119 Fun Facts About Vampire

Which pungent plant is the classic folk ward against vampires?

Garlic is the classic ward: in Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing hangs garlic flowers around Lucy's room and neck to keep the Count out, borrowing an old folk belief.

Which actor played the Count in Universal's 1931 film Dracula?

Bela Lugosi played the Count with almost no make-up and his own Hungarian accent, and the role typecast him as a horror villain for the rest of his career.

In Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels, what do vampires do when the sun hits them?

They glitter like diamonds in direct sun instead of burning, which is why Meyer needed, in her words, 'someplace ridiculously rainy' for her vampires to live.

What follows each time Sesame Street's Count von Count finishes counting?

Thunder and lightning crash at every finished tally, even on sunny days; in his first sketches the Count was more sinister, stunning other Muppets with a hypnotic wave of his hands, an edge the show later toned down.

Vampire bats are native to which part of the world?

Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina and Chile, is their home range; the bats were named after the vampires of European folklore, not the other way round.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is set in which fictional California town?

Buffy is set in Sunnydale, California, whose high school sits on the Hellmouth, a gateway to demon realms; the school is blown up in the season-three graduation finale.

In which year was Bram Stoker's Dracula first published?

Dracula was published by Archibald Constable and Company in London on 26 May 1897, while Stoker was business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre; his working notes date from 1890.

Which comedian voiced Count Dracula in the first three Hotel Transylvania films?

Adam Sandler's Drac runs a human-free hotel to keep his daughter Mavis safe, until a backpacker wanders in; Brian Hull took over the voice for the fourth film.

Who played the vampire Lestat opposite Brad Pitt in the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire?

Anne Rice publicly objected to Tom Cruise's casting, then took out a two-page ad praising his performance after seeing the film.

True Blood, following telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse in small-town Louisiana, aired on which US network from 2008 to 2014?

HBO's series is named after Tru Blood, the bottled synthetic blood whose invention lets its vampires 'come out of the coffin' and live openly among humans.

Kiefer Sutherland led a gang of teenage vampires in which 1987 film?

The Lost Boys (1987) stars Kiefer Sutherland as gang leader David; the title nods to Peter Pan's boys who never grow up, and the boardwalk scenes were shot in Santa Cruz.

In Bram Stoker's novel, Jonathan Harker visits Count Dracula's castle in which mountain range?

The Carpathians reached Stoker only through library books and travellers' accounts: he never set foot in Transylvania or anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

The TV series The Vampire Diaries is set in which fictional Virginia town?

Mystic Falls is the TV show's invention: L. J. Smith's novels are set in Fell's Church, and the series filmed its town square in Covington, Georgia, which now runs fan tours.

In Twilight, Bella Swan moves to which rainy Washington town?

Forks, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, was chosen after Meyer searched for the rainiest place in the United States; the town later built a tourism trade around the books.

The 1922 German silent film Nosferatu renamed the vampire Dracula as what?

F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu renamed Dracula as Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck; Stoker's widow Florence sued anyway, and a German court ordered every print destroyed.

The 2014 mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows follows vampire flatmates in which city?

The flatmates share a house in Wellington, New Zealand; Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement wrote, directed and starred, and the film later spawned an American TV series.

Which anti-hero, played by Wesley Snipes in 1998, is a human-vampire hybrid with vampire strengths but none of the weaknesses?

Blade's 1998 success, two years before X-Men, convinced studios that a Marvel character could carry a film; Stephen Dorff played its upstart villain, Deacon Frost.

Who directed the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula starring Gary Oldman?

Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), banning computer effects in favour of in-camera tricks from early cinema; it won three Oscars, including costume design.

In Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, which vampire, made by Lestat, tells his life story to a reporter?

Louis de Pointe du Lac tells a 200-year story; Rice wrote the novel after her daughter Michele died of leukaemia at five, and the child vampire Claudia was inspired by her.

The hairy-legged and white-winged vampire bats feed mainly on which animals?

Birds, including chickens and other poultry, are their main prey; only the third species, the common vampire bat, makes mammals such as livestock its usual meal.

In Stoker's Dracula, the Count arrives in England aboard a ship named after which Greek goddess?

The Demeter, a Russian schooner, runs aground in a storm with its dead captain tied to the wheel, and an immense dog leaps ashore from the wreck.

Which British studio's 1958 Dracula starred Christopher Lee as the Count and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing?

