"Night Neighbors" - FOX News Channel - See Video Below Articles Section Hannity's America w/Michelle Belanger & Anshar Seraphim- December 7, 2008 Members Of America's Vampire Subculture Could Be Living Right Under Your Nose http://www.foxnews.com/hannitysamerica
Hannity's America (Beyond Belief) w/Michelle Belanger & Anshar Seraphim Fox News Channel - Sunday, December 7, 2008
Night Neighbors: Could you be living next to a vampire? Blood-Sucking Neighbors:Members of America's vampire subculture could be living right under your nose.
Maury Povich Show "Vampires, Ghosts, & Haunted Houses" w/Don Henrie Friday, December 5, 2008
Ghost, Haunted Houses, Vampires... Caught on Tape! Video and
sound recordings of allegedly paranormal activity. Also: a man who
claims he's a living vampire.
Tyra Banks Show "Vampires" w/Don Henrie, Sarah Lester, & Vampyra Friday, October 31, 2008
Think vampires aren’t real? Wait until you meet these guests! With the
popularity of HBO’s “True Blood” and the “Twilight” series, teen books
that focus on vampires, Tyra delves into the mysterious world of
vampires as she meets some of these nocturnal beings. We’ll learn how
and why these guests embrace the vampire lifestyle!
This is the final 2008 update for the Vampirism & Energy Work Research Study.We have recently completed all data entry for
data sets one through four and will be completing data sets five and six by July 2009.Over 20 new charts (from the last two data sets) have been posted via
the http://www.suscitatio.com web
site. This project is a monumental
undertaking and we appreciate your assistance over the last three years.We hope to complete all the pertinent data
entry necessary to the composition of three separate bodies of work on
vampirism and the community by the middle of 2010.We will be working on these publications
throughout 2009/10 and will update the web site with any new tabulated
statistics along with the important upcoming cross-correlative findings as they
are completed.Many of you have inquired
if it would still be possible to complete the VEWRS (Part 1) and AVEWRS (Part
2) surveys even though the official deadline has passed.
Data Set 1: 001, 003, 004, 006, 030, 037, 137, 155/156, 172,
236, 246, 262, 285 Data Set 2: 383/384, 392, 398, 413, 479, 549, 557, 669, 794, 827, 831, 844,
871, 946 Data Set 3: 025, 027, 033, 077, 120, 124, 144, 145, 151, 198, 269, 325, 329 Data Set 4: 390/391, 397, 400/401, 411/412, 529/530, 624/625, 681/682, 692,
796/797, 819 Data Set 5: 031, 034, 039/040, 047, 067, 122, 142, 227, 276, 281, 308, 311,
313, 355, 358 Data Set 6: 439/440, 473, 521, 657, 671, 759, 829, 841, 843, 851, 854/855, 856,
890, 908
Background:
The Vampirism & Energy Work Research Study is a detailed
sociological and phenomenological study of the real vampire community conducted
by Suscitatio Enterprises, LLC (http://www.suscitatio.com). The specific
focus of this study concerns individuals who personally identify as psychic
and/or sanguinarian vampires. Two surveys were released in 2006 that were
answered by nearly 950 individuals from all paths within the vampire community
and throughout the World. The first was the Vampire & Energy Work
Research Survey (VEWRS) with 379 Questions in March 2006; and the second was
the Advanced Vampirism & Energy Work Research Survey (AVEWRS) with 688
Questions in August 2006. From 2006 to 2008 a combined response total
(VEWRS & AVEWRS) reached over 1,450 surveys or over 670,000 individually
answered questions; making it the largest and most in-depth research study ever
conducted on the real vampire community or subculture. Not only are we
now able to provide the organization and quantification to questions vampires
have been asking themselves for years, but we have increased the standard of
research and subsequent analysis on the community through the creation of such
a vast body of data. SURVEYS: (Click Links
To Download)
MonsterQuest - History Channel - "Vampires in America" Wednesday, August 6, 2008 @ 9:00 PM EDT
"A vampire scare in New England in the 1700s lasted more than a century
and turned families and communities upside down. The dead bodies of
those suspected of vampirism were exhumed and ancient curse-breaking
rituals were performed on them. Watch as the latest technology is used
to analyze historic evidence of the New England vampires and discover
if there was any basis for the panic. Medical science is also used to
examine those who believe themselves to be modern day vampires. Is
there a common element between the suspected vampires of America's past
and present?"
