Vampires are Interesting People

I know I won't keep up this blog, because I never do, but I wanted to post about some of the more interesting things that have been going on in my life lately.

Just over two years ago, being bored and unsatisfied with my life, I decided to do a Google search on "real vampires" and found there were a great many sites on the web about this subject. At first, the knowledge that there were so many sites by, for and about self-professed vampires scared me a little. Then I thought that if I'm scared of something, I should really check it out more. I started to read and post at real vampire forums, not claiming to be one myself, but admitting to an interest in the subject that went beyond simple curiosity. I discovered that the people who claim to be vampires, in general, do not seem to be freaks or crazies, just people with some unusual abilities and symptoms.

For two years I read and posted at a couple of forums sporadically, getting to know some of these people pretty well from their posts and becoming rather fond of some of them. Not long ago, I decided that I wanted to meet some real vampires in person, rather than see them only as a part of this distant online community. I posted my interest in the subject at meetup.com and within a couple months I went to my first vampire meet-up.

It's one thing to secretly believe that vampires could be real. (I've thought this since I was 16, because of some unusual dreams and experiences I had.) It's another level of paradigme shifting to start having conversations with self-professed vampires online. But it's a whole new level of blowing apart one's paradigme of Reality to actually meet real vampires face to face, to hear their stories and issues, and to experience the weird energy and "coincidences" that one can notice around them.

Now, I have to state quite emphaticaly that real vampires are not like the creatures in legends, books and movies. I'm talking about living people here, not monsters or supernatural beings. By and large, they age the same, get sick the same, go to jobs the same, and have the same kinds of financial and family issues that the rest of us have. Their main distinction is that, while they have to deal with all the same stuff as the rest of us, they also have to deal with a metaphysical energy imbalance that requires them to take in energy from outside sources besides regular food. They also tend to have more psychic and metaphysical abilities than normal people do, which is part of what makes them so intereting.

I've met more than half a dozen real vampires lately, and count some of them among my friends now. I hope and expect to meet still more in the future. Knowing real vampires, the fictional ones don't seem nearly as interesting anymore. Also, I don't really feel like I need to prove vampires are real to other people. That would be like trying to prove a psychic friend is really psychic or a Wiccan friend is really a witch. They just are what they are, and you accept them as themselves. Knowing them does make life seem more interesting, though.

- Persephone