In most mythology all kinds of revenants, including vampires, were feared. There might be exceptions, but they were rare. Certainly, vampires were not seen as sexy beings until recently due to - as you mentioned - modern western media, in most cultures, they were described as looking clearly dead and sometimes even rotting. True, they don't all drink blood, some absorb your life force (like the chinese Jiangshi) or eat your flesh (as in some legends from my home country Germany), but in most tales, they are not seen as anything than a terror.
I am Polish myself and I don't think the different portrayals of vampires in Slavic folklores (since this is where the word vampire originated from) were exceptions. Rather, they were never popularized in Western media, because they remained folklore stories until the technology progress and free education destroyed the myths, as people stopped believing in them. You won't find them in horror books, only in ethnographer works. Instead in Western media you get basically a repetition of Bram Stoker's version. And I am not a fan of throwing different "undead monster" from different mythologies together, while ignoring the differences in spiritual beliefs and cultures. I could as well say the German vampire is just a zombie, because it's undead and eats flesh.
To give an example, in some stories people believed that your undead spouse could come back and demand marital rights. And these could take either a dark, or a humourous note, e.g. in one story the woman told her undead husband to "kiss her ass" and that scared him off.
I direct you to ArvGuys answer to your comment, so I don't have to repeat everything. And Bram Stoker did get his inspiration from different mythologies. And as ArvGuy said, just because, there are some stories, that might take a funny turn, in the overwhelming majority of the stories, vampires are indeed fearsome and dangerous.
Last edited by fylimar; 30/08/2110:35 AM.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