Relevant Information Recap:
Minute 28-29: Rod Ferrell - KY "Vampire" Killer + Diagnosis w/Aspergers Syndrome Minute 30: Matthew Hardman - UK "Vampire" Killer (Konstantinos & Katherine Ramsland sprinkled in here and there throughout) Minute 31: Joy Poulos (Dominae Drakonis) - Agrees to hematological testing in NYC Minute 43: Porphyria Discussion w/Doctor (Unrelated to Joy, etc.) Minute 43:
White & Red Blood Cell Counts / Platelets / Other Results =
Completely Normal. Hematologist stated there is no evidence to support
anything abnormal about Joy based on her blood tests. Minute 44: Psychic Vampires / Michelle Belanger w/Raxx (HK Member) - Basic Background On Michelle & Psychic Vampirism Minute 45-46: Dom Villella, a paranormal investigator, attempts to record an energy shift between Michelle & Raxx Minute 52-54: Actual Testing Trials a.) FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) Camera - Detects Temperature Variation / Changes Result:
When pushing energy into Raxx; Michelle's hands went from orange to
yellow (hotter). Unusual, but not a "concrete" finding. b.) Multimeter / Voltage Meter - Detects Changes In Electrical Current Result: Baseline established for both; when holding hands = 80; 30-90 is average for two individuals c.) Electromagnetic Field Detector (Trifield Meter) - Detects Changes In Electromagnetic Fields Result:
Baseline = "0"; Michelle caused spike to "2". Don noted that "1" was
the highest level he had previously seen. Stated that there was a
definite manipulation in the electromagnetic field when tested on
Michelle. Videos Unavailable At This Time
Secret Lives of Women - WEtv - "The Occult" Tuesday, September 16, 2008 @ 10 PM EDT
In
this episode of Secret Lives of Women, we will explore the enigmatic
world of the Occult. Known as one of the oldest known religions, the
Occult involves spiritual practices or activities that tap into forces
that have not been explained by science or seen in traditional
religions.
We will follow four different women who moonlight in
these “secret societies” while holding down jobs and carrying for
families. From the outside, these mystical ladies are teachers, nurses,
accountants, or stay at home moms but there’s much more to these women
than meets the eye.
We will profile a vampira – a real life
woman who actually claims to be as close to a true vampire as a human
female can get - including following her as she partakes in typical
occult rituals as well as bloodletting exercises where she actually
drinks blood.
Next we will uncover the secret life of a white
witch known as a Wiccan. We explore the elements of sorcery, good and
bad spells and if any of this actually works. In addition to looking at
vampires and witches, we also meet people who pledge their faith to the
devil, called Satanist.
TWILIGHT - A Formal Gathering Of The Vampire Community
TWILIGHT I - Los Angeles, CA - October 30, 2007 TWILIGHT II - Atlanta, GA - March 7-9, 2008 TWILIGHT III - Seattle, WA - September 26-28, 2008 TWILIGHT IV - T.B.A.
Zilchy has released a series of Q&A videos via YouTube discussing vampirism and answering your questions. You may view the rest of his videos or submit questions for him to answer in future episodes at:
The Vampiric Library is located in Second Life - SL (http://www.secondlife.com) in Lunitarium (219, 64, 21) and is a major educational initiative created by LadyCG. The Vampiric Library is a virtual repository of information related to real vampirism along with entertainment-style features built into a virtual reality SL environment. To connect (once signed into Second Life) copy & paste http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lunitarium/219/64/21 into SL's open chat, bring up your chat history and double-click the highlighted link. You will be teleported there.
