Vampires: The Long-Standing Trend - The Walton Tribune, page 1

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Vampires: The Long-Standing Trend
By Stephen Milligan
The Walton Tribune
Published December 13, 2009 (Print & Online Edition)

The crowd at the Beechwood Cinema in Athens is electric. Hours before the film starts, the line is already growing. Hundreds of people — most of them under 20, almost all of them women — are sitting inside the theater, re-reading books obsessively or chatting with friends as they wait for midnight to strike and the movie to begin....

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‘Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle’

For some, however, the vampire phenomenon goes farther than reading books or watching movies. These people aren’t just interested in vampires - they are vampires.

“I’ve self-identified as a vampire for the last 13 years,” said Merticus, 31, one of the founding members of the Atlanta Vampire Alliance - www.atlantavampirealliance.com..., a group of people who think they have an actual condition resembling vampirism. “We use the word ‘vampire’ strictly in a metaphorical sense. We do not identify with fictional characters, supernatural powers or immortality, nor do we have any difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality.”

Instead, Merticus, a name he chose to identify himself, and other “real” vampires say they feel the need to feed from other people in order to fully survive, either on blood — as sanguinarian vampires do — or through contact with “life force,” as psychic vampires do.

“Psychic and sanguinarian vampires are individuals who cannot adequately sustain their own physical, mental or spiritual wellbeing without the taking of blood or vital life force energy from other sources, often human,” Merticus said, who discounted the fictional idea of cloaked figures draining doe-eyed virgins of their blood. “The consumption of blood from human sources if facilitated through a consensual agreement by verbal or written contract between vampire and donor.”

While Merticus and the other members of the Alliance do meet socially with other self-identifying vampires, they also spend time studying the phenomenon of the modern vampire, including educational outreach to the mainstream. Yet he knows the popular perception of the vampire among most.

“The mainstream culture has increasingly become interested in exploring all aspects of the vampire archetype and the possibility of real vampirism,” Merticus said. “I was a vampire before ‘Twilight,’ ‘True Blood,’ and ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and will be one long after the fanfare from these has waned. We now find ourselves educating growing numbers of the public that one is born with a vampiric nature and not turned, that we adhere to ethical and safe feeding practices, are of sound mind and judgment and productively contribute to society. Real vampires don’t sparkle!”