I should like to say a few words now on the specific habits and cultural identificatory markers predominant among real vampires. Doing so will help to dispel a few myths or misconceptions. Real vampires do not generally sleep in coffins (though certainly some have and do), and they do not claim to live forever. Indeed, real vampires diffuse beyond the realms of film and literature in which popular culture has traditionally situated them. Real vampires are living people, generally leading what may be deemed everyday lives, and who, according to what I and other scholars have been able to ascertain, appropriate the figure of the vampire and adapt it for self-identificatory purposes. This, however, they do only after—in many cases, years after—the compulsion to take blood or energy arises. Even still, this is not to say that some of the fictional vampire’s more obvious cultural and socio-historical dimensions in film and literature are not reflected in real vampires.

Aside from blood-drinking and feeding on energy, a sizeable number in the real vampire community prefers to don Gothic apparel (though certainly not all the time), and many will even don prosthetic fangs, a practice that, for the most, is purely aesthetic, though it can and does serve a cultural need, especially in New Orleans where fangs contribute to inter-communal identification. Scholars and curious observers interested in real vampire communities around the world have begun to probe this subculture with renewed vigour to ask why, partly in an attempt to gain new insight, but for some regrettably it is to disqualify, or suppress I think, this identity group. I suspect that latter does so mainly out of a host of misconceptions as the “real” and the “reel” continue to blur more and more seamlessly into one another in and outside of the vampire subculture. There has even transpired, upon closer scrutiny, a certain degree of cross-pollination between the two realms. That is to say, the more “Goth” or “Steampunk” variety of self-identifying human vampires—which, in fact, comprises only a portion of the vampire community—seems to be informing with increasing regularity the representations of vampires we see in film, television and literature (not just the other way around). The process has become recursive. Thus, to divorce completely this subculture from literary and filmic representations is to deny it its modernity.

Similar may be said for denying real vampires of their humanity. In my own dealings with the real vampire community in New Orleans and Buffalo, I found its members to be kind, accommodating and pleasant to be around. To my surprise, some were loving parents whose children accompanied them to vampire community meetings. Some could have passed for everyday “professionals” one might pass on the street, while others were only too eager to embrace the latest Gothic fashions. All of them, however, regardless of their choice of personal attire, showed what I can only describe as admirable strength and courage in the face of immense opposition to their identity. Equally important, they behave—and survive—as a community(s).

Curiously, though perhaps not surprisingly, these communities are represented through an amalgam of identities and experiences. The real vampires I met and interviewed ranged in age from approximately 18–50; represented both sexes equally; practiced sanguinarian and/or psychic feeding; described themselves as atheistic, monotheistic or polytheistic; self-identified as heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual; some were parents; married and divorced; and were wearing or have worn fangs, or had, or have had, naturally long incisors. Unquestionably, I found the members of this community to be competent citizens, that they performed blood-letting and other similar rituals safely and did so only with willing donors, and participated regularly in medical checkups that scarcely (if ever) indicated complications as a result of their feeding practices.

The French Quarter, the central research site chosen for the New Orleans study, is particularly germane to this line of enquiry, as there are, I would imagine, few other research sites in which such a vastly diverse ethnic and cultural makeup may be observed to coexist in the open. It is also here, in the French Quarter, that I encountered all of my Louisiana participants. During the initial stages of this study, I was completely overcome with excitement and curiosity, and had very few expectations as to what, or whom, I would find. I must not omit to say, however, that I felt a certain amount of hope, which is something quite different from expectation, and it was hope that permitted a certain level of delusion to set in very early on. Early on, I think on a subconscious level I romanticized the research process. The longer it took me to locate my first participant, the more my delusion morphed and shaped how I imagined “my first time” (as I called it) would be. Finally, at Wicked New Orleans, a Gothic apparel shop, the opportunity arrived. The shop owner, with whom I was engaged in conversation, suddenly stopped me mid-sentence and advised me to go speak to a woman who had entered his shop, a woman he claimed was a “vampire”. I was completely unprepared for this; I never imagined “my first time” would be in a leather shop. Swallowing my pride, I walked over to the unsuspecting woman in her 40s–50s (whom I shall call “Jennifer”). I explained to Jennifer who I was and what I was doing in the French Quarter, to which she smiled and revealed her teeth (some of which had been filed down to a point). I made friendly conversation for a moment (and looking back, I cannot even remember what I said) then gave her my contact information, asking politely that she call or e-mail me at some point. Never, not for one second, did I think I would not see or hear from her again; but I did not. My first chance had come and gone, and I blew it.

As I began delving into some of the field’s early scholarship, particularly Kaplan’s work, I realized the difficulties I had been facing were nothing new to studies in real vampirism. Before going out into the field again, I poured over several scholarly and popular works, and eventually took a new initiative: Treat all future encounters with participants as though I would never see or hear from them again after the initial contact. To prepare, I compiled the “Questionnaire” and carried several copies with me, I brought along clipboards (for the participants to write on), latex gloves (in case of inspection involving blood or teeth), a flashlight (in case my research took me into dark places or homes) and a digital voice recorder (in case a participant refused to write his or her answers but agreed to verbalize them). Although my satchel grew heavier, my workload grew lighter, as the strategy would eventually pay off.