MagickTV - "Living The Wiccan Life" w/Michelle Belanger December 14, 2007 - Parts 1 & 2
An interview with Michelle Belanger, author of the Psychic Vampire Codex and other works on modern vampirism.
“Gabriel” is a 9-to-6 computer tech at a Sacramento utilities company
who off-work wears typical guy clothes like a Raiders cap and jeans.
But unlike the average Joe, he's lanced the skin of his obliging
girlfriend, a wireless phone service employee, and sucked her blood.
Gabriel is a self-professed modern-day vampire. He and his kind say
there are thousands worldwide, though most lie very low. When they're
not going about everyday lives – no joke, one insider says nurses are
big in the vampire community – they socialize with each other and chat
over the Internet about such worries as how to raise little vamps
(“Help! My Teenager Wants to Eat the Dog!” a parental post on one Web
site read).
Forget neck-biter Dracula, though. Mostly, these are nonstalking
vampires who may feel the compelling need to “feed” upon other people's
energy more than blood, which they see not as a meal but as a sacred
“courier of energy,” according to Gabriel. A vampire code of ethics
encourages them to get consent from any “donor,” be it of hemoglobin or
good vibes.
Don't look for any of these vampires-next-door in the new gory
horror pic, “30 Days of Night.” The super-nasty, razor-toothed,
human-looking vampires who terrorize the sheriff (Josh Hartnett) and
townsfolk of Barrow, Alaska, have one purpose only: to eat everyone
before the sun rises after a month of darkness. Although fashionably
clad, they descend like wolves upon grandmas and girls alike, snapping
necks as they ferociously feast. With faces smeared with prey's blood,
they emit ear-piercing, animalistic screeches because only their
leader, Marlow (Danny Huston), seems able to speak (in gibberish, which
is translated in subtitles).
“It's always with the vampires in a negative light,” sighs 27-year-old Gabriel.
By the way, he likes garlic and figures he can't tolerate the
sun because he's of Irish descent and light-skinned. He does, however,
have long fingernails, which he says he's used as a “feeding technique”
to pull down the skin of his “eclectic Wiccan” girlfriend instead of a
knife or dagger to draw blood.
Skeptical Slade
The British director of “30 Days” snickers when told about the
existence of self-proclaimed vamps. “If it's a psychosis, then that's
very interesting,” says David Slade, basically dismissing them as head
cases. “Not my cup of tea, really.”
If only Slade would've known the real deals were lurking about. Before
4,000 liters of fake blood drenched the “30 Days” set in New Zealand,
the director sent 20 actors to “vampire boot camp,” where he taught
them to menacingly walk, scream and act like a frenzied pack. The movie
is based on the graphic novel that features monsters quite different
than the romanticized hypnotic vampires of other books and films.
“These are not your Anne Rice vampires. Everything revolves around eating and killing,” Slade says.
The non-Hollywood vamps claim they eat more burgers than bodily fluids.
“Merticus,” a 29-year-old Georgia antiques dealer and founding
member of the Atlanta Vampire Alliance, helped conduct a recent online
study of 900-plus self-described vampires from 24 countries. Those who
were blood-drinkers reported taking only an ounce or less at a time,
usually no more than once a week. Feeding was seen as a
“quality-of-life necessity.”
“If they don't consume blood on a semi-regular basis, they feel
lethargic or exhibit medical symptoms” such as asthma, anemia or
unexplained pain, Merticus relates.
He's a “psychic vampire” who feeds on the “vital energy” or “life
force” of humans. If he's away from crowds for too long, he says he
becomes weak, his muscles ache and his head throbs.
