Something that does not sparkle.

Immortal being that subsists on blood. Legend says the Only way to kill a Vampire is with a wooden stake thru the heart but an Original Vampire can Only be killed with white oak.

a great subculture and ledgend on the verge on ruin due to the popular mainstream phenomon known as 'Twilight'

1: One whom drinks the blood of others, be it animal or human. Not to be confused with cannibalism or sarcophagy as no tissue is consumed.

2: Term describing Vlad Tapish, or Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476) and Erzebet (Elizabeth) Bathory (1560 -1614), the Bloody Countess of Csejthe: both notable historicaly for the consumption of blood. Dracula is a name based off the Order of the Dragon, or Order of Dracul, which Bram Stoker used as his vampiric character based loosely on Vlad the Impaler.

Mythical creatures which were once considered genuinely scary, but are now the laughing stock of the monster world thanks to Stephenie Meyer and her extreme pile of fail 'Twilight', otherwise known as 'Necrophilia for Tweens'.

The vampire legend comes from the the Greek Mythological creature, Empusa, which is a creature that has the upper body of a ghost, a leg of a donkey, and a leg of bronze. Empusa fed on the blood of young men, creating the vampire legend. So therefore, vampires do NOT sparkle. Those are fairies.

Vampires are re-animated corpses of people who have transformed into blood lusting creatures of the night. Though many theories and legends surround the story of the beginning vampirism, each culture has tailored to suit each societies location on the globe (very similar and antonymous to the theory of god/s in centered religions in different places). Some say that vampires are demons straight from the breast of the devil himself, sent to wreck havoc on earth, others believe that they are the awakened cadavers of those who died unbaptized. Chiefly they are not supposed to be physically able to venture into the light, lest it burn them to re-death. Their weaknesses are said to be garlic, the sun, holy or blessed things such as crusifixes and holy water, poppy seeds (though this myth died due to the easiness of destroying a vampire by spilling seeds onto the ground behind you, for he would have to obsessively count them until the sun came up), wooden stakes through the heart, decapitation, or being charred to ash with a flame.
Many vampire novels falsely depict vampires as recollective of their humanity, in becoming a vampire, one is set on a path to becoming a monster, once transformed, they permanently loose their soul and are bound to traverse the earth until they are killed a second time and cast into hell. They are renoun for either being breathtakingly beautiful, or horrifically disfigured. Either way they sat on the top of the food chain, practically impossible for animals to kill, and much stronger, faster, and clever than a mortal human.