^{The History of Vampire     Listen! Do you hear any strange sounds from the graves? Finding that corpses went missing? Feeling any crawl from the dead?     Dracula has waked up from long sleep! He wanted you to share his story in the deep dark night!! Dracula was originally called Vlad Tepes. He was born in the town of Sighisoara in Transylvania in 1431 and died in 1476. Later,he came to rule that area of southern Romania known as Wallachia.  He was a tyrant who      was notorious  for evil acts and brutal punishment techniques to people in Romania; he often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged,burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc.  He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs, and limbs.  But his favorite method was impalement on stakes.Hence, the word "tepes" in Romania language means impaler. Impalement was a particularly gruesome form of execution,          wherein the victim was impaled between the legs upon  a large, sharpened stake the width of a burly man's arm.Vlad especially enjoyed mass executions, where several victims were impaled at once, and their stakes hoisted upright. As they hung suspended above the ground, the weight of their bodies would slowly drag them downwards, causing the sharpened end of the stake to pierce their internal organs. In order to better enjoy these mass spectacles, Vlad routinely ordered a banquet table set up in front of his victims, and would enjoy a leisurely supper amid the pitiful sights and sounds of the dying.     Beside the title Impaler, he was also known as Dracula, son of the dragon. Originally, this title came about because his father (also named Vlad) belonged to the Order of the Dragon, an order formed by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund for the purpose of defeating the Turks. The elder Vlad used the dragon symbol on his coins and went by the name "Dracul" ("dragon" or "devil").     However, to our surprise, he was  respected by his subjects because of his fierce campaigns against the Turks. He was  respected as a warrior and stern ruler who tolerated no crime against his people. Because of the harsh punishment, he was twice overthrown by his people. And finally, he was killed by one of his followers, which was said to be Turkish spy.He was buried at one of the monasteries he patronized, on the island at Snaovg. (Source: Synthesized from http://www.opa.com/vampire/Dracula.html)     Back Home}