I've just been reading some other people's blogs and I think they fall into two types. The types I like are the less introspective, less ranty types, less about what a ghastly business life is. The type I prefer are about getting on with it, sharing their interests, their travel experiences, both good and bad, and so on, people who show a real love of life. Maybe shallowly, I want to be entertained, no matter how awful the experience, most of the time. I'm not interested in loads of pictures, but if the person who's writing the blog throws some excellent ones in, then so much the better, but it doesn't have to be picture-centred. Ranters for too long about their problems quickly put me off as do people who quote too much poetry. Some short pithy quotes are ideal.
Unfortunately, I don't like people who go on about trendy causes too much. Again, I think 'get on with it.' Now of course, people could say that my blog has its longeurs - every blog has its longeurs, and there are times when I rant a little too. And I am so fond of diversions (something you can't get away with in a novel unless its part of the character). So enough diversifying again, and let's get back to the vampires, werewolves and evil mystics that seem to have temporarily taken over.

Well, my grandmother, who was a God-fearing woman, was also a great believer in ghosts, and she had one or two tales which still scare me today. In all my travels, I think I can safely say I have never come across a ghost, not exactly, anyway, (though I imagined I saw one once in Indonesia in the Puncak - makes a great short story), nor a vampire or a werewolf - not yet! But there are plenty of human monsters nevertheless, including the ones posted on a thread started by borderland when he still was regularly contributing to the boards of BNA.
Many of these people have been the subjects of films; even Elizabeth Bathory is supposed to be the inspiration behind 'Lady Dracula' and , whisper whisper is the subject of a highly-eroticised and exotically-portrayed tableau in the 1974 film "Immoral Tales' by Walerian Borowczyk. If she was the monster legend makes her out to be, then W.B. has only made her a very sexy monster (to male eyes), and the scene where she bathes in the blood of her victims, which should be awful and extremely nasty, is rather a muted shock.
Vampires can exude pathos, rather than sex appeal - both Murnau's orginal film Nosferatu, and Werner Herzog's version of the same go for the monstrous, but also pathetic aspects of the vampire, a very Central European approach.
The city of Prague, which I lived in for three years, had a remarkable monster, the Golem, part of the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Low's Golem was an artificial being made from the mud/clay of the river Vltava and its original purpose was to protect the Jews from their enemies, among other duties. The Golem was one of the inspirations behind Mary Shelley's remarkable Gothic novel Frankenstein, and as I write this, I realise that I am going to string together some of my traveller's tales concerning the Golem with other notions of monsters/ghosts, strange experiences on the road - and make a little story out of it.
So what of Greek Vampires and werewolves, the Santorini vrykolakas
that started the whole thing? There are many interesting articles on the net about the origins of the legend as old as pre-Hellenic times. Just google "Greek vampires', for example.