After Jennifer, almost another 2 months would pass before I could locate more participants for my study. A chance opportunity came one October night in 2009, however, when I frequented a club in the French Quarter called, “The Dungeon”. In the space of 2 h, I met there and documented five vampires. Among them were “Maven”, mid-30s, a “fangsmith” (designer and sculptor of made-to-order vampire fangs) of some repute I gathered and would later verify, and a local vampire elder2; a vampire named “Max”, Maven’s sidekick, late-teens/early-20s, and a martial artist; a vampire named “Torch” (with whom I have now lost contact), mid-20s, quiet demeanour and elusive; a vampire I shall call “Victoria” (with whom I have now lost contact), Torch’s girlfriend, late-teens, excited by the prospect of participating in the study; and a vampire I shall call “James”, early-30s, who was initially hesitant to participate. The challenges, however, were far from over. All five participants left contact information in the “Questionnaire”, but only one phone number proved to be legitimate. This fact was rather an unfortunate one. However, after concluding my field observations at The Dungeon, something occurred to me after the fact: all the vampires who were present that night at the club arrived in separate, smaller groups: Maven and Max, Torch and Victoria, and James. Yet, all five participants knew each other by name, which suggested to me at the time at least a certain level of what one might call communiality. How, I remember thinking, would I ever be able to find this community if I could not even get one of its members to call me back or disclose an accurate e-mail address. It turned out I would only have to wait about a month.

Laycock (2009) aptly remarks that the public generally only hears about the real vampire community in the media following some “vampiric” serial murder, or during October as a means to exploit the season of death and monsters. Unfortunately, the New Orleans vampire community has not escaped Laycock’s assessment. An ABC 20/20 special on New Orleans’s real vampires broadcasted that October, one that, according to the community, sensationalized the whole ordeal by editing down their interviews and mixing and matching some of the questions and answers, incorporating into the programme the use of Gothicized music, images and other similar tropes, and in effect turning the whole account into a twisted fantasy. Another painfully negative outcome of the broadcast occurred in the Discussion/Comment Board that accompanied the video at ABC’s Website. As Browning (2010b) discusses at length, on it are statements from viewers who, to some degree, support the vampire community or one’s freedom of expression, but far more frequent were statements by unsupportive, misled or utterly irate viewers whose comments were unfounded and born out of assumptions, misconceptions and misinterpretations about the real vampire identity and community.

One of the vampires featured in the 20/20 broadcast was “Belfazaar (‘Zaar’) Ashantison”, a resident of New Orleans and a member of a community-wide council of vampire elders called the New Orleans Vampire Association (NOVA). It was through him, after meeting his expectations and gaining his trust through our initial interview, that I met over the next few weeks 10–12 additional members of the community, all of whom generously agreed to participate in my study. “Zaar” was in his early-40s, a local vampire elder, and a founding member of NOVA. I encountered the next eight participants at the initial NOVA meeting I attended: a vampire named “Corrien”, who looked to be in her late-30s; a vampire named “Reverend Boone”, in his late-30s/early-40s, who looked to be the most menacing of those in attendance to the meeting; a vampire I shall call “Meph” (short for “Mephistopheles”), a local vampire elder who suffers from a debilitating physical illness and therefore walked with a cane (a Barnabas Collins’s Dark Shadows replica); a vampire named “Jade”, a local vampire elder who looked to be in her mid-30s; a local vampire elder named “Reverend Jezabel de Luna” (or “Jez”), a larger than life female who looked to be in her mid-30s; a local vampire elder I shall call “Lorilee”, who looked to be in her mid-40s; a vampire I shall call “Tony”, who is a local tour guide, a local vampire elder and looked to be in his early-40s; and a vampire I shall call “Erin”, Tony’s girlfriend who looked to be in her late-30s. In time I would meet other vampires as well.

After I moved from New Orleans to Buffalo in Summer 2011, I was immediately interested in whether or not Buffalo had its own real vampire community and if it was similar to New Orleans’s. Perhaps “geography”, I thought, would offer another fruitful context within which to frame the fundamental relationship of the vampire identity to its cultural construction. Whether geographical specificity could yield insights into the more generalized umbrella of vampire self-identification became for me a new and fascinating avenue worth exploring. To carry out this new supplemental study, I planned to use the following research methods: contact leading members of the vampire community at large and through them obtain contact information for persons living in Buffalo who meet one of the categories given previously; frequent night clubs in the greater Buffalo area whose attendees either appropriate “Gothic”-style themes, or that are rumoured to be frequented by persons who meet one of the categories given previously, or both; post, in local newspapers and public e-forums, ads that describe my study and invite qualified persons to participate; frequent local stores that sell “Gothic”-themed goods, and there speak with the owner and workers, describe my study, ask about potentially qualified persons and leave at the store my contact information to be handed out accordingly.