Hammer's film reached American cinemas as Horror of Dracula, retitled so that nobody would confuse it with Universal's 1931 film.

In the FX series What We Do in the Shadows, what kind of creature is Colin Robinson?

Colin Robinson is an energy vampire, played by Mark Proksch: he feeds by boring and irritating people and lives in the basement of the Staten Island house.

Stephen King's 1975 vampire novel 'Salem's Lot is set in which US state?

'Salem's Lot is set in the fictional town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine; it was King's second published novel, written after he taught Dracula to high-school students.

Which 'Blood Countess' was accused of killing hundreds of girls between 1590 and 1610?

Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess, was confined in Csejte Castle from 1610 until her death; the tale that she bathed in virgins' blood was first written down over a century later.

According to Stephenie Meyer, the Twilight vampire idea came to her in what form?

A dream on 2 June 2003 showed Meyer an ordinary girl and a vampire talking in a meadow; she began writing it down that day, and the scene became chapter 13 of Twilight.

Which family member of Vlad III earned the name 'Dracul' through the Order of the Dragon?

His father, Vlad II, joined the order in 1431, sworn to fight the Ottomans, yet was later forced to leave young Vlad and his brother Radu at the Ottoman court as hostages.

Which flatmate in the film What We Do in the Shadows is 8,000 years old and sleeps in a stone coffin?

Petyr, played by Ben Fransham, looks like the vampire of the silent film Nosferatu and keeps to the basement; he turns dinner guest Nick into the flat's newest vampire.

Bram Stoker was born in which city?

Dublin-born Stoker was bedridden with an unexplained illness until he was seven, then grew into an outstanding athlete at Trinity College.

The 2004 vampire novel Let the Right One In comes from which country?

Sweden's John Ajvide Lindqvist set the story in Blackeberg, the Stockholm suburb where he was born; the 2008 Swedish film was remade in America two years later as Let Me In.

Vlad III ruled which principality in today's southern Romania?

Wallachia was Vlad's realm; Transylvania, where Stoker placed his Count's castle, was then a province of the Kingdom of Hungary across the mountains.

In the FX series What We Do in the Shadows, which vampire is the self-appointed leader of the Staten Island house?

Nandor the Relentless, played by Kayvan Novak, is a former Ottoman warrior who declares himself leader of the house; his familiar Guillermo waits years for the promised bite.

Which member of Lord Byron's 1816 Lake Geneva house party wrote The Vampyre?

John Polidori, Byron's young physician, wrote it after the ghost-story contest at which Mary Shelley began her own famous novel; a magazine printed it as Byron's work, and both men had to set the record straight.

The 1872 vampire novella Carmilla is set in Styria, a state of which present-day country?

Austria's Styria also haunts Stoker: in 'Dracula's Guest', long thought a chapter cut from Dracula, the traveller shelters at the tomb of a countess of Graz in Styria.

European villagers scattered what on a suspected vampire's grave to keep it busy counting until dawn?

Poppy seeds, millet or sand were strewn on the grave because the folk vampire was thought a compulsive counter, unable to leave until it had numbered every grain.

The most famous American 'vampire' exhumation, in 1892, took place in which state?

Nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown was exhumed in Exeter, Rhode Island, in 1892 after dying of tuberculosis; her heart was burned and the ashes fed to her sick brother Edwin as a cure.

Nosferatu (1922) is credited as the first film to show a vampire destroyed by what?

Sunlight makes the film's vampire vanish in a puff of smoke at dawn, a screen invention: in Stoker's novel daylight only weakens Dracula.

Quincey Morris, one of Lucy's three suitors in Stoker's Dracula, comes from which American state?

Texas gives the novel its bowie-knife-carrying American: Quincey Morris drives it into the Count's heart in the final fight, then dies of his own wounds.

After five seasons on The WB, Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved to which network for its final two?

UPN picked the show up in 2001 after a contract dispute with The WB, and opened its run by having Buffy's friends raise her from the dead.

Robert Eggers's 2024 Nosferatu cast which actor as its title vampire?

Bill Skarsgård refused to have his voice digitally altered for the role, training instead with an opera singer to push it far lower.

Which feature of a decomposing corpse appeared to lengthen, fuelling vampire beliefs?

Teeth seemed to grow as gums receded after death; bloating gases also pushed blood from the nose and mouth, so a 'plump, well-fed' corpse looked freshly fed.

Which 1948 comedy was the 1931 Dracula star's last film as the Count?