Blood types
Buffy, beware. There are basically four modern-day vampire
types – the energy-devouring psychic or psi vamps, the sanguinarians
who exclusively drink blood, and the hybrids. There are also Goth
“lifestylers,” who aren't true vamps but adopt the dark archetype for
art, fashion, music and the sense of empowerment, says Michelle
Belanger, a psychic vampire and the author of numerous occult tomes,
including “The Vampire Ritual Book.”
“There's actually a job description in the vampire subculture.
It's called 'fangsmith,'” says the 34-year-old Belanger, who lives in
suburban Ohio.
Mainly, it's the lifestylers who have dentists craft
high-quality acrylic fangs to attach to their teeth, although Belanger
has a pair she wears for effect while singing with her metal band.
When it comes to blood, Belanger says, there are strict
protocols to ensure that “donors” – who may be significant others – are
disease-free and that the methods of taking blood are sterile.
“Most of the sanguine vampires that I know are either nurses or
phlebotomists, and they pursued that particular career choice so they
would be more educated. Not so they could grab a snack at work, as
people have suggested,” Belanger says.
Vampires may use diabetic lancets, needles or razor blades to
make inch-long cuts in the donor's fleshy areas, such as the upper
shoulder, above the breasts or inner thighs. “Sometimes there is a
sexual element in these exchanges,” Belanger adds.
By fulfilling their own craving, psychic vamps can help balance
people who have too much energy, according to Belanger. She cites her
knack for giving back rubs that reduce stress. Sucking energy from
someone without consent, however, is a no-no. “It's actually a type of
psychic rape,” says Belanger, noting a victim can feel ill and woozy
even from across a room.
The victims in “30 Days” don't have time to feel woozy. Within
a sec, they're pretty much entrails. Slade shot his film over two
months of nights, which he says “was really beneficial to the people
who played vampires” since it helped them get into character. Before
the camera rolled, the bloodsucker actors were airbrushed with a pasty
luminescent skin tone and outfitted with black contact lenses, “because
the idea is they're in the dark so much their irises take over,” Slade
says.
Belanger and many fellow vamps – who she claims include
doctors, lawyers and PTA moms – are nocturnal, but “nobody bursts into
flames” in the sun. Anyway, she adds, she doesn't take Hollywood
seriously when it comes to portraying her ilk on-screen.
Still, she just might go see “30 Days.”
“I'm curious,” says Belanger, whose publicity photos include one
of her in black, gnashing her teeth over a limp young woman. “I like
good horror flicks.”
Vampires. The word itself conjures up different meanings for different people. For some it's the fictional characters that grace the novels of Anne Rice and for others it's the parasitic, blood thirsty creation of Hollywood. They are perceived as entertaining at best and frightening at worst. But what are they really? Join us today as we interview Zero and Merticus. They are both with Suscitatio Enterprises, LLC and the Atlanta Vampire Alliance. Zero and Merticus will help us understand the defining characteristics of the modern day vampire and the role of their organization within the vampire community itself.
There are many misconceptions with regards to vampires and vampirism. How would you define a modern-day vampire?
Most of those misconceptions derive from the fact that the modern-day Vampire Community is using the word "vampire" in a metaphorical sense, and from the tendency of outsiders to ignore the context of this use. When a member of this community describes themselves as a "vampire," they are not trying to tell you that they think they're a fictional character with supernatural powers, that they have trouble distinguishing between a role-playing game and reality, or that they hope you're gullible enough to believe that they're hundreds of years old and live in a castle. They're not even claiming kinship with the folkloric monster that frightened the people of Central Europe, and has them performing vampire-banishing rituals to this day.
