Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come out at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins, how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?
– Bram Stoker
Dracula, Chapter 14. Van Helsing challenges Dr. John Seward’s rigid scientific thinking. He puts the case for believing in vampire bats that suck the blood of other creatures and prey on human beings like Lucy.