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was his second and final film as Dracula; when he died in 1956, his family buried him in one of his Dracula capes.

In Carmilla, the vampire's aliases must all be what of her real name?

Anagrams are all she is allowed: Le Fanu's vampire may only take names that reuse every letter of her own, so Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, returns as Millarca and then as Carmilla.

The Hungarian 'Blood Countess' died confined in Čachtice Castle, now in which present-day country?

Slovakia's Čachtice Castle held the countess until her death in 1614; her rank spared her a trial, while servants accused with her were tried and three were executed.

In Stoker's Dracula, the Count comes ashore from a wrecked ship at which English seaside town?

Whitby gave Stoker more than a setting: on holiday there in 1890 he is said to have found the name Dracula in a library book, then had his Count bound ashore as a great dog.

Biochemist David Dolphin linked vampire folklore to which rare blood disorder?

Porphyria can make sufferers painfully sensitive to light, the trait behind the comparison; Dolphin put the idea to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Reports on the 'vampires' Petar Blagojević and Arnold Paole, which popularised the word in English, came from which country?

Serbia was partly under Habsburg rule at the time, so imperial officials wrote up both exhumations, and London papers were printing the tale by 1732, spelling the word 'vampyre'.

Makt Myrkranna, a heavily altered 1901 version of Dracula, appeared in which language?

Makt Myrkranna, Icelandic for 'Powers of Darkness', passed as a plain translation until 2014, when Hans de Roos noticed its plot was very different; it was later traced to an earlier Swedish serial.

Universal's 1931 Dracula was based on Stoker's novel and on which earlier adaptation of it?

A stage play by Hamilton Deane, revised for Broadway by John L. Balderston, shaped the film; Deane had dressed the Count in a tuxedo and flowing cape so he could vanish through a stage trapdoor.

Draculin, a protein in vampire bat saliva, blocks which process in its victim?

Draculin is an anticoagulant: it blocks blood clotting by shutting down a key clotting enzyme within seconds, so blood keeps flowing from the bite while the bat laps it up.

Which child-devouring monster of ancient Greek myth is often counted among the earliest vampire-like figures?

Lamia was a Libyan queen loved by Zeus; when jealous Hera took her children, grief made her a monster that preyed on other people's, and later tales turned the lamiae into seducers who fed on young men's blood.

In 1462 Vlad III led a night raid on the camp of which sultan, the conqueror of Constantinople?

Mehmed II survived the raid and marched on to Târgoviște, where he found thousands of impaled captives outside the capital; soon afterwards he pulled his army back.

Well-fed vampire bats help a starving roostmate by doing what?

Regurgitating blood for it keeps a hungry bat alive, and bats give most to roostmates that have fed them before, so the favour tends to be returned.

In the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, which actress played Mina opposite Gary Oldman's Count?

Winona Ryder found James V. Hart's screenplay and took it to the director herself; Keanu Reeves played her fiancé, Jonathan Harker.

What title did Stoker's typescript of Dracula carry before publication?

The Un-Dead was still handwritten on the title page of the typescript sent to the printer; the switch to Dracula, the Count's own name, came only at the last minute.

Which country singer played Whistler, the hero's mentor and weaponsmith, in a 1998 Wesley Snipes vampire film?

Kris Kristofferson's Whistler appears to die by his own hand in the first film, yet the sequel opens with the hero finding him alive.

In Romanian folklore, what are the restless dead who rise from the grave to prey on the living called?

Strigoi were said to leave the grave as beasts or unseen, drawing strength from the blood of the living, a belief Stoker's Dracula may well echo.

In which 2012 film does Johnny Depp play Barnabas Collins, a vampire freed after nearly two centuries buried alive?

Dark Shadows has a spurned witch turn Barnabas into a vampire, and a construction crew frees him in 1972; it revives a 1960s TV soap whose breakout character he was.

Whose 1954 novel I Am Legend leaves one man alone in a world of vampires?

Richard Matheson's novel was filmed three times, and it was the main inspiration for George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

In 1970 the London press spread rumours of a vampire haunting which cemetery?

The Highgate Vampire scare of 1970 drew rival amateur hunters with stakes and crucifixes to Highgate Cemetery; one, David Farrant, was later prosecuted for damaging tombs.

In Stoker's Dracula, which asylum patient eats flies and spiders while awaiting his 'Master'?