Many casual treatments of the Vampire Community by the press and pop media gleefully ignore the metaphoric use of the word "vampire" and leap to cinematic conclusions about those who identify themselves as vampires. Of course, they never really firmly establish what a "vampire" is, much less the details of the vampire delusion. This is because members of the Vampire Community don't really "think they are vampires." The label has been taken as a statement of identification, not with myth or fiction, but with one another, and the experiences that real vampires seem to share. This use of yellow journalism contributes not only to the misconception that modern vampires identify with fictional vampires, but also to the misconception that members of this community are an extreme manifestation of another subculture - role-playing gamers, vampire fiction enthusiasts, Goths, or even body modification or blood fetishists. These diverse subcultures have all been erroneously referenced as recruiting grounds for the modern vampire subculture.
This goes as well for the misconception that modern-day vampires constitute a religious movement. While understanding the modern vampire phenomenon often requires a discussion about "belief," the belief in question is in psychic phenomena. Vampires often perceive their experiences in psychic and energetic terms, which can't currently be scientifically measured. So while there is often a belief element involved in discussing the vampire community, it's really just the fact that many in the community are willing to accept paranormal and ESP events as a possible framework to understand their experiences. If vampires are going to be classified as a new religious movement based on their acceptance of the paranormal as a possibility, the entire paranormal research community would also be members of that same religion.
Other misconceptions about members of the Vampire Community come from an entirely different direction - while pop media tends to treat self-described vampires as ordinary people with strange, and necessarily false, self-perceptions, the occult literature believes, but doesn't approve. Most of what has been written about vampirism in occult, Neopagan, and New Age literature has been negative, based on the understanding of vampirism as a real psychic event, but characterizing the vampire as predatory and destructive; the vampiric person of occult literature takes energy unethically and selfishly, and leaves behind him a trail of ruined lives and relationships. This portrayal has led to a widespread prejudice against the vampire community among other occult and Neopagan subcultures. It's important to understand that much of the source material for this understanding of vamprism comes from the 1920-30's books of Dion Fortune, written long before vampires were a self-aware community. Whether Fortune encountered a few unscrupulous individuals, or she dealt with vampires who weren't even aware of their vampirism, her description doesn't hold much water in the modern Vampire Community, where vampires trade tips on responsible behaviour and discuss ethics like it's a national pastime. One of the things we hope to accomplish by distributing data from the Vampirism & Energy Work Research Study is to put some of that old prejudice to rest by allowing vampires speak for themselves about their own personal ethics, beliefs and practices. Contrary to this common misconception, vampires are highly concerned with the effect their actions have on the people around them. The community has collectively put a lot of effort into the discussion of how to be a balanced and positive presence rather than parasitic.
Real vampires are neither delusional nor are they predatory, psychically or otherwise. They don't style themselves after fictional characters, and 60% of our survey respondents said they didn't even consider themselves Goth. And vampires have sent back surveys to us identifying themselves as Christian, Buddhist, Left-Hand-Path, Wiccan, and Daoist, among many, many others. It seems that vampires have religions, they don't comprise a religion in and of themselves.
So if vampires aren't any of these things, how can we define a vampire? The fact is, we tend not to. Vampires have an emerging identity that's built from the experience of being as they are - vampires use introspection, self-awareness and the sharing of their experiences with others to create a collectively-discovered picture of what it means to be a vampire. This is entirely a process of discovery, so rather than there being some central vampiric ideal that we're aspiring to, we think of what a vampire is by thinking of what we know to be true of ourselves, and of the similarities in experience that others like us share. Furthermore, that discovery process is ongoing - we still don't know exactly what makes a person a vampire, or how vampires get to be the way they are. The only common ground that vampires generally agree upon is that vampires share a need to feed on either blood or psychic energy in order to sustain their well-being. The need to feed, and the associated blood hunger or energy deficit are the only things that the Vampire Community can agree on that we know set us apart from other people. There are other experiences that may go along with being a vampire, which will get discussed below, but they aren't well-understood or universal enough to provide us with a definition of vampirism. Taken collectively, however, these experiences are what make our lives similar to one another's and different from the average, ordinary life, and they are what form our understanding of ourselves as vampires.
How widespread is this phenomenon?
There is no way to tell how many vampires there are in the world, partly because individuals are solely responsible for their own self-identification. The standard wisdom from the community is that only you can decide whether or not you are a vampire, after serious self-aware introspection. The Vampire Community online and in the real world has definitely been growing in membership, but that's due to many factors. First, not everyone who participates in the Vampire Community, whether online or offline, is actually a vampire. Some just like the community atmosphere, and the Vampire Community rarely turns away anyone who wants to engage in healthy socialization. Second, the increase in widespread communication means that more interested individuals can find the community today, whereas we can only assume that in the past, real vampires may have gone their entire lives without discovering that there were others like themselves. Today, after receiving completed VEWRS/AVEWRS surveys from dozens of countries, and having received requests to translate the text of the survey into multiple languages, we know for certain that there are self-identifying vampires all over the world, that this is not just an American, or an English-speaking, or even a Western-Hemisphere phenomenon. We have heard from vampires in Asia, Europe, South America, and North America. However, we have nothing like a vampire head-count, and no foolproof vampire test to tell whether everyone claiming to be a vampire actually is one. We can say the Vampire Community has been growing in participation and visibility, but there's no way to tell what percentage of the population might be vampiric.
What are the defining characteristics of a vampire?
There is now a visible and vibrant community of people who are using the label to describe themselves, but to this day there is no functioning definition of a real vampire. This is primarily because no one knows what the cause of the phenomenon actually is, and the community has coalesced around a set of loosely shared perceptions and symptoms rather than a central organizing principle. Therefore, we can describe some common experiences involved in being a vampire, but these shouldn't be taken as a definitive vampire checklist. There are no known necessary and sufficient conditions to be met before you can be a vampire. Likewise, there's no single definitive sign that someone is not a real vampire.
That said, the most common experience vampires share is the need to take in life energy or blood, from sources outside themselves, to maintain spiritual, psychic, and physical health. Blood-drinking, or sanguinarian, vampires have to consume small, polite amounts of human blood from willing donors. The majority of respondents to the survey reported taking only an ounce or less at a time; usually no more than once a week. Feeding is absolutely a health necessity; vampires have reported many negative physical symptoms when trying to ignore this need to feed. Psychic vampires, or psivamps, feed on psychic energy. Some psivamps enter into relationships with donors in the same way that sanguinarian vampires do, while others consciously train themselves away from human energy altogether, either for convenience or as a result of personal ethics. Some psivamps report a natural affinity for feeding on natural sources such as elemental or ambient natural energy. Others cultivate techniques for absorbing ambient energy from crowds and public places, so as not to take from any one source.
Many vampires are nocturnal and have difficulty with school and day shift work. Many are visually photosensitive and get physically ill from sun exposure. Others will mention having unusual sensory perceptions, from the basic five senses, like light and smell sensitivity, to more esoteric extrasensory experiences. Many vampires reported seeing ghosts, having psychic dreams, or perceiving spirits, but some vampires have never had any ESP or PRE experiences. At this time, there is no scientific theory explaining why vampires need to feed, or why they tend to do so in very particular ways. It's at the center of the vampiric identity, intensely experienced, and yet to this day unexplainable. We hope that one day this need will be better understood and that our study will serve as a catalyst for increasing scientific and medical interest in future research into this phenomenon.
What does your organization offer to the field?
Our major contribution at this time is our inaugural research project, the Vampirism & Energy Work Research Study. We released the Vampire & Energy Work Research Survey (VEWRS) in March 2006 and the Advanced Vampirism & Energy Work Research Survey (AVEWRS) in August 2006. Combined, these surveys ask over 988 questions, which were answered by over 650 individuals from all corners of the Vampire Community. The questions covered many topics of interest to not only ourselves and fellow vampires, but to outside researchers as well. We hope that the completed study will offer two very useful contributions, both to vampires and to people who want to know about vampires.
