3 Historical Figures People Really Thought Were Vampires

Nowadays, courtesy of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and early film adaptations like Nosferatu, we generally think of vampires as pale-skinned people with sharp teeth, dark robes, and sometimes, pointy ears. 

Back in 18th-century Eastern Europe and Russia, where the myth came into its own, vampires were more akin to modern-day zombies and were visualized as corpses that rose from their graves to feast on the living. 

Despite these changing depictions, vampire stories have often reflected social anxieties, fears, and unexplainable events over the years. Fear of vampires—like witchcraft—has also occasionally sparked mass hysteria, which often mixed with racial and religious prejudices to target people that a community or political organization considered eccentric or threatening.

Many of history’s original “vampires” weren’t fictional monsters, but real people accused either in their own lifetimes or posthumously.

1. Jure Grando
2. Vlad III 
3. Mercy Brown

Jure Grando

One of the earliest known people to be accused of vampirism—first documented in a 17th-century text by historian Johann Weikhard von Valvasor entitled The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola, which is often cited as the world’s earliest written account of a vampire—was Jure Grando Alilović. 

Alilović was a stonemason from the Croatian village of Kringa who died in 1656, and was later said to rise each night to terrorize his neighbors and widow. After digging up his well-preserved, smiling corpse, the villagers cut off his head, filling the grave with blood. 

As with other entries on this list, Alilović’s alleged vampirism can be seen as a manifestation of cultural currents. As one researcher argues, the rumors “served as a tool for expressing fears about sexual freedom in an 18th-century Balkan society constrained by its own depravity.”

1. Jure Grando
2. Vlad III 
3. Mercy Brown

Vlad III 

Also remembered as Vlad the Impaler, Vlad III was a ruler of Wallachia, a region in modern-day Romania, who reigned several times between 1448 and his death around 1477. The son of another Wallachian nobleman named Vlad Dracul, he is often cited as one of the inspirations for the character of Dracula.

Allegations of vampirism arose from rumors that Vlad III was a cannibal who drank the blood of his enemies. Stories about his reign, which was marked by wars with various ethnic and religious groups, picture him seated at a dining table while his soldiers crucify prisoners of war and cut off their limbs. 

A controversial historical figure denounced by Russian contemporaries for converting from Orthodox Christianity to Roman Catholicism, Vlad III’s alleged vampirism may be a result of propaganda and resentment.

Mercy Brown

In the late 19th century, a 19-year-old girl from Exeter, Rhode Island named Mercy Brown passed away alongside her mother and sister. Though she likely died from tuberculosis, at the time it was believed that supernatural forces were at play. 

When her brother Edwin fell sick as well, the people of Exeter came to suspect that Mercy was a vampire who was draining her surviving sibling’s life force from the grave. Her corpse was dug up and burned after it appeared oddly well-preserved to her exhumers, and the ashes were mixed with tonic and fed to Edwin in a futile attempt to cure his illness. 

Mercy’s posthumous persecution coincided with a period in history known as the New England Vampire Panic, when fear of vampiric attacks spread across the American East Coast just as the witch trials had several centuries before. The panic was likely fueled by tuberculosis outbreaks, and sustained by a lack of understanding of the fact that cold winter ground preserved dead bodies, not vampirism. 

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