II， NTRODUCTION<br > ur continuing interest in the nightblooming， bloodsucking ladies and gen-<br > tlemen of the night is obvious. No other creature in the world of horror has<br > caused more fear， more dread， yet more fascination than the vampire. The<br > single work of fiction most frequently brought to the movie screen is not one of the<br > great works of literature but the nineteenth-century gothic novel Dracula. The novel<br > has been made into a movie more than a dozen times and， encouraged by the tech-<br >nological improvement in special effects， Draeula has inspired more than 200 addi-<br >tional movies in which Count Dracuta is the central character. In fact， the count is<br >second only to Sherlock Holmes in frequency of appearance on the silver screen.<br >Since the publication of Dracula in a897， the book has remained continually in print<br >in numerous editions and versions， and it has inspired hundreds of novels and short<br >6tories. While it may seem that writers have exhausted the theme， the number of<br >new vampire novels has surprisingly continued to grow. As of 1992， an average of<br >two additional Dmcula or vampire novels appear every month.<br > ~AMPIROLOGY: THIRSTING FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE VAMPIRE<br > Despite the humorous element and even the touch of the absurd in the contem-<br >.porary appearance of the vampire， it is the subject of serious consideration.<br >Vampirology， the name given the field of study of the vampire and the myth it has<br >spawned， has at least three significant components. The prime concern of vampirol-<br >ogy is the investigation of reports of encounters with a vampire--these reports date<br >tO ancient Greece and Rome and are just as numerous today--and the subsequent<br >development of theories concerning the nature of vampires. Such theories fall<br >ro Jghly into two categories: those that suppose the actual existence of vampires and<br >those that relegate it to the realm of superstition or various psychological causes. In<br >modern times， the search for real vampires has been promoted by the development<br >of the modem discipline of parapsychology.<br > A second aspect of vampirology， which arose in the early nineteenth century， is<br >the vampire as the subject of popular imaginative fiction writing. Beginning with<br >