Modern Day Vampires: Threat or Posers?



You have your SciFi guys that like to speak Klingon and dress in costumes and do role playing. They can get so caught up in their characters that the identity beats anything they could create just being “themselves.” I understand the reasoning behind pretending to be something which is fictional to begin with. It's like taking our mundane world and making it a little more exciting.

I even understand the folks with low self-esteem who get nose jobs and boob jobs and take photos of Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston to their hair appointments wanting to become this person, studying their looks and gestures and mannerisms, as pathetic as it may seem.

So, it’s not entirely hard to understand why someone would choose to be a vampire. Whereas Mr. Klingon is probably sociable, Mr. Vampire says “screw you humans, I’m a cut above.” There is a whole culture of folks who find something sexually satisfying, dark, and empowering in playacting as a vampire. They, of course, cannot earn invincibility or the other features the fictional character has anymore than the Klingon-pretenders can fly in space.

So, how gratifying is it to be a vampire poser?

They refer to themselves often times as “otherkin” or believing that they have a soul that is nonhuman. I’m sure we can all imagine the set of circumstances in which any nerd or outcast might find this quite exciting to be “special” and “different,” as well as “immortal” in some form; better than the rest of us swine.

These vampires run with a premise that they can gain their powers by the typical drinking of blood, but they also have ones who believe they can psychically drain power from folks (you know, kind of like when ghost hunters complain about drained batteries). More often they use consensual volunteers for blood drinking, but they can also get together in a room with others emanating energy and psychically draining each other, as well as doing it in public places with unsuspecting "victims."

I will admit a fascination with posers and playacting. I’ve personally always wanted to hang with some vampires just to know how to write about the mindset of those who get so deep into a role that they truly believe they are changed. I’d love to make a career of just hanging with the strange fringe and fetish folks. Alternate lifestyles are one of the beautiful features of humans. We are sheep who follow the leader, but occasionally there one some of us who stray from the flock and think they’re horses and pigs. I admit I’ve never had my own category and actually go the other way trying not be pegged, whereas these folks like to be labeled.

In a way, they’re not really anarchists, they’re really conformists if you think about it.

We probably don’t spend our days worrying about vampire wannabes drinking our blood, but the psychic aspects of draining energy does make people uncomfortable. I’ve been asked before if it’s possible for someone to drain your energy. Here’s how I explain it. They cannot steal your energy, but it is entirely possible that you can sense their own energy and feel very bad and very overwhelmed and not know why. When people say “he had a bad aura,” that’s basically what they’re saying. They can certainly make you feel out of sorts, but it’s not because they took your energy, but more because you sensed their aura. The closest I can come to describing it is that as a psychic, although I can access a person's memories, I cannot take their memories from them; I can simply view them and remember that viewing. They still maintain the original memories. So, there's really nothing to fear about psychic vampires running around draining you of your youth. There is no such thing as a human oxidizer.

So far as the vampire culture goes, I’m all for it. If they’re not hurting anyone who doesn’t want to participate, more power to them. I’m not sure I’d want to be part of a culture that defines me so narrowly, but I understand why some people need that sense of power, as well as group to call yourself a part of. We need more odd groups out there, it’s just a shame that most of the counterculture groups feel they have to be underground. Any time you go to a zombie walk or a SciFi convention or the renaissance festival, you can’t help but admire folks who can let loose like that and just be someone else for a time. If we’re lucky, the average citizen only feels it on Halloween, so enjoy it when you can.

Comments

  1. My feeling about these people has always been, if it makes you happy who am I to judge?

    But on a side note, did you hear about that case several years back in which a vampire poser convinced his role playing group to slaughter some girl's parents and drink their blood. I guess they all began to believe they were really becoming vampires? So maybe that's where the danger comes in.

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  2. Jessica;
    Yeah, I was just watching that on E channel the other day. Strange case--definitely a creepy little cult thing. There's propensities and then there's obsessions. The problem always comes in a group when someone become designated leader and his power goes unchecked (i.e. Bush White House). hee hee
    Yeah, anything can be taken to the max. I've seen folks at SciFi conventions I've given talks at where they were really reaching the mental illness levels and couldn't seem to come out of character. Sort of reminds me of how often religion cuts into mental illness and becomes a justification. I guess even "good" things can go very bad.

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  3. Don't get me started! I'm seriously beginning to HATE these guys!
    First up, if you've got a pulse, then you ain't no vampire. Period. End of discussion. Words have meaning, and "vampire" by definition means an undead revenant. But of course these posers just change the definition of the word to fit their own particular set of delusions.
    I also find that these wannabes invariably fall into one of two groups: the ones who consider themselves "superior" to humans (yeah, right, like mosquitoes, leeches, ticks and other parasites are somehow superior) and the Emos ("oh, it's horrible to have to bear this curse! Nobody understands,poor, poor, pitiful me!")
    I don't care how much blood you drink, or how much energy you absorb, or how you dress or how sensitive you are to sunlight, you're NOT a vampire, find something else to call yourself.
    As we say in The South, "Just because you shit in the woods, that don't make you a bear!"

