Creatures, Myths & Legends

The science behind vampires and monsters

By T.K. Randall
November 9, 2012 ·  29 comments

Image Credit: Dracula - 1931 It's a question that science journalist Matt Kaplan has set out to investigate. Kaplan maintains that our tendency to crave stories about horror and monsters is not dissimilar to the way in which lion cubs behave when they engage in play fighting - they allow us to face our worst fears without putting ourselves in any genuine danger. Different fictional and mythical monsters have sprung up around this tendency for telling terrifying tales.

Some specific denizens may have had some basis in reality, for instance the concept of vampires may have sprung from symptoms of decay in the newly deceased. Bram Stoker's classic novel 'Dracula' is most commonly associated with bringing the vampire concept in to popular culture, but how did we get from the blood curdling terror of Count Dracula to the modern day vampires of Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' saga ? [!gad]It's a question that science journalist Matt Kaplan has set out to investigate. Kaplan maintains that our tendency to crave stories about horror and monsters is not dissimilar to the way in which lion cubs behave when they engage in play fighting - they allow us to face our worst fears without putting ourselves in any genuine danger. Different fictional and mythical monsters have sprung up around this tendency for telling terrifying tales.

Some specific denizens may have had some basis in reality, for instance the concept of vampires may have sprung from symptoms of decay in the newly deceased. Bram Stoker's classic novel 'Dracula' is most commonly associated with bringing the vampire concept in to popular culture, but how did we get from the blood curdling terror of Count Dracula to the modern day vampires of Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' saga ?

Source: Reuters | Comments (29)

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