News stories from the HistoryExtra podcast

Fear of the living dead, in the form of vampires, is a near-constant trope in modern popular culture – from the regular reinterpretations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to 20th century Buffy. But the tradition has far deeper roots. Discover how ancient Mesopotamians shaped these beliefs and spread the world’s earliest vampire traditions – and why young women were the most terrifying of all