Why a Fascination of Vampires

From times of old, vampires have walked among us. Their legend has fascinated and horrified countless generations, crossing oceans, and becoming fully formed in modern society. Some are so fascinated with vampires as to assume their attributes. But why?

The fascination with death itself has been intriguing. Tales of ghosts and ghouls, living wraiths bent on revenge, cursed pirate ships wandering the seas, and zombies rising from their graves had their roots in legends and grew, their myth becoming something our horror writers have run away with, giving them new life, so to speak.

Yet in all that mad horror and fear, one creature stands out among them, provoking not only fear, but lust and desire. The vampire.

The blood is the life, or so it is said in the vampire culture. Many cultures have included sacrifice, blood letting, and drinking of blood in their worship, so it is really no surprise that our fascination would continue. Even in biblical times blood was important for sealing covenants and sacrifice. So impotent was the blood that God forbade it to be drunk.

Combine this with the other qualities of vampires, the immortality and vitality, their great strength and stamina, in some tales their ability to read minds or fly... It is no wonder that we are so drawn and taken to them.

Vampires are a romantic notion, their mystery and suffering something that appeals to us. Those of us who would heal them, and those of us who would slay them. Both are drawn to their story, their plight. The wayward vampire has been a staple of modern fiction for many decades, shifting its form from one thing to another. Some have sipped on youth, others souls, but the vast majority have the same MO every time. Blood, invulnerability, stakes, and the cross.

As Brian Lumley says in Necroscope IV: It's the romance.

"The shiver of our spines when we consider our past, when we wonder who we were and where we came from. The mystery of the stars , worlds beyond our ken, places the imagination knows but can't name or conjecture except from old books or scraps of moldering maps."

"It's the romance of tracking down legends, and it infects people like a fever. Scientists go to the Himalayas to seek the Yeti, or hunt for Bigfoot in the North American woods. There's a lake in Scotland- do you know where I mean?- Where every year they sweep the deep water with echo sounders as they seek evidence of a survivor out of time.

"It's the fascination in a fossil, the proof that the world was here and that creatures lived in it before we did. It's this love man has for tracking things down, for leaving no stone unturned, for chipping away at coincidence until it's seen that nothing is accidental and everything has not only a cause but a result. It's... a synchronicity of the soul. It's the mystique of stumbling across the unknown and making it known, of being the first to make a connection.

"Scientists study the fossil remains of a fish believed to be extinct for sixty-million years, and pretty soon discover that the same species is still being fished today in the deep waters off Madagascar. When people get interested in the fictional Dracula they were astonished to discover there'd been a real life Vlad the Impaler... and they wanted to know more about him. Why, he might well have been forgotten, except and author- whether intentionally or otherwise- gave him life. And now we know more about him then ever."

What if there were vampires? What if this creature that whispers at the corners of our imagination was not only real, but something truly to be afraid of? For centuries people have been, wreathing their doorways in garlic and painting hexes on their windowsills. People have dug up graves and stirred up the bones of the dead to keep them from rising, all because of this creature that marks the boundary of the unknown.

And the lust? I've thought about this for a very long time. The lust that they portray on the movie screen, the woman gladly greeting the vampires lips with her own, then bending her head to the side so he can bite the tender flesh of her neck. What a marvelous image that seems, enticing us, and repelling us at the same time. Who among us can say for a moment that we did not find that fascination in the mystery of the vampires arms?

It is so many things. I think for many it is the ability to be so fully known by another, to be enraptured inside and out by one who could know every ounce of our being, know all we have ever done, and all we have ever thought, and still desire us more then anything. That was the mystery of Braum Stokers Dracula, a man who could listen to her deepest thoughts and travel the length of not only the world, but time itself to win her back. A woman who would stand by him, even against God himself. This is the true romance of the legend, the image that entices us beyond understanding.

In all of history few things have captured our imaginations quite like the vampire, and twisted themselves in so many different threads. Vampires stories will continue to rise from among authors, and their fans will continue to drink it all in.