The idea of blood-sucking creatures has been around for quite a while for, and is there in most cultures.

But what I want to look at in terms of the vampire is looking mostly at how it has developed in the modern time, especially from the time of Bram Stoker.

It seems like the vampire has taken up a particular niche in the world of monsters, and I think

it's a niche that it's important to understand at the moment.

This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world.

Now the notion of vampires has been around for a very long time. The idea of things coming, people coming back from the dead to take other people's blood.

You in the, let's say in the older versions of the vampire, it's mostly the imagery of a parasite

or, you know, of something which is coming from the outside,

which is coming from below, you know, like an insect or a mosquito that is feeding off the living.

And so it is really this parasite. A way to understand it is how, let's say, on a more psychological

level, is to understand something like

someone who dies and what they left as a legacy is going to continue to

nod you for one reason or another is going to continue to act as a parasite on

your life despite the fact that it is that person is gone and so the uh you know despite the person's

death something about what they left behind is going to keep uh gnawing at you and uh i'm sure we could

find many examples of that but the way that the vampire has taken form in the modern time especially

since the time of bram Stoker, a little bit,

just with the basic idea of Count Dracula and the notion of a monarch, the idea of an aristocrat

who becomes this vampire, who sells his soul to the devil, or does something similar,

and then becomes this creature of the

night. It trades off, you know, the idea of having power and unlimited life for a life of living

death and sucking the blood of others. And so the interesting aspect of this vampire is that it really becomes the image of a monstrous

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