 The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones . The aristocratic Count Dracula , alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers , appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry , is symbolic of the parasitic Ancien regime . In his entry for " Vampires " in the Dictionnaire philosophique ( 1764 ) , Voltaire notices how the end of the 18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now " there were stock @-@ jobbers , brokers , and men of business , who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight ; but they were not dead , though corrupted . These true suckers lived not in cemeteries , but in very agreeable palaces " . 
