As I researched for the current update of By Light Unseen, I visited many websites reviewing their content and information. I discovered a number of retrospectives or "editorials" by various people about "the Vampiric Community," by which they meant the Online Vampiric Community or "OVC"--the individuals who created, moderated, and participated most actively in online fora such as messageboards, e-mail groups and chat channels. Most of these articles were written between 2000 and 2002, at which time a number of highly active individuals had retreated from participation, and there had been a shift in the nature of the forums themselves. By the time I had read over the fourth or fifth of these reminiscences (which also include the opening chapters of Michelle Belanger's The Psychic Vampire Codex), I couldn't help thinking that all of us seem to have felt pretty darned traumatized by the events online around that time. What happened?

As Sanguinarius describes in her essay, "From the Beginning to October, 1998," the year 1997 saw a sudden explosion of serious, sympathetic "real vampire" sites and information onto the Internet. My Fireheart article, Sanguinarius' website, my website, and others popped into being within the space of a few months. Very rapidly, Sanguinarius and several other people began creating online forums for direct interaction among readers of these websites, including Sanguinarius' messageboard, AngelBitMe's V.E.I.N. messageboard, Namadie's Hall of Memories messageboard, and a number of e-mail groups. The venues available in 1997 left much to be desired. Free e-group hosting had only just begun to be offered by a few companies, and the groups tended to be buggy, unreliable and prone to security lapses. Many of the "real vampire" messageboards were initially set up on Server.com, which operated on a complete laissez-faire principle and provided no way to control or block problem posts. Some of the same individuals who were active in these fora also posted to the usegroup alt.vampires, which was more of a fannish/scholarly venue, and eventually spun off alt.culture.vampires for "real vampires." (The contentious division of the two usegroups inspired an academic paper, "Negotiating the Vampire" (1998). Several of the key individuals involved are still active in the present-day OVC.)

The first reference to this loosely linked online sub-culture as a "community" appeared in the Statements of Purpose on Sanguinarius' Vampire Support Page (as it was then named) website in the summer of 1997. At that time, the reference was used generally, with "vampire community" indicating all those who self-defined or fell under any definition of "vampire," whether they were connected with the online fora or not. In this sense, the term was used in the same general way that "community" has been applied to a number of subgroups that have in common a special interest or experience--for example, the Pagan community, the gay community, the leather community, even "the victim community" of survivors of violent crimes. Sanguinarius suggested that self-defined "vampires" represented a "community" through broad common interest. Her Statements of Purpose asserted that her objectives included greater understanding and networking among community members, outreach to isolated individuals, public education efforts about blood-drinking and vampirism, and support for vampiric people suffering from persecution. This is similar to the initial goals of many of the first organizers of various "communities." One point, however, was more assumed than articulated: by "vampire" Sanguinarius meant blood drinker.

As websites, e-groups, messageboards and chat channels continued to proliferate during the winter and early spring of 1998, a core membership of regular participants evolved. These members did not restrict themselves to just one online venue but circulated among almost all of them (although most had a favorite "home"). This meant that discussions, interpersonal issues, hot debate topics and so forth did not stay in one isolated place but spread throughout the network of Internet fora. Strong personalities emerged, and inevitably, so did strong disagreements. There were even one or two community scapegoats. Some community members became highly distressed at the occasional lack of civility in discussions and complained or announced their departure (usually temporarily). However, an objective view of all the online turmoil reveals some interesting changes going on underneath the surface.

Beginning in the early spring of 1998, a variety of online debates centered on a critical issue: what, exactly, was meant by the term "vampire" (or the then-current "real vampire"), what characteristics did a "vampire" have, and who should be considered one, and hence a member of "the vampire community?" Many of the heated discussions had their direct or indirect origin in my own website. The direct origin came from a couple of features of that site in particular: the "real vampire traits checklists," which some felt were misleading, and the FAQ question "What is a psychic vampire," in which I made the statements that "there is no such thing as a psychic vampire," and "all real vampires are psychic vampires by nature." What I meant, and made a mess of explaining at the time, was that I believed that all "real vampires" could and should be drinking blood, that "real vampires" needed blood for its pranic energy content, and that no "real vampire" should be denied validation because he or she didn't or couldn't obtain blood. How my article and website were interpreted was a bit different--and unfortunately, I apparently was extremely obtuse about what some people tell me was "my influence in the community." There was a growing number of self-defined "psychic vampires" in the OVC, and an even larger number of what were termed "psi-blood feeders"--people who reported craving for, and/or being satisfied by, both blood and "energy." I heard from a lot of these "hybrid vamps" in my own e-mail, and independent surveys by the original owner of the Psychic Vampires website seemed to support this "bell curve." It appeared at that time that the majority of vampiric people reported a need for blood and "energy" in varying proportions.

