16 Real Places Where Vampires Might Actually Exist

Bram Stoker began his influential Dracula novel at the count’s castle in Transylvania. Ever since, the central Romanian region has been considered one of the best places to find a vampire.  Bran Castle is now known as Dracula’s Transylvanian home, even though it is only loosely connected to the 15th-century ruler Vlad the Impaler. Also known as Vlad Dracula, the tyrant became associated with vampire myths because of his bloodlust ways (which include spearing 20,000 victims on stakes). Stoker’s tale was also inspired by Romanian folklore about strigoi, or the evil souls of the dead that can transform into bats and kill victims by sucking their blood.

One of the best places for vampires to live is New Orleans, the setting of biting novels by Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned) and Poppy Z Brite (Lost Souls). Rice’s mausoleum lies in Metairie Cemetery, and her Lestat Fan Club continues to throw a decadent Vampire Ball every year in NOLA. Visitors can shop for fangs and blood-red candles at Boutique du Vampyre, and search for a rumored vampire grave at Lafayette Cemetery. New Orleans is also home to a subculture of “real life vampires,” some of whom belong to Houses and engage in consensual ritual blood-drinking.

According to Chinese folk tales, a dead body can be reanimated as a jiangshi by a sorcerer. Since the undead are stiff with rigor mortis, they can only move by hopping like rabbits with their long-nailed hands outstretched. The sorcerer controls the corpses with a spell written on yellow paper and stuck to their foreheads. If the “Post-It Note” falls off, the jiangshi regains control and leaps around trying to suck the qi (life force) from the living! Instead of garlic and crucifixes, the Chinese use sticky rice and yin-yangs to repel jiangshi. Hong Kong released several popular horror-comedy movies about jiangshi in the 1980s—so if you’re passing a funeral home in the city, be sure to hold your breath (to keep in your qi) and listen for jumping noises…

Anyone who has played the video game Skyrim will be familiar with killing draugr, or skeletal reanimated corpses reminiscent of vampires. Icelandic mythology is ripe with these undead parasites, which try to drag humans into open graves in order to make more draugrs. Although they don’t drink your blood, draugr still suck: they’re known for attacking livestock and harassing the living. To stop a draugr from dragging you down, chop off its head and nail its body into a casket with stakes. At the Draugasetrið Museum in Stokkseyri, you can browse exhibits about draugr and other ghastly Icelandic spirits.

If vampires are real, then you’ll find plenty at Rynek Underground Museum in Krakow. Go below ground to see 11th-century excavated graves, including the skeletons of alleged vampires. According to Polish folklore, people with red hair and extra teeth were at risk of becoming blood-suckers after they died. To keep the deceased from rising, they were buried in a fetal position with their hands bound and heads cut off.

The Akan people of southern Ghana have a horrific legend about a vampire-like predator. Be careful when you’re wandering the forests near Accra… There might be an asanbosam hanging out in the trees. Witnesses describe this creature as a humanoid with hideous pink skin and long red hair, and enormous iron hooks for legs. When an asanbosam attacks from above, it’ll jab its metal hook-feet into your neck and drain you dry. If you spot one of these terrifying creatures, don’t scream “asanbosam” because anyone who says the word brings bad luck upon themselves and those around them.

German lore says it takes nine days for a corpse to transform into a vampire after being buried, hence the name neuntöter, which translates to “nine killer.” The revenant emerges in bad shape: it is covered with open sores, smells like excrement, and carries all sorts of plagues. Anyone born with teeth is supposedly doomed to be neuntöter—so upon their demise, someone must cut off their head between 11 p.m. and midnight and stick a lemon in their mouth to keep them from turning. A probable place to find a German vampire is Stahnsdorf, one of the largest cemeteries in Europe (look out for the stench of a neuntöter amidst the Gothic weeping angel statues and vine-covered tombs).

