The European settlers and African slaves brought the vampire mythology of their homelands to the New World. In some cases these myths became intertwined as settlers from many backgrounds melded into a single nation. While Native American mythology has some very fascinating monsters, some of them being flesh-eaters, others being shape-changers, none are true bloodsuckers. Yet, there is a true "American vampire," one born of this young nation, one found only here in America. This vampire is much more than a meld of the beliefs of the Native Americans and those of our forefathers.

The vampire has long been a source of morbid fascination, particularly for authors of gothic fiction. Although The Vampyre - Polidori's uninspired pilfering of an unfinished tale by Lord Byron in 1819 - sparked a hugely popular revival in vampire literature that eventually led, in 1897, to Bram Stoker's Dracula (and its subsequent exhaustive film adaptation), vampire fiction can be traced back as far as classical Greece.