The vampire is not the way it is portrayed in films or books, sometimes I think Anne Rice, Bram Stoker et al have an awful lot to answer for. Forget all the typical stereotypes about having to sleep on the soil of their homeland, not being able to walk in the sun, being mortally afraid of crosses and holy water..........in fact the only thing that is right is that a stake through the heart will kill them stone dead; after all it would kill anyone!

The easiest way to sum up the modern day vampire is by saying that, broadly speaking, they are incapable of producing enough energy of their own and so have to "steal" it from others. Now this is an extremely simplistic statement and many would disagree with it on many angles, but it's a starting point for trying to understand the vampyric condition. There are varying types of vampires but these we will deal with elsewhere, for now a brief overview is all that is required.

Vampires do not just drink blood to survive, although there are those that physically need (as oppose to crave or have an addiction to) to consume blood in order to stay healthy. Many combine the consuming of blood with more direct forms of energy usage; which may come from human, animal or more elemental or natural sources. There are also those who, while not strictly speaking vampires, follow a lifestyle that they feel appropriate to that of the vampire but which is often heavily influenced by the media portrayals of the vampire and has little to do with the actual reality of being a vampire.

There is no set "look" for a vampire although many do seem drawn to the gothic way of dress and expression. The first person you meet when you walk out of your door could well be a vampire and you would have no idea. Although it is true to say that many are of a paler skintone than those from the same region, often they are extremely charismatic and people are drawn to them without either party really knowing why and they are also slower to show the physical changes that ageing brings.

There is no way of knowing just by looking at someone that they are a vampire and, in my personal opinion, if they run around telling everyone that they meet that they are indeed a vampire then the chances are they aren't; it tends to be more in the way of a "dirty little secret" and this is for good reason..................after all, do you really want to spend the rest of your life in a lunatic asylum?

The vampire is as human as the next person in the supermarket queue. Although it is fair to say that many have major superiority complexes and come across as exceedingly arrogant and belittling of their fellow man; commonly referring to humanity as cattle and so forth does nothing to prevent people from assuming that they are in some way sub or preter-human. Like anyone else they have jobs to hold down, relationships to nurture and the same old chores, problems and elations as everyone else in the human race.

However, many refer to their vampirism as "the beast or the devil within" and this is the intrinsic piece which sets them apart from other members of the human race. Whilst their is the argument that this is all a psychological problem and with proper treatment it can be cured, the flip side of the proverbial coin is that it is a real and physical genetic condition that is yet undiagnosed. Whichever it is, vampirism exists in the modern world.