Was the idea of Batman inspired by vampires?

Question

When the character of Batman was first created, is there any indication that it was inspired or influenced by vampires?

In-universe, here is a description of how Batman chose his identity, from the article on Batman on the Batman Wikia:

“Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot”, Wayne remarks, “so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible...” As if responding to his desires, a bat suddenly flies through the window, inspiring Bruce to assume the persona of Batman.

A creature of the night, black, terrible; a man who could become a bat: this sounds familiar. The same description could apply to Dracula.

Other similarities between Batman and vampires:

• They both rely on illusion and fear.
• If you allow for Batman’s technology, they both have superhuman strength.

Batman stated that he was trying to play on criminals’ superstitions, and assuming a vampire-like persona could be a good way to scare a superstitious person.

One of Batman’s first enemies, in Detective Comics #31, was The Monk, a vampire, so the early authors were at least thinking about vampires near the time of Batman’s introduction.

Also, Batman has become a vampire himself on occasion. See this question and the article on vampires at the Batman Wiki.

Are these similarities coincidental, or was Batman conceived partly as a human, crime-fighting analogue to Dracula?

Perhaps the idea for the character was simply to choose a symbol which could scare his enemies. Still, lots of animals are potentially scary, and he became Batman rather than, for example, Snake-man.

Answer 1

Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, found inspiration in several sources, and it seems that he did not specifically set out to create a human, crime-fighting analogue to Dracula. However, one of his influences was Dracula.

Kane’s initial idea was a superhero with bird wings. From Batman: The Complete History by Les Daniels, page 18:

When Kane sat down at his drawing board in the Bronx, he immediately sketched in a figure similar to Superman’s... Then he ... began experimenting with variations in the costume. He tried a pair of bird wings, perhaps inspired by an alien race in one of his favorite strips, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon.

Hawkmen from Flash Gordon

Dracula

From Batman: The Complete History, page 144 (emphasis mine):

There has always been a subliminal association between vampires and Batman; this was a hero who was designed to frighten his foes, and Bob Kane admitted that one of his inspirations was Bela Lugosi’s performance in the 1931 movie Dracula.

The Bat

Also, as rosesunhill points out in his answer, another inspiration for Batman was the 1930 film The Bat Whispers. That film is about a criminal called The Bat, who turns out to be an ordinary man, but the other characters in the story suspect at times that the Bat is supernatural.

I wasn’t able to find a copy of The Bat Whispers online, but it was based on a 1920 play, The Bat, which was novelized in 1926. The novelization makes no mention of vampires or Dracula, but the characters do suggest that the Bat is supernatural. A batlike, supernatural enemy lurking in the dark is reminiscent of vampires in much the same way that Batman is, but this isn’t a direct reference to vampires. It does fit in nicely with Batman’s stated desire to terrify superstitious criminals, however.

Da Vinci’s ornithopter

As mentioned in Doc Type’s answer, another of Batman’s inspirations was an ornithopter designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Someone flying this machine would be a sort of mechanical bat-man, with no particular association with vampires.

From Batman: The Complete History, pages 18 and 20:

From his boyhood reading, he [Bob Kane] recalled the ornithopter, a flying machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci. This device was essentially a glider, with wings built like those of a bat.

Picture from Wikipedia

Other influences

Doc Type’s answer and Batman: The Complete History mention other inspirations including Zorro, but the influences above were the closest batlike or vampiric influences I could find for Batman.

Answer 2

The original concept of Batman was developed by writer/artist Bob Kane. Inspired by Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, a Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a bat-winged flying machine, and his own imagination, Kane sketched an early version of the character. Taking his idea to writer Bill Finger, they further developed the concept.
_Source

Answer 3

We're getting close to a Batman/vampire connection.

The book The Horror Film, on Google books, describes the play The Bat, as toying with the idea of the supernatural and vampires, even though the title character is revealed to be simply a criminal. Roland West turned the subsequent novel version into the 1926 film of the same name.

He then remade it as a talkie in 1930 as The Bat Whispers and Bob Kane cited that film as one of the inspirations for Batman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bat_Whispers

Does that get us close enough?

Answer 4

Maybe the original concept of Batman was only marginally influenced by Bela Lugosi's Dracula? I mean there's no way you could say, "Batman flying through the night" in 1939 and someone not say, "Oh you mean like Dracula?". If I remember rightly whoever owned the Dracula copyrights in the 20's/30's were fiercely protective of them and wouldn't allow anyone to use the material in whole or adaptations unlicensed. This even led to all copies of an unlicensed movie being supposedly destroyed (but not all thankfully). I certainly believe saying your character was heavily influenced by Dracula at the time would have pricked up ears in some quarters. You can hardly think of "man-bats" without thinking of the 1931 and derivative vampire movies since. Maybe subsequently the character became more influenced by Dracula because the core similarities were all too obvious.