Using information gathered over a period of several months from interviews and field observations, it was my intention for this supplementary study to provide behavioural and socio-cultural data geographically specific to study participants inhabiting the greater Buffalo area. Contrasting this study with the previous one would, I hope, allow me to perceive qualities of each field site that might otherwise appear to the average observer as “normal”, unrelated or universal. While conducting the study, I took along with me, just as I did in New Orleans, my trusty brown satchel containing IRB consent forms, pad and pen, flashlight, voice recorder and latex gloves. What I eventually found, through comparative analysis, was that my experiences with vampire self-identification in New Orleans yielded quite a lot about vampire identity construction in Buffalo, but it had less to do with similarities. Geography, it would seem, played a much greater part than perhaps any of us in the field had realized.

I began my study in Buffalo by first contacting through e-mail the people living there whose contact information I had received from leading members of the real vampire community. It was also my intention to frequent Gothic-styled night clubs or other places generally rumoured to be frequented by real vampires. However, neither was to be had, mainly because they simply did not exist as far as I could ascertain, though Club Diablo (now closed) was mentioned, albeit dubiously, as a potential site. Even still, my experiences in Buffalo were in some ways similar to New Orleans, though in many other ways they were quite different. For example, the term “ronin”, used by the vampire community at large to denote an individual vampire who is not affiliated with a particular house, coven and so on, was applicable to only a handful of vampires living in New Orleans. In Buffalo, however, the use of this term was universal, as the five vampires I encountered were not affiliated with any group, nor did any such group seem to exist within the city or outlying suburbs.

One of my study participants in Buffalo, whom I shall call simply “Christy” (early-30s), was a psychic vampire. Contact with Christy was confined to the Internet. We made several attempts to meet in-person, but conflicting schedules, illness and finances prevented this. There was also, with Christy, a strong issue of confidentiality. This was due in large part to an extenuating circumstance that made her situation quite different than any I encountered in New Orleans. Her partner with whom she lived at the time was not fully aware of the extent of her vampire self-identity, and what little he had been told he reacted negatively to. Additionally, Christy was engaged in the process of trying to gain custody of her daughter and felt (aptly so I think) that knowledge of her self-identity would impede that effort. The next two vampires in my study came as a pair: Serevus (male, 36) and Shyla (female, 19), who at the time were engaged to be married. Both were psychic vampires, and identified primarily as tantric feeder, which is to say they absorbed energy through sexual and erotic encounters. Shyla explained to me that this particular method is often misunderstood, that folks outside and even some within the real vampire community look at it as merely a craving for sex: “[S]ince I realized that I was a sexual vampire, I was really into the attraction—just the feelings. It’s not even just sex in itself, but the actual people flirting and things like that. It’s something I feel. And, you know alot of people don’t understand it”. I met with Serevus and Shyla together at a local Buffalo eatery on three occasions, and later I conducted interviews with each separately at a local prominent coffee shop. In both instances I found them to be very friendly and quite attuned not only to their self-identities but to the cultural practices of the vampire community at large. Although neither was affiliated with a vampire house, both were up-to-date on national and community-wide activities and practices; this contrasted greatly with my New Orleans participants, all of whom were members or leaders of a local vampire house but gave noticeably less attention to general, community-wide matters unless they were pertinent to New Orleans. Serevus and Shyla seemed adamant about starting their own household in Buffalo (a dream made all the more possible, they claimed, as a result of my study).

Contrasting these geographical studies through the use of interviews and field observations gathered from each field site has helped to accentuate place-specific behavioural and socio-cultural factors. On that note, it is worth mentioning as well that Halloween meant far less to the Buffalo identity than it did in New Orleans. For many in the vampire community, October in general, and Halloween in particular, can be a profitable time of year. Vampire organizations like the one I shadowed in New Orleans, fangsmiths (who construct prosthetic fangs for vampires), vampire event performers, and individual members and houses of the vampire community, all converge on large cities like New York, New Orleans and Atlanta, and in cities across the world, to participate in ceremonies and take part in celebration and fellowship. This is especially true for New Orleans, which plays host to some of the largest vampire events in the country. However, although the fruit of such gatherings is profit for the organizations and private parties who, in turn, feed that money back into their respective vampire communities and organizations, these profits are also vital to fuelling local charity events, such as those organized by Zaar and NOVA like feeding the homeless (at times, as many as 80–100 mouths) at Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving or aiding those in general need, and to perpetuating the organizations who pride themselves on giving back to their local communities. This speaks voluminously of the vampire identity, which, to the outside world, is often associated purely with excess, psychopathology and a general sense of disconnection from community involvement. The reality, as I have tried to show, is actually far different. Modern vampires, through reconciling these and other, similar antitheticals, effectively critique ideological systems that dictate how normalcy should be constructed. Indeed, their metaphysical understandings of themselves and what they regard as their innate condition serve to “challenge”, as one external reader of this article found, “the authority of contemporary power structures and normalizing discourses of both western religion and modern medicine and psychiatry”.Footnote 2 In short, normativity is of minimal practical use to real vampires and serves little more than to recall for them hurtful memories of a repressive and oppressive system that shuns more than it embraces.