In Russia 1047, there was the first confirmed reference to the concept of vampires, roughly a thousand years ago. The term used was not “vampire,” but rather “upir” which translates to “the thing at the feast.”

It’s unclear as to how exactly vampiric folklore came to be, but some scholars blame the prominence of disease. Prior to the development of modern medicine, people often searched for an explanation for the widespread sickness that often ailed them. Being that bacteria and contagions were not understood, it’s not exactly unreasonable for people to turn to the supernatural. 

One of the diseases that Stanley Stepanic, a professor of Slavic languages at the University of Virginia, blames for the rise of vampires is rabies. Rabies is mainly spread from animals to humans through biting, which may explain why vampires bite. Moreover, rabies can cause a fear of light, increased aggression, nocturnal sleeping patterns, and a fear of water. All of these symptoms, in some way, connect back to vampiric folklore. Vampires burn in the light, are violent creatures who feast on human blood, sleep during the day, and in some cultures, cannot cross running water. It’s safe to say that people living in 1047 Russia were not encountering vampires, they were encountering people with rabies.

The concept of vampires didn’t disappear as the world started evolving scientifically. Most people don’t even truly believe in vampires anymore, yet the Western world consistently develops stories based on vampires. Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, the list goes on and on. To understand why modern society remains fascinated by vampires, one must first look at the first piece of popular vampire media: Nosferatu. 

Nosferatu is a 1922 German silent film centered on the vampire Count Orlock, based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Interestingly, Nosferatu has been cited as being both the first vampire movie and the first horror movie – further serving as the basis for the Western world’s love for vampires. 

Count Orlock follows the typical vampire folklore: he cannot survive light, he drinks blood, he brings plague and disease. However, there’s one characteristic in particular that has remained in pretty much all of the following vampire media: Count Orlock is upper class. 

Count Orlock is a nobleman, hence the title “Count.” He lives in a large castle despite it being rather decrepit. In fact, the entire reason the film Nosferatu begins is because the Count is seeking to buy a second home! Count Orlock was America’s first rich vampire.

The dozens of vampires created following Count Orlock’s debut also share the obscenely wealthy gene. In Twilight, one of the most popular vampire series in history, the Cullens are extraordinarily wealthy. An article by Forbes cites Carlisle Cullen, the head of the Cullen family, as having a networth of $34.1 billion. The Cullens are so wealthy that they own an entire private island named “Isle Esme,” named after the matriarch of the family. Rich is not a strong enough word to describe the amount of money this fictional family has. The way the Cullens accumulated their wealth is attributed to Carlisle’s many years as a doctor and Alice Cullen’s power of precognition being used in stock markets. Despite the explanation, $34 billion seems excessive being that the rest of the family has never been described as bringing in any income.

The Cullens are far from the only rich vampires. Lestat de Lioncourt of Interview With a Vampire is also described as wealthy, though he did not become wealthy until after his transformation. He i’s described as having inherited money from his wealthy creator and then investing in properties, most notably plantations…it seems that profiting on human suffering didn’t trouble him (– another characteristic common for vampires that will be discussed shortly.)

Other rich vampires include Eric Northman of True Blood, Klaus Michaelson of The Vampire Diaries, and even Count von Count of Sesame Street. It seems being a vampire comes with the certainty of wealth. 

With the release of the 2024 remake of Nosferatu, many people have begun to have online discourse about the common characteristics of vampires and what they represent. One TikTok reads, “Watching people be shocked when fictional vampires prey on humans, attack women, commit incest, and enact prejudice as if they don’t represent the leech upper class.”

It appears that scholars have been making this connection for years. A 2021 dissertation written by Mackenzie Phelps for Chapman University says that vampires are “bodies of corruption, of aberration and the unorthodox, of the unsightly and unusual.” Vampires aren’t the sexy, mentally tortured creatures that are frequently portrayed in young adult media. They’re money hoarders who don’t care who they harm or even kill to live their lives comfortably. Sound familiar?

This idea is most easily seen in the recent remake of Nosferatu. Once Count Orlock has his mind set on having Ellen, a married woman plagued with nightmares, nothing stops him. Orlock claims he won’t force her to be with him, yet promises to kill thousands if not millions, until she relents. He kills her best friend, but not before murdering her best friend’s two young children. He threatens to kill her own husband, which causes her to finally relent and offer herself as a sacrifice. In other words, she’s forced to relinquish her body in a desperate effort to keep those she loves safe. Some say this is an allegory for capitalism, as many of the lower class sell their own bodies doing hard labor in an effort to keep their families comfortable. Others say this is simply a portrayal of how the upper class doesn’t value the lives of those they deem below them. Whatever one’s conclusion, the general idea is essentially the same. 

Count Orlock isn’t the only vampire to kill humans remorselessly. In fact, it is the norm for vampires represented in the media to kill humans, besides the Twilight vampires. (Being that those novels were published for teenage girls, it’s easy to see why Stephanie Meyer eliminated that characteristic.) All of the other vampires mentioned in this article, Lestat de Lioncourt, Klaus Michaelson, and Eric Northman, have all killed hundreds – if not thousands – of people. Therefore, not only are vampires portrayed as affluent, but they’re also portrayed as callous and cruel – the same words some may use for the upper class of Western society. 

Of course, many argue that vampires are simply entertainment. Most would prefer to escape into the lavish lifestyle of vampires rather than observe the poverty they know all too well. Moreover, some may argue it’s more intriguing to watch a vampire with loose morals rather than a perfectly honorable vampire. Everybody loves a villain, right? It’s up to each individual to make their own conclusions about vampires and what, or rather who, they represent. 

However, there’s one final historical figure to be discussed to truly understand the concept of vampires and how they may represent the wealthy and immoral. 

Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed, also known as Countess Dracula, was a Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer born in 1560.

Bathory was accused and found guilty of murdering hundreds of peasant women. By the year 1611, there was a formal investigation taking place, and over 300 witness statements were documented. Some say she only killed women, specifically virgin women, to bathe in and drink their blood in order to maintain her youth and appearance. Others say it was simply sadistic pleasure, while few historians argue that the entire situation was fabricated due to her position as a woman in power. Whatever one believes actually happened, Bathory’s reputation greatly influenced vampire folklore. In fact, she may have even been the inspiration for one of the most famous vampires of all time: Count Dracula.

In the end, the story of Countess Elizabeth Báthory – whether fact or fiction – encapsulates the essence of the vampire archetype as it evolved through history. Bathory, an aristocrat accused of unthinkable cruelty, became a symbol of unchecked privilege and perversions. Hungarian peasants did not see her as merely a serial killer but as a vampire, a reflection of the oppressive upper class that drained the lifeblood of their society.

Furthermore, this parallel between vampires and the elite persists in modern vampire stories, whether it’s Count Orlock’s predatory nature or the Cullens’ excessive wealth. Vampires continue to captivate us not just because of their supernatural allure but because they mirror our deepest struggles with power, wealth, abuse, and exploitation.