I surfed the Barnes & Noble website on the prowl for a new book. Browsing through the categories of Best Fiction 2009, New York Times Bestsellers, and Oprah’s Book Club, one category caught my eye: Vampires.

I was somewhat astonished. Vampires had bitten themselves into the market with much success—so much success they actually had an entire category of books devoted to them. Why this sudden vampire craze? Twilight had been around since 2005 and didn’t get popular until about a year before the first movie came out.

Yes, I’ll admit I was into the vampire thing once—when I was thirteen years old. At thirteen, when I had never been in love, never been kissed, and my mom was still driving me places, I ate this vampire stuff up. The heroines always stood out from the normality and monotony of their high school classmates, they were always beautiful, and they always got the strangely handsome and brooding new guy who would later reveal his secret thirst.

However, I grew up and moved on from the predictable and trite normal girl falling in love with the tortured soul who (what a shame) has to remain eighteen forever, storyline. Although, if I was stuck in the angst ridden teenage years I guess I too would be tortured, if only by the fact I would be five-hundred years old and still under the legal drinking age. Now that I’m twenty-three, I am yet to be moved by such young adult dramas considering they are aimed at girls twelve to eighteen.

Although I am no longer infatuated with the fang scene, tracing the evolution of the vampire in pop culture does seem to be interesting.

The drinking blood thing isn’t anything new, and I’m not talking about Christians drinking wine as the blood of Christ.I’m talking about the flesh and blood, malicious, unadulterated evil historical figure: Vlad the Impaler. During the 15^th century, Vlad the Impaler (a nickname well earned), lined his castle with macabre art—rows upon rows of dead and dying adversaries impaled on large wooden spears—human shish kabobs if you will. It was said that he enjoyed drinking his victim’s blood from a goblet as he watched them wriggling like worms in the sweltering sun.

How did such a man inspire the idea of the modern vampire? As it turns out, Vlad the Impaler was just one name of many. People also called him Vlad Dracula. Bram Stoker would use that name for his title vampire in 1897.

After publication, people were hungry for more. One of the first vampire movies, the German Nosferatu was released in June 1929. In this film, the vampire is still grotesque, with long creeping fingernails, pointed ears, haunting eyes, and sharp fangs.

In 1931, Bela Lugosi changed that. He appeared as a different Dracula. He was seductive, charming in an Old World European sense, and devilishly handsome. His performance was inviting and intriguing. It changed vampires from ugly and misshapen, to figures of elegance, utterly enticing. Many actors have followed in Lugosi’s footsteps. Two that come to mind are Gary Oldman and a young Gerard Butler. Both possessed that seductive quality onscreen.

Stemming from these characters we now have the vampires we know today, Edward Cullen (Twilight), Bill Compton (True Blood), and Damon Salvatore (Vampire Diaries). Might I add that these movies and television shows are based on books that have been around long before their screen counterparts.

And there you have it—the evolution of the vampire from fact to fiction, from Vlad the Impaler to the teen heartthrob Edward Cullen.