Bite Me! Why We Love Vampires

Nice work Joan,

I did actually go to Twilight with the wife when it hit the cheap theaters, not bad. The most entertaining part for me was the reaction of the teenage girls who had obviously watched it a few times already. I was in over 20 different states last year alone researching and investigating reports of paranormal phenomena. Two times last year I investigated reports of vampires (I take an objective but open minded approach to any reported mystery). Some of your visitors might enjoy reading all about my crazy real life supernatural adventures in my free Legend Trippers Journal (http://www.w-files.com/legendtrippersjournal.html).

For those of you who are a bit more scientifically minded, I just released some level headed scientific method op eds on www.GetGhostGear.com with links right on the home page.

Keep up the good work!
Noah Voss

I have been fascinated with vampires since Dark Shadows.... and I thought Gary Oldman played an outstanding version of the vampires I envisioned. Rob Pattinson's Edward has revived the genre. If Summit doesn't totally sanitize/kidify the books and allows this great story to come to life, I think these stories will stand for years to come. Though I like True Blood's Bill and Eric anc Co, but I think the Twilight Saga vampires are just a cut above the rest, sexy, with enough human qualities to believe they possibly could live next door - smart, charming and with integrity. Hope springs eternal that someone like that exists for me...

Joan,
Interesting article concerning the fascination with vampires. But you left out several good references that have fueled the obsession over the last 30-40 years. You failed to mention Stephen King's story 'Salem's Lot and the movie The Lost Boys, but the most glaring missing link is the the classic Dark Shadows with Barnabas Collins as vampire gone amuck.

Too bad you didn't mention Moonlight. True Blood doesn't hold a candle to it.

For me it was Moonlight. True Blood doesn't hold a candle to it. Too bad you didn't mention Moonlight!

I find it very interesting how spitualism and on the life after death theory of reincarnation, vampirism have stricking similarities. Vampires are killed and reborn in the same body though, however they change their identies and personality changes, just as if someone reincarnated from 1 life to the next, plus the idea of the human soul living forever in 1 way or another, like vampires living forever in the same body. Plus some people not only relate to the vampire characters conditions, but also unconsiously relate to the characters history, spiritually if they think they had similar past life tragities as the characters they see and lived in similar past life settings. I was a huge Buffy and Angel fan for example, because of my similar past life struggles I had that were like Angel's. Ironically I even look like David Boreanez in real life. Unfortunently I know about forbidden love from my past life in the French Revolution. I was involved in a horrible tragity where this beautiful girl I was with at the time was accidently killed in the revolution when I helped try to kill her parents (who were incidentally from the upper class) because they were trying to split us up. They made her life miserable too, by exiling her from the family, we tried to marry in secracy, then we had a kid togather and she died right after childbirth. The kid was given up for adaption. I was so tormented by her loss and the guilt of her accidental death, I almost commited sucide. Instead I went insane killed the rest of her family then killed 100s of other people during the revolution as part of an angery tormented rage, commited treason along the way. Terrorized the European countryside along the way like Angel did in the 18th century, except at gunpoint and gillutine instead of biting them. Then 200 years later and 1000s of miles away in the USA I met the reincarnation of this girl in high school, she fell madly in love with me all over again, it was love at 1st sight for her. Like in the other lifetime she originally initiated the attraction by comming on to me 1st. Unforunently though in our present lives, we never got togather. She was crushed, then once I realized how important she could have been in my life, I was miserable as well for not getting togather with her again when I had the chance, for the last 20 years I was left wondering, " what could have been, or should have been" if I had gotten back togather with her again. I let my sexual repressed and sexuall restricted feelings hold me back from going out with her, then hated myself for it afterwards, which developed into a chronic state of depression and present-life torment later.

I think that girls and guys for that matter secretly and subconsiously both love the idea of the opposite sex manipulating their feelings into becoming attracted to them in a situation where they were not originally attracted and then changing them as people, changing their lives for the better, sometimes changing their personality, and improving them somehow as people. Although nobody ever admits this form of sexual lust, myself included.

I see another parallel with real life...females almost always want a select small percentage of guys. Vampires always have many "wives", and in real life, a small percentage of single guys have the majority of single females, who fantasize that they are their one and only, and that he'll eventually realize it. With the guys, it's "who am I in the mood to have sex with today". Ahhh, life in america. I think I'll be leaving soon.

