Comment by IAmBroom
7 days ago
Your point about vampires and zombies being modern isn't true.
The notion of the "revenant" - a corpse reanimating to wreak havoc on the living - is so ubiquitous that occasional burials across the centuries and globe involve the body being place upside down (presumably so they dig the wrong way), with heavy stones in their mouth, or staked.
Yes, I know. I thought I mentioned that in my comment but I guess I wasn't clear.
The modern archetypes of vampires and zombies as they currently appear in media and popular culture are modern in origin. Yes, undead spirits and revenants and the like appear throughout folklore, but all (or very nearly all) modern depictions of vampires originate with Bela Lugosi and Bram Stoker, or pop culture references proceeding from that (such as White Wolf games) and all modern zombies in media originate with Night of the Living Dead.