Vampires – May be it is October and almost Halloween time, but vampires seem to be everywhere.  Have you noticed? True Blood is on cable. Vampire Diaries, Blood Ties, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,  Kindred the Embrace, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Dark Shadows, Angel and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. There are so many more, and of course there are the films – Interview with a Vampire and the hundreds of Dracula films.

What do the blood suckers mean to you? Malicious, dirty, evil creatures, is that what vampires are? They look attractive on the outside, but their objective is terribly dishonorable. They swoop down on you “like bats out of hell”. They seize you in their strong grip, and then suck out your blood.  Hmmm that likes the banks that just raised interest rates on their better customers! Ok moving right along - Carol Senf pointed out that the very traits that make the long-established vampire a threat in eighteenth-nineteenth century stories such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), predominantly his or her erotic power and eccentric behavior, make the vampire appealing to twenty-first century fan.  Bela Lugosi does not look like Brad Pitt. True Blood gives a Southern take to the vampire theme with a lot of sex, and even a marriage proposal.

Do vampires help you deal with death and/or near-death? New classification related to brain death, life support systems, persistent vegetative states, and the freezing of both embryos and cadavers (cryonic suspension) have made the boundaries between life and death unclear.  There are individuals who vital signs drop so low, they appear dead when they are a sleep.  Runners and other athletics can have pulses as low as 40-50 beats per minute while awake.  Neuromuscular blockers drugs are often used during surgical procedures and in intensive care and emergency medicine to cause paralysis. In earlier times, vampire legends were influenced by individuals being buried alive due to ancient medical knowledge. The bubonic plague was considered to be the work of Vampires, and terror of infection led people to bury their dead without completely verifying that they were truly deceased.  In many cases people reported sounds originating from a coffin. It was then no wonder that so many encounters of Vampires rising from their graves during this time were noted. When the coffin was dug up fingernail marks were discovered on the inside from the victim trying to escape. A person, buried alive, would try to claw his way out of the grave and would be discovered covered in blood from the wounds he had inflicted upon himself by doing so. Because of the fear of being buried alive, many people were buried with bells. Bodies make noise because of the bubbling of escaping gases from natural decomposition of bodies.  

 Vampires today seem to be sexier and more romantic. Watching Moonlight on the SyFy channel, we encounter Mick St. John, a private investigator. He crosses back and forth between being human and being a vampire.  His “love” interest, Beth Turner is human, and Mike does not want to turn her into a vampire – very noble.  Apparently Mike St. John did not know his new bride was a vampire, and was turned into a vampire by his bride Coraline on the couple's wedding night fifty-five years earlier. This is a far cry from a gloomy castle in Transylvania and Count Dracula tearing out victims’ throats.