A young boy riding his bicycle is surprised at the sight of a coffin on a concrete sidewalk rather than its designated home at a southwest Houston church cemetery.
Where do vampires come from? Or, more specifically, what are the origins of the legend? There is no one blanket answer to that question. That the vampire is a psychological archetype is attested to by the sheer universality of the subject. But from what seeds did that concept spring? Anthropologists are quick to credit the communal fear of human mortality, disease outbreaks, ignorance of the particulars of physical decomposition of bodies, etc. But I believe we can discern how such legends could originate on a localized scale, micro as opposed to macro.
Submit it for your consideration: A largely uneducated population, beset by a series of misfortunes. In this case, flooding. Cholera or some other such nasty disease has broken out. People have died. The populace might easily pin the blame on some supernatural agency at work. Now the ground is fertile for the birth of a vampire. One morning some person is out surveying the damage, and lo and behold spots a coffin where no coffin is supposed to be. He might discern that the coffin was deposited there by floodwaters, yes—but might not the inhabitant of that coffin, its rest disturbed, now rise to stalk the living as a vampire?