Today if you ran up to someone and asked if vampires existed there answer would probably be the same as mine. Of course not! Well then why did people think they did exist in Europe in the middle ages. If you went to Transylvania (and many other European towns) a few hundred years ago then you would see they believed in vampires as much as they believed in heaven and hell. But was there any physical evidence? Was there any scientific proof to the existence of these undead blood suckers? The answer might surprise you.
The dictionary definition of a vampire is "undead creature that drinks blood". People have put many rules on vampires in both modern media and old folklore. Modern media movies like twilight have said that they don't need to sleep are super fast and strong and are nearly indestructible while older folklore puts more rules on vampires. Like their hatred of garlic various shape shifting abilities and the idea that vampires can't go into sunlight. All of these are extra characteristics but the base definition only have two characteristics they are undead and they drink blood.
The reason why this is important is to realise how different various cultures viewed vampires. For instance old folklore believed rubbing the fat of a pig which was sacrificed on a holy day onto the body of a dead person would stop it from turning into a vampire. Also in old Chinese legend vampires that couldn't change shape were covered in pale green hair and had no spiritual powers.
Most of the evidence for vampires (if not all) came from the way that a body decomposes). For instance when you die your body starts to fill up with noxious gas mostly in the stomach and abdomen. So if someone were to... oh I don't know... stab you with a big sharp wooden stake then your body would let out those gasses in such a way that would sounded like a groan. People believed this was the vampires dying breath.
Also when you die you will notice that as you are decomposing blood will begin to well up inside of you. As its welling up it will come out of one of the few holes your body has your mouth. Seeing this blood people believed that the vampire had recently gorged itself on blood.
Incredibly some people don't rot. Or at least they do not show the signs of rot. The reasons for this has been both unknown and explained. For instance the body of st Cuthbert supposedly did not rot for hundreds of years. Also people who were buried in bogs were known not to rot because their skin became leathery when it came in contact with some of the acids in the bog. This could also be an obvious sign of a vampire.
Another reason why some people believed in vampires or at least the sexual parts of vampire legends is when a man decomposes is penis becomes swollen. Also it has been known to leak semen which was also taken as evidence.
Though all of these are the scientific reasons why people believed in vampires. Other less scientific facts that turned them into believers was merely their fear of death. Not just their own death but ideas that there loved ones would come back as monsters and the blood drinking part. It was known even back then that blood was essential in life (despite there contradictory practices of bloodletting). There for it would be simple to assume that if when you lose blood you grow weak that when you gain blood you grow strong.
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