Renfield has a system: he feeds flies to spiders and spiders to sparrows, hoping to absorb each life himself; Dwight Frye made the part his signature role in the 1931 film.

Which Transylvanian castle is marketed to tourists as 'Dracula's Castle', despite only thin links to Vlad III?

Bran Castle is never named in the novel, and Stoker never visited Romania; Vlad III, so often confused with the Count, never held the castle either.

The novel Let the Right One In takes its title from a song by which singer?

The title comes from Morrissey's song 'Let the Right One Slip In', and plays on the folklore rule that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited.

Which vampire cursed with a soul left Buffy the Vampire Slayer to lead his own spin-off series?

Angel was cursed with a soul by a Romani clan so that he would suffer for his past cruelty; his spin-off ran for five seasons from 1999 with David Boreanaz in the lead.

In True Blood, which vampire runs the Shreveport bar Fangtasia as Sheriff of Area 5?

Eric Northman, a Viking made a vampire about a thousand years ago, rules Area 5 from Fangtasia; in season one he has Sookie read minds there to find out who has been stealing from him.

Which actress plays the vampire Selene in the Underworld films?

Kate Beckinsale played Selene, a vampire who hunts the werewolf-like Lycans, from 2003 to 2016; she married the first film's director, Len Wiseman, the year after it came out.

Which empress sent her physician Gerard van Swieten to investigate vampire claims, then banned grave-opening?

Maria Theresa's physician Gerard van Swieten reported in 1755 that vampires did not exist; her decree against exhuming and desecrating bodies ended the Austrian vampire panic.

The jiangshi of Chinese folklore, sometimes called 'Chinese vampires', get around in what distinctive way?

Hopping suits a creature whose name means 'stiff corpse'; one suggested origin is the corpse-drivers who carried dead labourers home lashed upright to bamboo poles, making the bodies seem to hop.

Varney the Vampire, the 1845–47 gothic serial, appeared in what cheap format?

Penny dreadfuls paid by the line, which is why Varney runs to hundreds of chapters; the serial also gave vampire fiction its fangs and the two puncture wounds they leave.

Which US president is recast as an axe-swinging vampire hunter in a 2010 novel and its 2012 film?

Abraham Lincoln fights a caste of vampiric slave owners in Seth Grahame-Smith's story, which recasts the American Civil War as a hidden war on vampires.

Which bestselling romance novel began life as Twilight fan fiction titled Master of the Universe?

Fifty Shades of Grey kept the fan fiction's story but renamed Edward and Bella as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. E. L. James first posted it online as Snowqueens Icedragon.

Which actor ate a live cockroach on camera for the 1989 black comedy Vampire's Kiss?

Nicolas Cage swapped the script's raw egg for a real cockroach, playing a New York literary agent who becomes convinced that a lover's bite is turning him into a vampire.

In the children's book Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit of the title sucks the juice out of what?

Vegetables sucked dry are the clue that sets Chester the cat plotting against the rabbit, which the Monroe family found in a cinema during a screening of Dracula.

Folklore's vampires are often said to cast no reflection in a mirror because they lack what?

A soul is what a vampire was thought to be missing, perhaps why the glass stays empty. Bram Stoker gave the trait to Dracula and later writers kept it.

Transylvania, the homeland of fiction's most famous vampire count, is a region of which modern country?

Romania gained Transylvania only in 1920. When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula it lay inside the Kingdom of Hungary, and its Latin name means the land beyond the forest.

Which British actor went from Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter to vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films?

Robert Pattinson was a supporting player until Twilight opened in 2008, and the saga went on to rank him among the world's highest-paid actors.

Which 2025 film has Michael B. Jordan play twin brothers facing vampires in 1930s Mississippi?

Sinners went on to a record 16 nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, where Jordan won Best Actor for playing both Smoke and Stack.

Universal shot a second 1931 Dracula on the same sets with a different cast, in which language?

Spanish audiences got Carlos Villarías as the Count: his crew filmed at night after Tod Browning's had gone home, and historian David Skal judged theirs the better film.

Which child star earned a Golden Globe nomination as Claudia in 1994's Interview with the Vampire?

Kirsten Dunst broke through as Claudia, a vampire trapped for ever in a child's body, years before she played Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.

Anne Rice made which American city, her own birthplace, the main haunt of the vampire Lestat?

New Orleans is where Lestat makes the narrator of Interview with the Vampire one of his kind in the 18th century. Rice was born there as Howard Allen Frances O'Brien.