First, we will provide organization and quantification to the information that vampires have been informally passing amongst themselves for years, to give the community a chance to tell itself about itself. Much of what we asked were questions we had been asking ourselves, on Internet message boards, chatrooms, and other informal meeting places. Vampires want to know what's "normal" for being a vampire, how much of what they're experiencing is shared by others.
And second, we'll be able to address the academic research that is starting to be done with this community. At the point when we started the project, there was no real body of data against which research could be judged, and most outside analysis was openly hostile, ranging from the sensationalist to the alarmist. There didn't seem to be a standard of proof needed to make armchair analyses of the community based on poorly conducted website research, and these analyses always painted some lurid picture of a youth delusion, or worse, a "vampire cult" that would engage in occult practices, ritualistic sacrifice, or even cannibalism. We intend for the body of data we are gathering to show what this community looks like when someone conducts responsible research, and to raise the standard of proof that researchers will need to meet in order to make claims about this community and its members.
How can people contact you?
Our primary e-mail address is research@suscitatio.com. We are updating the community on our progress and future research initiatives at http://www.suscitatio.com
How do people take part in your study?
After almost two years of survey submissions, the deadline has finally passed (October 31, 2007). You may still view the surveys at our website along with all associated charts, graphs, and other statistical analysis. As of November 2007 we are currently engaged in the data-entry phase of this research study.
Do you have any upcoming educational events or related events that you either produce or you endorse?
In the past we've had community-based events hosted everywhere from Georgia to Ohio to California where we have presented our research and preliminary findings to members of the community. We have several events we are either organizing or plan to attend in 2008 and the details will be posted via our web site at: http://www.suscitatio.com
Vampternoon Tea - Mary Cassat Tea Room (Rittenhouse Hotel) Philadelphia, PA - August 30, 2008
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TAPS Paranormal Magazine October 2007 Special Halloween Edition "Interview With A Vampire"
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The Secret Life Of Vampires - A&E October 28, 2005
This A&E Special Presentation gives viewers a chilling close up of the modern world of vampires. There's the bewitching young couple who relishes their vampire lifestyle and each other's blood. And Michelle Belanger who extols the spiritual side of vampirism as she guides viewers into her own hidden world's a vibrant and diverse society with its own rules, conventions, politics, language, customs and as opinionated as our own.
Is being a vampire really all about blood and death, or is it about living life to its fullest? Why do some vampires seek blood, while others sustain themselves on the "life-force" of others? In a small town in Canada viewers meet a 42-year-old grandmother (Lady CG) who shops at Wal-Mart and enjoys gardening. Every Sunday night she gathers fellow vampires around a campfire and talk about local politics, personal issues, and safe sources of blood. In a TV first, viewers get a first-hand look at one of these meetings. A young New York City vampire (Father Sebastiaan), who people are generally afraid of, practices a bloodless vampirism that involves taking the physical or sexual energy from a willing donor. A devotee named Don Henrie sleeps by day in a closed coffin and hits the town at night to prey on willing energy donors.
This A&E Special Presentation asks, "If Vampires are all around us, where do they come from?" Modern day vampires practice something deeply rooted in the human spirit and history. The link between blood, life, and death can be found in ancient cultures around the globe. Viewers visit Dracula's birthplace, the ruins of his mountain castle, and his burial tomb. They also visit a small town in Romania where last year panicked villagers, thinking they had a vampire in their midst, dug up corpses and drove stakes through their hearts. Viewers also learn that most vampires are very fussy about what goes into their body, particularly if they drink blood. And vampires who feed off of each other have a bond of intimacy, sometime sex, sometimes ritual. One vampire says that once you have tasted another's blood you are bound to them forever. The drinking of human blood is the pinnacle of what most people consider to be true vampirism. Viewers see a demonstration of human bloodletting and drinking.
Dark Nations Gathering - Las Vegas, NV - May 22-24, 2009
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