Vampires

“	I have to admit... at first, it felt strange, the metallic taste. But then, it was like electricity coursing through my body-- a million stars exploding in my mind all at once. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. It was amazing. And all I can think now is... I want to do it again.	”
	— Camille O'Connell on becoming a Vampire in A Ghost Along the Mississippi

Vampires are magically reanimated human corpses which are inhabited by the spirits of the deceased person and who closely resemble the living human they were before their transformation. Vampires feed and survive on the blood of the living, typically on that of humans, and they can also transform other humans into more of their kind by sharing their own blood with them. Vampires are one of the many known supernatural species in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals universe that were created by Witches.

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Creation

"She called upon the sun for life and the ancient white oak tree, one of Nature's eternal objects, for immortality. That night, my father offered us wine laced with blood. Then, he drove his sword through our hearts."

—Rebekah Mikaelson to Elena Gilbert about the creation of the first vampires.

Caroline Forbes during the transition.

A human who has consumed vampire blood in some way (whether by drinking it, having it poured into their open wound, or by being injected with it) and has subsequently died with the blood in their system will be magically revived as an undead vampire, just like the vampire who sired them. The exact nature of the human's death is irrelevant to this process; the only condition that must be met is that the body has to be more-or-less intact and able to function once they reawaken in transition, though the upper limits of physical damage upon a human body by which vampirism can recover has yet to be defined.

Vampire In Transition

Main article: Transitioning

In order to complete the transition into a vampire, the person must then consume a significant amount of human blood, at least a sip's worth, within the next twenty-four hours, or else they will die. Vampires can only feed on human blood in order to complete their transformation-- animal blood or vampire blood is not sufficient to finish the transformation from human to vampire. However, in this case, "human blood" can include the blood of a human witch, as was proven by Alaric Saltzman and Camille O'Connell, who both completed their transformations by drinking the blood of witches Bonnie Bennett and Vincent Griffith, respectively. Additionally, the blood need not be from a live human; Caroline Forbes and Esther Mikaelson (while possessing Lenore) both completed their transitions by feeding on donor bags of human blood and Vicki Donovan completed her transition by drinking from the newly-deceased Logan Fell, who would then awaken a short time later to find himself in transition as well.
A vampire in transition is neither truly living nor truly dead until they make their choice to either complete their transition or to abstain from feeding and ultimately die. This puts the semi-vampire in a strange liminal space between the two states that can affect them in different ways. For example, a vampire in transition is immune to the effects of a dark object known as The Serratura, which is said to create an impenetrable barrier through which nothing living or dead can pass; this was evidenced by the fact that Camille, while in transition, was able to activate the Serratura inside of a shipping container to trap Tristan de Martel inside without being trapped herself. In a similar vein, until a person in transition drinks human blood to complete their transformation, they will be not be susceptible to the standard weaknesses of a vampire (i.e. they can still walk in sunlight and can enter homes without an invitation).