Vampires
These are, by far, are my favourite creature. I am not allured to them because of their evil reputation but to the fact that they can chose who they are associtated with, may it be evil or good.
There are many misconseptions about vampires that hollywood imprented on our brains (all of my information comes from folk tales and legends and not from self-proclaimed vampires). The misconseptions began with Bram Stoker's novel Dracula which was probably an allegory on foreigners and women's rights in Great Britian; Dracula represented the hated and feared foreigner that poured into England and Lucy was the "New Woman" in the womans' rights movement-the evil woman. Bram Stoker got some of his ideas from historical sources and legends but most of the vampiric traits he wrote of came from his own imagination.
Vlad Tepes Dracul is the "grandfather" of the modern dracula image because of his vicous nature in the way he protected Romania from the invading Turks, but all rulers of the time fought bloody battles and thougth of ways to intemidate enemies. (Vlad III was not called Dracula because of his temperment but because of the medallion that he inharited from his father. The medallion was from The Order of the Dragon.) Vlad's particular method today seem groulish by today's standards-he would impale his prisoners on large spikes and ate in their presence and may have drank their blood, but that 
does not make him a vampire. In fact, today in Romania he is considered a national hero due to proctecting them from the Turks, but yet the locals are afraid to stay too long at Hunedora Castle.
But Vlad's end does not stop the speculation; when he died, local monks carried him off to the monestary and buried him beneath the alter, and when they excevated his grave they found not human remains but those of an animal. According to the locals, the animal remains are a testiment that Vlad turned into a strigoi; in fact Dracula's castle is writtled with strigoi, demons, and ghost. (A strigoi is an evil person, after death, turned into an animal-vampire, warewolf, or any creature of the likes.) It is possible that Vlad's body was secretly moved and replaced with a dead animal.
Some two hundred years after his death there were reports of people seeing a figure that bore the same features as Vlad. Reports continue today and Vlad seems to have lost his gusto and is far less violent than what he was. It is even said that Vlad never died and that is the reason no has been able to find his remains.
Every culture had a vampire figure and every variation had a different picturial of the vampire, and the image most prodomiate is the Nosforatu like figure-the dead corpse. And of course, every version has their vampire with different powers-some morph into animals and some have no powers at all.
Vlad was not the only historical figure that is considered a vampire. Elizabeth Bathory was a very beautiful Hungarian noble-one of the weathiest. She married Count Ferencz Nadasdy and bore him three chidren; Ferencz died in battle in 1600. As she grew older and her beauty began to wear off, she began to depend heavily on cosmetics but they hardly worked. One night a maid was brushing her hair and pulled too hard so Elizabeth swat at the young maiden causing the blood to spatter on her hand and face. After she cleaned off the blood she noticed that the skin on her face and hands was smoother, clear, and pale; she revealed this to a maid servent that she trusted and they both conspired to lure young women into the castle to starve them and take blood from them so that Elizabeth could bathe in it-that was only mild considering what she did later. She set up a torture chamber where she would force them into an iron maiden; their blood would pour from the cage and Elizabeth would stand beneath to shower in the blood. She was caught when she made the mistake of murdering a noble woman; when they investigated her, they found her guilty for the murder of at least 612 women. She was imprisoned in a windowless wall were she received no light and what little food she received was passed through a small hole. She died four years later. There are reports of her ghost walking around the Carpathian mountains looking for more blood.
How One Becomes a Vampire
Most legends state that a person becomes a vampire after they have comitted suicide or a cat jumped over your body. In Greece, if you were a red head, when you died you immediately became a vampire, but in Ireland and Scotland a vampire is a part of the sidhe. Then there is the classic form of infection-the bite.
Destroying a vampire does not involve holy symbols or holy water but silver is the best form of inhibiting them; silver inhibits their powers. Steaking works well but it also works well on living humans. (Not all vampires are repulsed by the sight of a crusifix or holy water because some can be very religious, and think about it, how did people 10,000 years ago defeat a vampire if Christianity was not around.)
The most recent account of a vampire that I have read was as close as 2001. The incident occured at Lodge Lane, Liverpool in a flat house were some tenets have had some fears about a neighbour who seemed to be somewhat of a peeping tom; a man caught a person with a bloodshot eye looking down at him from a hole in the ceiling. But the only evidence anyone has collected in regard to who the prawler was was taken from a security camera. A collage student was living in one of the flats when one night she received a frantic ring on her buzzard at 3.00 in the 
morning. Apprehensive, she turned on the monitor and saw a grotesque face of a pallid and bald man. She immediatly contacted the police but no evidence of the man was found other than the picture on the monitor that was taken. Before then, people on the street have reported seeing a tall figure in a long black trench coat chasing kids and stray animals. This is the picture that Tom Sleman originally had on his site regarding the Lodge Lane vampire but is no longer there. One cannot rule out a fraud when it comes to the picture or whether it was just a demented person looking to gets kicks or prey. You can decide for yourself.
Werewolves
Werewolves are my favourite creature of mythology, and the science behind the transformation from human to animal is intriguing. Lycanthropy is the most common psychological disorder where someone believes they have been possesed by the spirit of a dog or wolf, and that spirit manifests itself through erradice behaviors and physical transformation (excess hair growth, claws growing on the hands, ears pointing, teeth beginning to sharpen, etc.). The wolf is not the only animal that is believed to possess a human. In the Middle East people have believed to have been turned into a werejaguar, weretiger, and any creature that can stalk and kill a human (were meaning human).
Some pychologists have surmised that the myth of the werewolf is the human need to explain away homocidal tendencies in humans and the need to link back to our animal instincts, but spiritualists atest that the spirit of the animal inhabits the human body because it's life was cut short and it wishes to live a full life. Lycanthropy is a highly documented mental disorder that can be treated with therapy and sometimes in humoring the patient by letting them believe for a while that they are true werewolves until they finally see that they do not actually morphy into a wolf.
Although science has basically proven away the existence of werewolves people still claim they have seen a large bipedal animal which in no way could be bigfoot or a bear or even a dog that stood up on its hindlegs. People have seen the face of a dog-like animal peering into their windows with red eyes looking for its next meal, growling at anything that it sees. And much like the vampire, every culture has its case and version of a werewolf that has stalked the village and killed several people and livestock; those villagers were also keenly aware of the predators of the surrounding area and nothing in the victims wounds resembled the local predators-much is the same with the up and coming legend of the el chupacobre.
Ginger Snaps presents another "science" to lycnathropy in that lycanthropy is a virus that infects that DNA and alters it, but the difference is is that once a werewolf, always a werewolf. The Ginger Snaps werewolf is the most probable since the GS lycan goes through a relatively slow transformation before the final transformation is made. Example: hair and nails grow first, then the tail, teeth, and an extra toe on the ankle. The werewolf purests don't like Ginger Snaps (or any of the sequals) because it mainly goes againt the norm of transformation by moonlight, but I personally liked it.
But sometimes in the night our mind plays tricks on us and formulates images from shadows into our darkest fears, toying with our imaginations to give us a thrill that we have lacked because of our protected existence. Perhaps it a shadow of remembrence of larger creatures that we once hunted and were hunted by, keeping us always at bay for those that may want us dead; the Western dragon is an example of that. The dragon's features resemble our old prey such as the protruding face of a large cat, the snake-like neck, the body of a lizard, and the wings and talons of a bird. Those elements may be a collective fear of our old predators.