Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world. Their variety is almost endless; from red eyed monsters with green or pink hair in China to the Greek Lamia which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a winged serpent.
However, the vampires we know of today, although changed by fiction and film, are largely based on Eastern European myths. The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East, and were transported from places like China, Tibet and India with the trade caravans to the Mediterranean. There they spread out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans and of course the Carpathian mountains, including Hungary and Transylvania.
Our concept of the vampire today still has some features in common with the Eastern European myths, such as blood drinking, return from death, attacking humans at night, etc. However many things we are familiar with; the wearing of evening clothes, capes with tall collars, turning into bats, etc are much more recent additions/inventions.
On the other hand, many aspects of the old myths such as the placing of poppy seeds at the gravesite in order to keep the vampires occupied all night counting seeds, rather than attacking, have all but disappeared from modern fiction and film!
I hope this helps you a bit with your understanding of the origin of the concept of Vampires. If you are looking for more information I suggest you also take a look here! Good luck :)
