January 16, 2008 -- Officials in Transylvania spent $392,000 on a luxury coach for Dracula sightseeing tours - only to find it was too big to get through the city gates. Entry to the old centre of Brasov is through 10ft medieval gates and councillors were embarrassed to find the double-decker coach was too high.

October 18, 2007 (Maghull and Aintree Star / Ed Casson) -- People are being urged to don spooky outfits and complete a charity run. The Jospice Dracula Dash is a four-mile route starting and finishing at Asda in Aintree.

Early theologians had a real problem with the status of women in regard to Genesis. Here is this supposedly weak creature twisting Man around her finger and bringing death on the entire race. A "logical" answer presented itself in splitting woman into the Madonna/whore dichotomy. There was even a Biblical basis for Lilith.

August 22, 2007 (Boston Herald / Laurel J. Sweet) -- A Jamaica Plain "vampire" who drank the blood of his wheelchair-bound grandmother after shooting her to death is trying to sell his amateurish art online to bankroll "a new start" if he’s freed.

Our traditional image of the vampire, though born from literature, is based on this folkloric vampire, which dates back as early as the eleventh century, and was (until the 1700's) found exclusively in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe.