My Obsession with Vampires & Dark Shadows

My Obsession with
Vampires
&
Dark Shadows

Dracula one of the more (in)famous Vampires

As the sunsets....the children of the night... come out to play

Malkavian....BruJAnim....AnVenture

A few of the many vampire clan symbols.

I have always been mystified and intrigued by vampires. It began for me, as it has for others, watching late night televison and seeing a dark cloaked figure come from nowhere out of the night to prey on his victims.

I was fascinated.

I would venture to every movie I could possibly see that had some kind of vampiric overtone to it. I knew the Prince of Darkness was searching for me, and I was going to comply to his wants.

Then in my teen years, a television show came on, and low and behold, one of it's main chacters was a vampire.

Barnabas Collins.

The love had been renewed. This was going to be MY vampire, all I had to do was be available. At least as much as one could be for my age in that period of time.
I became very fascinated with the show after the vampire was introduced, and am still an avid fan.

Vampires

The word "vampire" comes from the Slavic word obyri or obiri,
      which evolved into the Bulgarian word "vampir". Although sources
      differ greatly, some say that the Greek word nosophoros (which
      means "plague-carrier") that evolved into the Old Slavonic word
      "nosufur-atu" is a synonym for the word "vampire". In our culture,
      the words "vampire" and "nosferatu" are interchanged often.

Birth of a Legend
The vampire is truly a global creature, with myths related to the dead
      which rise to drink the blood of the living coming out of cultures all
      around the world. From Africa to Japan to Spain and the UK, the
      vampire has held humans enthralled for centuries. Nowhere,
      however, do we see more vampire folklore than in the stories of the
      Slavic people. Perhaps the reason for this is the historically high
      population of gypsies in that area. The migration of the gypsies has
      been traced back across the continent to northern India, where the
      religion had a cast of certain bloodthirsty deities (such as Kali) and
      creatures (such as a bhutu). It has been theorized that with this as a
      base of folklore, the gypsies picked up bits and pieces of other
      legends as they migrated toward the north-west and as a result,
      altered the folklore of the Slavic nations.