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  4. Burt;
    Can I keep that wonderful saying about shitting in the woods? I love that one. I love the way you peel it right down to the bare bones. Yeah, I get why they do it. We usually grow out of that in early adulthood, but some folks just say "the world hates me, I say screw you world" so they continue with this adolescent trek. Role playing does fascinate me, but people who do it nonstop are just lacking a real life. Too much of anything is excess. Yeah, you're right--we all know they're obviously not really vampires. I can dress like Princess Leia and imitate her voice, but I ain't Carrie Fisher. So, we'll just go with "posers" as your vote? Hee hee. I've had a few people actually ask me about energy vampires and I thought--it's time to write about this foolishness. Glad it entertained you so. Hey, Burt, you can untwist your shorts now.

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  5. Oka, okay, I've calmed down a bit. (completing a big ammo order will do that!)
    There are people who can drain energy from others (if the victim doesn't know how to shield themseslves). Just as one can send or transmit energy, one can also drain it. And what's unintentionally ironic is that the so-called "Energy vampires" or "Psivamps" are more akin to the original folkloric vampires. (other than the undead thing). The early vampire lore describes the vampiric attack as draining the life's energy from the victim. Only later did the "energy" become literalized into the draining of blood. "The blood is the life" and all that, and of course once the church began expanding its influence and incoroprating local folk beliefs, the blood aspect was really emphasized.

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  6. Burt;
    I always know you'll be the expert on these dang monsters you must hunt. I'm not at all sold that a person can drain another's energy--other than a really great session of sex or a spinning class. Psychically, I don't see that happening in any form. I can certainly access a helluva lot of information, but I can't for any minute suck someone's energy off and I doubt these goth-wannabes know how to do such an incredible skill if it exists. Burt--you are too fun to talk monsters with! What's you stand on werewolves? Do you believe in the dogman? I gotta say, I think there might be something there.

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  7. Insightful post, autumn. & it brings up some really good questions about the fiction that makes it to the Times lists. Twilight, Host. What was it? According to my agent, whose house sold these books, it was that long, intense gaze across the cafeteria. That sealed the deal.

    Go figure. Now off to duplicate that, if possible!

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  8. Yeah, women are suckers for vampires--no pun intended. After all, the most sensitive part on a woman's body is her neck which surprises many men.

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  9. Concerning that vampire wannabe who helped slaughter some girls parents -- didn't they make a movie about that? I swear I saw a movie about that. It had a guy off of Charmed in it, I think.

    Anyways, I could careless what these modern vampires do as long as it is legal and consensual. If they are happy, who cares.

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  10. Andrea;
    I think they did make a movie about that one. If you see the story about it on TV's E Channel, they were really just a bunch of pimply kids who didn't fit in. The Columbine types. I agree, as in all things, consensual is key.

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  11. A person can drain another person's energy, but only if that person lets them. As Gummerfan says, you can shield against it if you know how. The problem that most often lets people drain another's energy is that on some level many of us lend ourselves to being victimized. Part of being human is sometimes feeling like our lives are out of our control. However, it is just that sort of thinking that allows an "energy vampire" to be able to drain energy. Fear is very dangerous when it comes to psychic attacks. To avoid psychic attacks you need to develop a sort of mental mastery. You are in control of your own destiny. As long as you are in control then "energy vampires" can't harm you. I know this because there was someone who tried to attack me like this when I was teen. The older, wiser me realizes that I could have saved myself a lot of grief by believing in myself just a bit more. So glad the teenage years are over!

    As for the vampire cult, it seems rather attention-seeking. Vampires are cool and everything... in myths. But I wouldn't want to be one. There is something repulsive about being a leech. Role-playing in itself is harmless though and can be a lot of fun. My cousins for instance are involved in Viking reenactments. It is cool to preserve a bit of history in that way.

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  12. I have had plenty of "vampiric" friends who I could no longer be friends with because they exhausted me mentally...but when it comes to the so-called "real vampires" amoung us today, I don't THINK so. They are posers for sure, and took all those Anne Rice books back in the 80's just a little too seriously. She is the one who made being a vampire cool and really brought them to the forefront. If you think about it, there were none of these "vampire bars" and there was no "vampire underground" in NYC and other major cities back before the 80s - and if there was, it was only a few believers. After Interview with the Vampire and then all of the following books, it became a much bigger movement. Not to offend any REAL vampires reading this blog, but I think they, like a good deal of people into the occult, just want some attention.

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