This essay describes the cultural history and folklore of contagion, from supernatural agents to contemporary fakenews, arguing that stories about Covid-19 draw upon and reflect cultural representations – notably the Gothic. This means that in addition to scientific and political measures we also need to deal with the imaginative culture generated by the disease that has now permeated every aspect of life in the nightmare figure of the vampire. The essay accordingly draws on a range of sources, from fifteenth-century theories of disease to early models of circulation to contemporary news reports tracking the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and concludes that ‘thinking with vampires’ can sensitise us to the new realities of pandemic living.