A blood-sucking ghost] a soul of a dead person
superstitiously believed to come from the grave and wander about by night
sucking the blood of persons asleep, thus causing their death. This
superstition is now prevalent in parts of Eastern Europe, and was
especially current in Hungary about the year 1730.
Fig.: One who lives by preying on others; an
extortioner; a bloodsucker.
Either one of two or more
species of South American blood-sucking bats belonging to the genera
Desmodus and Diphylla. These bats are destitute of molar
teeth, but have strong, sharp cutting incisors with which they make
punctured wounds from which they suck the blood of horses, cattle, and
other animals, as well as man, chiefly during sleep. They have a
cæcal appendage to the stomach, in which the blood with which they
gorge themselves is stored.
Any one of several species
of harmless tropical American bats of the genus Vampyrus, especially
V. spectrum. These bats feed upon insects and fruit, but were
formerly erroneously supposed to suck the blood of man and animals. Called
also false vampire.
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