Like Sanguinarius, I was less concerned with categories and definitions than in uniting the entire community according to what it shared--I expected a high degree of diversity. I hoped to encourage varieties of vampiric people to see themselves as having vampirism in common and so feel more like a unified class of kindred spirits, despite their differing needs and practices. Community member Amy Krieytaz, however, continued to bring up the question of "pure psi-feeders" and "pure blood vampires"--the latter, especially--"feeling excluded" by my model, which was anything but my wish. I'm a blood drinking vampiric person, myself, and that's where my chief sympathies were and are, but I got the impression (accurate or not) that many "pure" blood drinking vampiric people in the online community did not have a high opinion of me and my site. Meanwhile, Amy attempted to address the situation by devising ever more hair-splitting "overlapping categories" of so-called "real vampires," and we debated this issue in private e-mail.

I perceived an ominous change as the summer of 1998 went on. The online "psychic vampires" (with and without blood-craving or blood interest tendencies) continued to increase in number incredibly rapidly, and websites, chat channels and messageboards specifically for them were being founded enthusiastically. As this was going on, "psychic wars" began to break out in which the "psychic vampire" community rallied around one or more members who complained of being attacked, often during IRC chat sessions, by other "psychic vampires" (either members of the group or hostile outsiders). These claims baffled and disturbed blood drinking vampiric people who could not understand what these attacks meant or how to assess claims of something they could not perceive. The skepticism--no matter how quiet and noncommittal--the "psychic vampires" sensed from other members of the OVC contributed to a widening crack. Instead of seeing themselves as "real vampires" with an experience in common (a need to "feed" on blood or "energy"), the online community was beginning to separate into two halves. One side still felt that vampirism by definition implied a need to drink blood, and the other side was beginning to openly suggest that "real vampires" should not need to drink blood, but instead should aspire to the "higher" level of "psi-feeding." Long before this difference of opinion became openly contentious, it was creating a deep psychological rift. But the greatest irony of all in this development, at least from my perspective, was that it was all my fault.

Prior to the publication of my FireHeart article in fall, 1987, nobody, under any circumstances, considered a "psychic vampire" something that could be positive, or that anyone would ever admit to being. Every book that dealt with "real life vampirism" defined vampirism on the basis of blood drinking. If psychic vampires were mentioned at all, it was in the context of early occult literature that described psychic vampires as people (or astral entities) who drained the vitality of others, either unconsciously or maliciously. Some books described "psychic vampires" as the leechlike, clinging, using personality types defined and denounced by both the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set. The sole "positive" reference to a "psychic vampire" from his own point of view occurs in Norine Dresser's American Vampires, and that was published two years after my article. Without meaning to, I had introduced a totally new paradigm for psychic vampirism, and when it was dropped into the whirling maelstrom of the Internet, with the posting of the old article on the EarthSpirit website at the beginning of 1997, it was like a bomb going off. When I put up my first website as a response to the article, I only managed to pour gasoline on a roaring fire.

All of these people who were reading my website weren't adopting my ideas as a whole package. They were extracting from my site what agreed with their pre-existing worldview and ideology, which ninety-nine percent of the time meant completely ignoring my assertions that all "real vampires" need to drink blood and that "psychic vampires" are not separate entities. My site acted as a psychic vampire manifesto, and those who read it adapted my ideas, and passed them on to others who further adapted them, and so on. I had started a revolution, in which a "psychic vampire" suddenly was not a draining, energy-challenged individual who leeched off other people and needed to be "cured," "magically bound," or avoided, but a kind of superior being, a potential master energy-wielder, who could outgrow any need to "feed" on blood, or on other people. But I didn't own this revolution. I watched my ideas, my terminology, and often my exact words circulate through the Internet, and I didn't get the credit for them. (To be fair, most of the people passing them on evidently had no clue about their origins. For example, the term "pranic vampirism" originates with me--I'm the first person to link the word "pranic" and the word "vampire." But nobody remembers that now.) But I did get the grief for the results. Many blood drinking vampiric people didn't like me because some self-defined "psychic vampires" were adapting my ideas in ways rather unflattering to them (and very much at variance from my intentions); some "psychic vampires" didn't like me because I continued to insist there was no such thing as a "psychic vampire;" and almost everyone was dubious about me because of my "vampire traits checklists," which were widely seen as a bad idea. As I became buried under an avalanche of e-mail that mostly pled for an explanation of checklist scores, I was beginning to agree with that point of view.

