, 1892. While the bodies of both Mary and Mary Olive had undergone significant decomposition over the intervening years, the more recently buried body of Mercy was still relatively unchanged and had blood in the heart. This was taken as a sign that the young woman was undead and the agent of young Edwin's condition. The cold New England weather made the soil virtually impenetrable, essentially guaranteeing that Mercy's body was kept in freezer-like conditions in an above-ground crypt during the 2 months following her death.

Mercy's heart was removed from her body, burnt, and the remnants mixed with water and given to the sick Edwin to drink. He died two months later.

You can find an extended description of the Mercy Brown case here: [link]

Now that's what I call horrible. Sparkling vampires... might serve aswell as Christmas decoration.

I'll never understand those pitiful creatures:

[link]