Hindu myths describe a brahmaparusha as a malevolent spirit that delights in consuming human blood and flesh. The brahmaparusha is perhaps the most methodical and “extra” of vampires: it attacks a victim’s neck and pours blood from the carotid artery into a human skull. The Indian vampire then sips blood from the skull-mug and feasts on the brain. Finally, the brahmaparusha dances around the mutilated body and wraps its intestines around its head and neck. Since this tale stems from northern India, it follows that you might find one of these serial killers at the cremation grounds of Varanasi.

Greece has a long tradition of vrykolakas, or undead vampiric creatures that love to eat human livers. Someone who lives sinfully or is given an improper burial could become a vrykolakas, which dooms them to roam around and snack on humans until their bodies swell with blood. In 1701, notable French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort traveled to Mykonos and reported on a vrykolakas that was terrorizing locals, making the island a good place to search for a Greek vampire.

During the daytime, a soucouyant looks like a reclusive little old lady. At night, she becomes a fireball that flies into homes and sucks the blood of victims until they die. These female vampire-like monsters drink human blood for nourishment and give the excess to the demon Bazil in return for evil powers. Soucouyants are part of the colorful culture of Trinidad and Tobago, and similar tales of vampiric beings exist in other parts of the Caribbean and South America. At the Kimme Museum of Art and Sculpture in Bethel, you can marvel at Luise Kimme’s statue of a soucouyant with blood-red skin and a contorting body.  

One could make a solid argument that vampires come from Spain rather than Romania. Centuries before Vlad the Impaler was born, Costa Brava was terrorized by its own version of Count Dracula. Legend has it that a 12th-century Catalan noble named Count Estruch lived in Llers Castle and burned numerous women to death as witches. Before she went up in flames, a witch laid a curse that transformed him into the undead. For years, Count Estruch sucked the blood of young local women, causing them to give birth to monstrous newborns nine months later. Eventually, the villagers commissioned a vampire slayer—possibly an elderly nun—to take him out for good.

If you’re wondering where the first vampire was found, the answer may well be Kringa, Croatia. A local villager may have been the first living person to be described as a vampire in historical records. In 1656, Giure Grando died and reportedly came back as a štrigon, or vampire. For 16 years, he rose from his grave at night to knock on doors and suck those who answered dry. A stake through the heart did nothing to slow him down, but decapitation finally put the Croatian vampire to bed.

Guests at the Ghost Museum in Penang can pose with spooky displays of demons from Asian folklore. Perhaps the scariest example is the Malaysian penanggalan, or a black magic sorceress with long hair and fanged teeth. After dark, she detaches her head and flies around looking for blood—with her organs and intestines still attached and trailing from her neck! The penanggalan targets pregnant and menstruating women, using her fangs to bite and long tongue to lap up the blood.

In traditional Albanian stories, a shtriga is a vampiric witch that hungers for a baby’s blood. She enters a nursery by disguising herself as a flying insect like a bee, and then slurps up the baby’s lifeblood. To get rid of a shtriga, Albanians can try making crucifixes out of pig bones or carrying silver coins soaked in blood. If you visit Vuksanlekaj cemetery in Montenegro, known for its spooky carved gravestones of human figures, look out for a woman in a cape with a hateful stare…as she might be after your baby!

In 1966, archaeologists found what is believed to be the first vampire graveyard in Celakovice, a town near Prague. They uncovered 11 graves containing 14 bodies, each buried face down and secured with heavy stones or metal spikes driven through their bodies. Some had their hands and feet bound and heads cut off to ensure they stayed dead. Researchers determined that the gravesite dated back to the 11th or 12th century, but they remain puzzled as to why the departed were deemed vampires and buried in this way.

While building a school in the Nottinghamshire town of Southwell in 1959, construction workers uncovered a mysterious burial site. They were shocked to find the ancient skeleton of man with metal spikes jammed through his heart, shoulders, and ankles, suggesting a vampire burial. However, archaeologists dated the body to 550 and 700 ACE—a time before Europe’s earliest known vampire legends. Could it be that the idea of undead blood-drinkers existed further back than we thought, making Britain the true vampire country of origin?