According to Matt Kaplan, what is the most likely origin of the traditional European concept of the vampire?
a. The effects of a tuberculosis epidemic were combined with those of a rabies epidemic that struck at the same time.
b. Premature burials of people with weak vital signs were combined with the widespread belief that garlic could ward off evil.
c. Stories of the use of voodoo rituals and narcotics in Haiti to create "zombies" were combined with a tradition of the dead hungering for blood that goes back to Homer's Odyssey.
d. Elements from John Polidori's tale The Vampyre were combined with accounts of the real - life Vlad Tepes (also known as Viad the Impaler), ruler of Wallachia in the mid-1400s .