In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers the first scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends.  From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires, his book is fascinating reading.
“This study’s comprehensiveness and the author’s bone-dry wit make this compelling reading, not just for folklorists, but for anyone interested in a time when the dead wouldn’t stay dead.”—Booklist
“Barber’s inquiry into vampires, fact and fiction, is a gem in the literature of debunking