* Since published under the title of "Frankenstein; or, The Modern
Prometheus."


THE VAMPYRE.
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INTRODUCTION.
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THE superstition upon which this tale is founded is very general in
the East. Among the Arabians it appears to be common: it did not,
however, extend itself to the Greeks until after the establishment of
Christianity; and it has only assumed its present form since the
division of the Latin and Greek churches; at which time, the idea
becoming prevalent, that a Latin body could not corrupt if buried in
their territory, it gradually increased, and formed the subject of
many wonderful stories, still extant, of the dead rising from their
graves, and feeding upon the blood of the young and beautiful. In the
West it spread, with some slight variation, all over Hungary, Poland,
Austria, and Lorraine, where the belief existed, that vampyres nightly
imbibed a certain portion of the blood of their victims, who became
emaciated, lost their strength, and speedily died of consumptions;
whilst these human blood-suckers fattened --- and their veins became
distended to such a state of repletion, as to cause the blood to flow
from all the passages of their bodies, and even from the very pores of
their skins.

In the London Journal, of March, 1732, is a curious, and, of course,