There are a few Ancient Roman vampires in fiction, though they rarely venture to Pompeii unless it’s to witness the eruption for their epic back story. There may be some literary connection between the “unliving” plaster casts of the victims and the idea of immortality, though these works are pretty diverse. Surprisingly I could find no examples of werewolves in Pompeii, even though a she-wolf raises the legendary founder of Rome, and the Latin word for brothel was lupanar (wolf den).

  • Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Preskett Prest (1847) ends with the titular character throwing himself into Vesuvius. It also includes the earliest known literary vampire with pointed fangs.
  • In the TV show Forever Knight (1992), Lucien LaCroix is a Roman general who is turned into a vampire by his daughter on the night of Vesuvius’ eruption.
  • The Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice includes flashbacks to Pompeii in The Queen of the Damned (1988) and Blackwood Farm (2002).
  • Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004) is an action RPG video game where you play as a fledgling vampire. Although not based in Pompeii, there is a nightclub called Vesuvius which is populated with vampire strippers.
  • Heart of Vesuvius (2010) is the second book in Sky Purington’s paranormal romance Forsaken Brethren series, in which the two protagonists are pulled back in time to Pompeii.
  • Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors (2011) is a novel by A.J. Llewellyn and D.J. Manly that was released in installments. Chapter 6 (and possibly the end of chapter 5) includes Pompeii.
  • Apollonius (2013) is the fifth book in Rod Redux’s Oldest Living Vampire Saga. Apollonius is a slave who is brought into a vampire’s villa in Pompeii.
  • 79 A.D. (2015) is the third book in David McAfee’s Bachiyr series, each taking place in a different titular year.
  • The Volcano and the Vampire: The Case For a Volcanic Gothic by Laura Eastlake (2025) is an interesting essay on the link between vampires and volanoes, and discusses Varney the Vampire amongst other things.