Which filmmaker wrote and co-starred in From Dusk till Dawn, the 1996 vampire film set in a Mexican saloon?

Quentin Tarantino played one of two fugitive brothers beside George Clooney, while Robert Rodriguez directed his script, which traps the pair in a saloon for the night.

Which rock star played a vampire's fast-ageing lover opposite Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983)?

David Bowie's character starts to wither when the eternal youth he was promised fails. The Hunger was the first feature by Tony Scott, who went on to direct Top Gun.

In the Hotel Transylvania films, what is the name of Dracula's teenage daughter, voiced by Selena Gomez?

Mavis is courted by Johnny, a human who stumbles on the monsters' hotel by accident, while her father, voiced by Adam Sandler, schemes to keep the pair apart.

Which Marvel antihero, a doctor turned living vampire by his own cure, did Jared Leto play in 2022?

Morbius and his surrogate brother Milo become living vampires after curing themselves of a rare illness. The film won Jared Leto a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor.

Which R&B singer played the ancient vampire queen Akasha in Queen of the Damned, her final film role?

Aaliyah died in a plane crash in August 2001 after completing her scenes, and the film, released the following February, is dedicated to her.

In 30 Days of Night, vampires attack which Alaskan town, since renamed Utqiaġvik, in its sunless winter?

Barrow is the northernmost town in the United States, so far above the Arctic Circle that the sun stays down for weeks, which hands the film's vampires a month without a dawn.

Which creature of legend, blamed for draining livestock of blood, was first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995?

Chupacabra means goat-sucker in Spanish, after the animals it supposedly drained. An investigator later traced the first eyewitness's description to the alien in the 1995 film Species.

The New England vampire panic, when families dug up dead relatives, was a reaction to which disease?

Tuberculosis, then called consumption, crept through households one member at a time, so families blamed the first to die for feeding on the living.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has no single narrator and instead tells its whole story through what?

Letters and diaries, along with newspaper articles, carry the entire novel. The form is called epistolary, and Stoker intended it from his earliest plans for the book.

Despite its sinister name, the deep-sea vampire squid is a gentle scavenger that feeds mostly on what?

Marine snow, the drizzle of dead plankton and droppings sinking from above, is most of its diet. The name is said to come from its dark colour and cloak-like webbing.

The vampire finch, which pecks at seabirds to drink from the wound, lives only in which island group?

The Galápagos bird is one of Darwin's finches and lives on just two islands, Wolf and Darwin, where several may feed on a single booby at once.

Which ability, almost unknown in other bats, does the common vampire bat owe to its unusually strong wings?

Running is done on the wings rather than the legs: the bat bounds along on its forelimbs, a gait unique to the species, and usually approaches animals while they sleep.

The 'vampire facial' that Kim Kardashian made famous in 2013 applies what to the patient's needled skin?

Platelet-rich plasma is spun out of the patient's own blood in a centrifuge, then spread over freshly needled skin. Kardashian later said she regretted the painful procedure.

Which castle near Brașov is sold to tourists as Dracula's home, though Bram Stoker likely never knew of it?

Bran is presented to visitors as the Count's lair, yet there is no evidence that Stoker knew anything about it. Inside, the museum shows art and furniture collected by Queen Marie.

In some traditions a vampire may come and go from a house freely, but only after what has happened once?

Once it has been invited by the owner, the threshold no longer protects the household, which is why screen vampires linger so politely at the door.

Johnny Depp played which 18th-century vampire, who wakes up in 1972, in Tim Burton's film Dark Shadows?

Barnabas Collins was added to the 1960s soap opera to rescue its flagging ratings and was meant to last 13 weeks, but he proved so popular that he became its star.

The Vampyre, the 1819 tale of an aristocratic vampire, was falsely published as the work of which poet?

Lord Byron had only told the tale it grew from, during a story contest with Mary Shelley. His doctor wrote it, and the false credit stuck despite both men's denials.

Which deadpan comedy star played the Count in Mel Brooks's 1995 spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

Leslie Nielsen's Count spars with a Van Helsing played by Mel Brooks himself, each man determined to have the last word.

Which Australian actor played the monster hunter Van Helsing in the 2004 action film of that name?

Hugh Jackman's hunter takes on werewolves and Mr Hyde as well as the Count, in a tribute to the multi-monster films Universal made in the 1940s.

In Balkan folklore, what name is given to the child of a vampire and a human?

