Vampires, Strigoi...Oh Boy!

"In Romanian mythology, strigoi (same form singular or plural) are the evil souls of the dead rising from the tombs (or living) that transform into an animal or phantomatic apparition during the night to haunt the countryside, troubling whoever it encounters." (Wiki)

The idea of a non mortal waking at night to suck the blood from it's prey sounds crazy, right?

Check out this story that I found on Strictly Paranormal.

"People have believed in vampires for thousands of years, and surprisingly, there is quite a body of documented evidence which seems irrefutable. For example, in Yugoslavia in 1732, a group of civil and military officials, together with a Public Prosecutor and a troop of 24 soldiers under the command of a lieutenant of Duke Charles Alexander of Wurttemberg, went to the grave of where an alleged vampire had been buried three years earlier. At the graveside the soldiers and officials were joined by a number of 'various respected persons' who had also arrived to witness a sensational event: the execution of a vampire.

Over the last two weeks, it had been claimed that the man in the grave had murdered one of his brothers, and three of his nieces and nephews. He had subsequently been disturbed while sinking his teeth into the delicate neck of his fifth victim - another niece - whose blood he had sucked on two previous occasions. The bloodthirsty uncle had been seen to flit from the scene of the attacks with incredible agility into the direction of the graveyard, and now the authorities had been called in to put the vampire to rest, hopefully for good.

By the light of the soldier's lanterns, the grave looked disturbed, and the soil above it was inexplicably loose. Several soldiers dug down to the coffin, and were alarmed to see that the lid of the casket was not fastened down. They clambered out of the hole and two volunteers and a priest carefully descended into the open grave, armed with crucifixes, cloves of garlic, a copy of the Bible - and an iron bar with a sharpened end.
The priest lifted the coffin lid and passed it up to two other soldiers. Everyone present trembled to see that the 'corpse' in the coffin looked in the best of health, but had a somewhat ashen complexion. One of the soldiers then acted on a silent signal from the priest and plunged the iron bar through the vampire's chest, piercing its heart. A sickly white thick fluid and a great quantity of blood spurted out from the chest and mouth of the man in the coffin, and he screamed in agony. A hacksaw was handed to the other soldier in the grave pit, and he set about sawing off the vampire's head. As he sawed through the neck, the man in the coffin tried to talk, but seemed to choke on his blood. The severed head was later buried in quicklime, and the headless body was left in the coffin and covered with soil again. After the grisly ritual there were no further vampire attacks in the village. This incident is just one of hundreds that have been documented in Europe."

This site also has a modern day account of the Lodge Lane vampire as documented from 1983 to 2001.