Vampires

As a fiction writer I have researched many different fictional creatures but I found Vampires especially interesting. Many people believe that the Vampire myth started with the legendary Dracula. Dracula of course was known better, in his day, as Vlad the Impaler. He was so called for his reputation for Impaling people on wooden stakes, this is most likely where the myth that vampires can only be killed with a wooden stake came from in the first place. The vampire legend of course goes back even farther than that. In Hebrew texts it is said that vampires and all other demons ore the children of Cain and Lilith. Lilith was, according to the Hebrew beliefs, the first woman God created for Adam, but she left him and the garden of Eden and God sent angels after her but when they found her she struck a deal with them and was allowed to remain on her own, forever roaming the world as a witch living off the blood of unnamed children and when Cain was exiled for murdering his brother he found her by the red sea. That is the oldest legend I could find during my research but it is only one of countless others. The vampire legend is one of the most famous myths in the world nearly every country on the planet has some variation of the original story. Some people to this day believe vampires still exist. I personally don't care whether the did, do, didn't, or don't, however as with all stories I believe that there is some kind of truth behind all those so called supernatural occurrences and so I continue searching for the truth, looking back through history trying to separate fact from fiction. I know that most people would consider this pointless but I believe that there is much we can learn by discovering what could have caused such a gross exaggeration in recorded history. Perhaps there is something that history has forgotten because of the creation of legends such as these.