Dhampir sons were believed able to see vampires invisible to everyone else, so many took up vampire hunting, a trade handed down from father to son.

Bram Stoker spent 27 years as business manager to which star actor, the first ever to be knighted?

Henry Irving ran the Lyceum Theatre in London's West End, and Stoker doubled as his personal assistant, having earlier written a favourable review of his Hamlet.

When Count Dracula's ship runs aground in Bram Stoker's novel, which animal is seen leaping ashore?

A large dog bounds off the wreck, whose dead captain is found tied to the helm: it is the Count himself, who races up the 199 steps to the churchyard.

Which German director made Nosferatu, the unauthorised 1922 Dracula film that a court ordered destroyed?

F. W. Murnau changed names and details, but Bram Stoker's widow still sued and won an order to destroy every copy. The film survives because several prints escaped.

Which actor earned an Academy Award nomination as a real-vampire Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire?

Willem Dafoe played on an old legend that the silent star was no actor at all, and he returned to the tale in the 2024 remake as an occult-minded professor.

Which future Best Director winner made Near Dark, a 1987 film about a roaming family of vampires?

Kathryn Bigelow wanted to make a Western, could not find the backing, and so mixed it with the more bankable vampire genre. Three of her cast came straight from Aliens.

In the Twilight saga, what name do Bella and Edward give their half-human, half-vampire daughter?

Renesmee merges the names of her grandmothers, Renée and Esme, and her middle name Carlie does the same for her grandfathers Carlisle and Charlie.

Florence Balcombe, the celebrated beauty who married Bram Stoker, had earlier been courted by which writer?

Oscar Wilde was upset to lose her, yet Stoker kept up the friendship and later visited him during his exile on the Continent after prison.

In Bram Stoker's novel, what does Count Dracula bring to England packed in 50 boxes?

Earth from his castle is the source of the Count's strength abroad, so the hunters weaken him by tracking down the boxes he has scattered around London and destroying them.

Which vampire spawn, on the run from his master Cazador, is a companion character in Baldur's Gate 3?

Astarion was voiced and motion-captured by Neil Newbon, whose turn as the high elf won Best Performance at the 2023 Game Awards.

In the Castlevania games, which clan of whip-wielding hunters battles Count Dracula across the centuries?

The Belmonts were introduced with Simon, hero of the 1986 original, who fights through six levels of the Count's castle with a whip fittingly named Vampire Killer.

In which Japanese manga does the vampire Alucard hunt other vampires for a secret English organisation?

Hellsing takes its name from the vampire hunter Van Helsing, who defeated Alucard a century before the story begins and won the vampire's loyalty to his family.

Which 1972 blaxploitation film stars William Marshall as an 18th-century African prince turned vampire?

Blacula's prince is bitten after asking the Count to help him suppress the slave trade. The film's success inspired a wave of imitators, among them Blackenstein a year later.

Which silent-film star was nicknamed 'the Vamp', short for vampire, for her roles as a ruinous seductress?

Theda Bara was an Ohio native, but studio publicists sold her as the Sahara-born daughter of an Arab sheik and pointed out that her name was an anagram of Arab death.

Which Indonesian city on Borneo is named after a vampiric female ghost said to have haunted the site?

Pontianak's founder is said to have driven the ghosts out with cannon fire before building his palace on the spot, and bamboo cannons are fired there at Ramadan in memory of it.

Which Danish director of The Passion of Joan of Arc made the 1932 horror film Vampyr, his first with sound?

Carl Theodor Dreyer recorded the film in three languages and based it on Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, the story collection that includes Carmilla.

Jure Grando, perhaps the first real person recorded as a vampire, lived in a village in which modern country?

Croatia's Istrian village of Kringa was his home: legend says he rose from the grave nightly for 16 years after his death, until villagers beheaded the corpse in 1672.

In Caribbean folklore, the soucouyant sheds her skin at night and hunts for victims in what form?

A fireball crosses the night sky while her wrinkled skin waits in a mortar. Fill the mortar with coarse salt and she cannot put the skin back on.

Some suspected vampires were buried with which farm tool across the neck, to behead the corpse if it rose?

A sickle was one of several precautions: other suspect corpses were weighted with rocks or buried face down, so that a waking vampire would dig deeper instead of up.

Which Scottish singer wrote and recorded Love Song for a Vampire for the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Annie Lennox wrote the song for the film's end credits, and it reached number three in the UK as a double A-side with Little Bird.