Vampires are by far the scariest Halloween monster with their immortality, their striking presence and their devious nature.
They are the OG scary monsters. Without them, Halloween would not be the same.
Their appearance is the spookiest with razor sharp teeth, slick hair and long capes, which adds to their otherworldliness.
Vampires are beyond human comprehension. They are gory creatures that will not hesitate to take your human blood.
Gothic aesthetics that usually come along with vampires absolutely dominate Halloween.
Think of a haunted house. Many people likely picture a Victorian townhouse on a hill, run down with cobwebs, boarded windows and plenty of bats.
Without vampires, it definitely would not be that way. Their origins in Transylvanian folklore and history made them central to gothic horror.
Count Dracula, a horrifying menace, is the most famous vampire because of Bram Stoker’s 1897 literary masterpiece “Dracula.”
What makes the Count so scary is his ability to constantly evolve with the fears of society, according to an Oct. 30, 2008 NPR article.
Dracula was loosely based on Vlad the Impaler, ruler of Wallachia (modern-day Romania) in the 1400s, who was responsible for up to 80,000 civilian deaths.
He was nicknamed for his excessive use of torturing and impaling his victims and is arguably the most dreaded man in Transylvanian history, according to a Oct. 31, 2013 NBC article.
The 1931 film “Dracula” shows him representing what many of the depression-era, middle-class Americans feared the most – a wealthy European aristocrat hungry for power, according to an Oct. 28 2016 PBS article.
On the other hand, the 1958 version of “Dracula” was largely about the fears many U.S. citizens felt during the Cold War, with a Dracula that is purely evil and sociopathically apathetic.
Vampires are also one of the most versatile monsters when it comes to media. There are countless variations and spins on the frightening mythical creatures.
A monster that isn’t scary would not have lasted and stayed within popular culture for more than 130 years.
Even today, vampires are inescapable in the realm of popular culture.
The “Twilight” film saga, which began in 2008, is based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. The five-film series cemented itself as one of the biggest crazes of teenage girls in the early 2010s.
I don’t think there was anything as scary as the debate between the vampire Edward versus the werewolf Jacob because of how fanatic the fans were.
The series in total made more than $3.3 billion in the box office, according to a July 21, 2021 Forbes article.
Not to mention hit shows including the 1997’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and 2009’s “The Vampire Diaries,” both of which portrayed romantic relationships with the blood-sucking fiends.
That exemplifies a strangely sinister side of vampires, one in which they use affection to enable them to sustain their lives.
Teenage girls are not fighting over pairing a girl with Frankenstein’s monster or a mummy.
The way vampires have changed our culture around scary monsters proves that they are the best – and therefore the scariest Halloween creature.
