HALLOWEEN IS A BUSY TIME for candy makers, lawn rakers and blood takers. Not hospital phlebotomists, mind you, but vampires. The children of Dracula.
In this age of lethal blood pathogens and high cholesterol counts, most people attracted to vampirism are more into its dark fashions than tapping veins.
“There are certain vampire affectations,” says Martin Riccardo, Berwyn-based vampirism researcher, who each fall lectures in the horrific settings of suburban libraries. “People wear fangs. They sleep in coffins. Some might even drink small amounts of blood, but they don’t have a psychological need to do so.”
More common are the bloodless practitioners of preying on humans–vegan vampires, you could say. Those who call themselves “empathic” vampires claim they get a rush from absorbing people’s emotions. “Tantric” vampires feed off their partners’ sexual energy. “Elemental” vampires purport to get an otherworldly boost from thunderstorms. (“Honey, it’s 3 a.m. Turn that TV off.” “No! I vant to hear the seven-day forecast.”)
Online forums are crowded with various vampires as well as all sorts of donors offering themselves to the right takers. And, naturally, there are vampire dating sites that match likeminded enthusiasts, eliminating those blind dates when, say, a female blood donor is accidentally fixed up with a male elemental vampire. Awkward!
There are plenty of local vampirism enthusiasts, sources say–which might be of interest to Chicagoans with long necks, strong emotions or an excess of sexual energy, not to mention meteorologists such as Andy Avalos and Steve Baskerville. But trying to scare up some fang fans willing to be profiled on this page proved difficult. Landing an interview with a vampire isn’t as easy as Anne Rice makes it out to be.
Maybe they found it unwise to out themselves in a newspaper. Justifiable. Maybe daytime appointments didn’t coincide with their schedules. One thing is for sure: Hunting vampires, even for a simple quote, drained this mortal reporter of patience.