I read Twilight--the books are literary trash. Laurell K. Hamilton and Anne Rice offer some substance to their characters; those authors I love. I like the strength, authority and still the gentleness that the vampires in my favorite books offer. The idea that almost no vampire comes poor is also a turn-on. I believe it is the idea of such beauty and grace in such a deadly animal, yet still have the capacity to love and be loved that appeals to women and girls.
Flawless beauty, deadly grace, wealth, intelligence, and a well of emotions. Vampires are the perfect wet dream, a way to escape the reality for a moment. If a woman transfers those lusts to the real world, requiring, perhaps, her significant other to wear fangs and paint their face before they get intimate, then that woman has issues and should see a psychologist. Vampires are dreams, fictional. Real men have things that vampires do not--substance.

I agree with IHaveALife. My friend liked Twilight @ first and now she hates everything about it. All of the time I wish she'd keep her oppinons about it to herself and leave me alone about what I do and do not read. So if I find Edward attractive and sexy so what?!? He's a vampire, though not exactly what I'm looking for, sure he puts Bella through a lot and she does get way to attached, but he treats her with respect, he protects her, he has a little jealousy, he opens her door, they cuddle on the couch. Come on who doesn't look for that in a guy?

So first the deal was that to be attractive you had to be someone that was tough to be...all strong, rich, intelligent and powerful. Any lack of those led to insecurity. Then there was the big penis size thing, something which was even tougher to be considering it wasn't controllable and all chance; low chance. Now in order to be acceptable to a woman you have to do weird *** and act like a fictional character. Oh no wait, you have to BE that character. Can anyone else see the problem here?

Hey, to those of you who are seeing the Apocalypse in this stuff,..go take an aspirin and lie down, will you? You're probably the same people who got all worked up about Harry Potter and how reading those books was going to turn our poor little nnocent kiddies into devil-worshippers. You folks are always seeing Satanists behind every tree. Trends and fads come and go, the media turns everything into a circus for a while, then it dies down and goes away...until the next big thing. As for people who like to sleep in coffins and call themselves "vampires," look...if it wasn't this, it would be something else to obsess about. Human nature is funny that way. This is fiction for God's sake. Watch it or don't watch it; read it or not. Just leave the rest of us alone to make out own choices.

I don't think it's such a big stretch from penetration by a fang to the other kind! I suspect some women find this whole thing sexy because the vampires in these stories are always fantastic lovers and it's hard to find somebody like that in the real world. It's also a way around the double standard: If a woman loves sex and really gets into it, she must be a slut...unless something else took over and she lost control through no fault of her own.

This shouldn't be a surprise...
1. The Vampire "Lovers" are Usually Smoking Hot.
2. If you become a Vampire you get to stay young forever and become beautiful... and since women are valued for youth and beauty it makes perfect sense.
3. The Vampire "lovers" are usually hopelessly and madly in love with their female partners... who wouldn't want a hot, sexy and intelligent guy totally in love with you?
4. The Vampires want you so bad they want to literally eat you... but in that sexy wild animal loving way...

I read Johnny Depp is going to be playing Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, if that doesnt stir a sex pot I dont know what will.......I liked the 1990s version with Ben Cross before it was cancelled and have seen it on the Chiller channel a couple of times.

Honestly, I think it's all because Vampires make for an interesting book, movie, and show. They can take us away from the normal for a little while. This generation of people is not into what is NORMAL. We all want something that is different from our everyday lives. We all need to escape feeling like ***, or even feeling great, and we can forget a lot of things with a good book or movie (not just VAMPIRE books & movies, either) Not only are vampires getting more and more sexy, but now they are bringing out more of the paranormal, more of the supernaturals, like in Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels. You not only have Vampires, but you have Shapeshifters, like Sam. And then later on in the books you get to meet werewolves like Dawson, Weretigers like Quinn, and werepanthers like Calvin Norris. Then the faes like Claude and Claudine. You have death and mysteries. and Sookie is always finding herself involved in these kinds of things. In Twilight, Edward gets portrayed IMMEDIATELY as a kind of sexy god. He seems perfect to Bella and she cannot resist him. Therefore, since an avid reader puts her/himself in the shoes of the characters, WE are automatically atracted to Edward. Which is not a bad thing.