Mauro says:

Re: Nasties around the world
It’s curious to note that the present day idea of aristocratic vampire owes so much to Romantic British writers like Bram Stoker… and British actors like Cristopher Lee!
The original Slavonic vampires were usually depicted as ghoulish peasants wrapped in tattered clothing, barely able to speak and devoid of all superhuman powers except for a superhuman crave for flesh and blood. How they were transformed in the aristocratic Dracula and Nosferatu is good material for researchers though as Ian pointed out Victorian decency probably played a part in it.
I have in my book collection a copy of the astounding Nihonyokaitaizen by Shigeru Mizuki and some of the creatures described therein are absolutely incredible. To stay on the vapire field you have the Gashadokuro, an immense flesh-eating and blood-drinking monster made up by the souls of those who died of hunger and fatigue in the rice fields, the Jubotsuko, a tree which grew on a blood soaked battlefield that will capture people to drink their blood, and the Kokuribaba, a revolting old woman which stole freshly interred bodies from their graves to weave clothes out of their hair and drink their cold blood. Her sins were so great that she could not be reborn in another form and not even the Avichi, the lowest of the popular Hells, would accept her.

In Distortion We Trust