traits of a Vampire
Current mood: aggravated
Characteristics of the Vampire
Here are the characteristics of Count Dracula as presented by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula. Other writers, of course, have altered these to suit their own literary purposes.
Count Dracula possesses the following powers and supernatural traits:
he is potentially immortal
he survives on the blood of others
he has the strength of twenty men
he can shape-shift into the form of a wolf or a bat
he can appear as mist or elemental dust
he has no reflection in a mirror
he casts no shadow
he has hypnotic power over his victims
he can turn victims into vampires
But on the other hand, he does have limitations:
he may not enter a household unless he is invited in
he loses his supernatural powers during daylight hours
he must sleep on the soil of his native land
he can cross running water only at the slack or the flood of the tide
he is repelled by garlic and holy symbols (crucifix, holy wafer)
he can be destroyed by driving a stake through his heart and decapitating him
Note:
1. Even though it is indicated throughout the novel that he is to be destroyed with a wooden stake, this is not how it happens. In the final scene, Harker and Morris dispatch the Count with knives.
2. There is nothing in Stoker's novel to indicate that the vampire can be destroyed by sunlight. Count Dracula moves about freely in the daytime, though with a reduction in his supernatural powers. (The "sunlight" motif entered the legend as a result of the 1922 film "Nosferatu".)