The Psychic Vampire Revolution was a movement whose time had come, and the self-defined "psychic vampires" (or "psi-vamps") can't be blamed for the way they expanded into the nascent online community. After all, so many of us continued to bravely maintain that the "vampire community" should (somehow) include every self-defined vampire. What nobody seemed to realize--perhaps not even the "psi-vamps" themselves--was that the "psychic vampire" community was hiving off into its own completely independent reality, with its own leaders, its own subcommunity, its own vocabulary, and its own concepts. It was also growing explosively, with self-defined "psi-vamps" outnumbering both blood drinkers and "hybrids." As the "psi-vamps" became stronger, more self-assured, more articulate, and developed a better consensus, their collective influence naturally became much stronger in the general online fora. The blood drinking vampiric people found their own opposing self-definitions thrown into sharp relief as a result, and began reaffirming their own identity, pulling back into their own subgroup and grumbling behind the scenes.

Under the mounting pressure of this still unacknowledged and widening breach, the explicit issues finally erupted publicly in September 1998. Some blood drinking vampiric people logged complaints that the "psi-vamps" were "taking over." Sanguinarius forcefully stated her view that "real vampires" were defined as blood-craving or blood-lusting Sanguinarians, period, and that "psychic vampires" were not worthy of the name. She posted this message on both the Bloody Minded messageboard and then the much more general Vampire Community messageboard, and the "psi-vamps" suddenly found themselves brutally challenged by an acknowledged leader of the vampire community. They were, naturally, hurt and dismayed, the more so because a few other Sanguinarians cheered Sanguinarius' message and added their agreement. Some "psi-vamps" angrily responded to Sanguinarius' message while others simply abandoned the messageboard for their own more exclusive fora (at least until they cooled off). Sanguinarius later relented on her strong position and apologised, but she continued to state that she simply did not understand the "psi-vamps'" perspective on life, and that her real allegiance was to other Sanguinarians and their issues. Her view was probably representative of many blood drinking vampiric people. However, Sanguinarius and many others reaffirmed their dedication to the community as a whole. An uneasy truce was settled, and Sanguinarius renamed her main messageboard "the Vampiric Community messageboard" in accordance with a new suggestion of Amy's that we consider ourselves the "vampiric" community of "vampiric" people (not just "vampires").

At about this same time I was undergoing a private capitulation, based partly upon my finally realizing what I had, in a certain sense, wrought, and partly upon bowing at long last to another in a string of disappointments I had encountered ever since getting online in December of 1994. I threw in the towel for good on any ideas of unifying "real vampires" under a single multi-faceted definition. I also admitted to myself that the people in the online community were not the people I was seeking, and that it was unfair of me to expect them to be. I made a long post ("People Like Me") to this effect on the Vampiric Community messageboard, and I also posted a long, abject, public apology to Amy Krieytaz for misunderstandings regarding her proposal to name "hybrid" or "psi-blood feeding" vampiric people after me, as "Arthenian vampires." I then temporarily took down some sections of the Real Vampires Home Page website, including the troublesome "real vampire traits checklists," for long-planned and extensive revisions.

Although some of the upsets settled down, the general tenor of the online fora did not improve. As I saw it, the contention of the big split created a psycho-social atmosphere that attracted a great deal of negativity to the Vampiric Community fora. When I launched my completely redesigned website in December, 1998, now named Living Vampires, I created an accompanying messageboard for it, and also started a couple of e-mail lists. But for the next eighteen months, my fora and all the other high-traffic messageboards were constantly plagued by a series of extremely persistent, obnoxious and Internet-savvy trolls, several of them posting from other countries. It seemed that we messageboard moderators spent all our time deleting obscene posts, tracing IP numbers, identifying nuisance posters who used multiple nicknames, filing complaints to ISP's, and struggling to keep discouraged members from giving up on us. Several boards survived a number of sophisticated denial-of-service attacks in which they were flooded with hundreds of obscene posts. Server.com only advised us to "ignore" the trolls and asked me at one point "what we'd done to offend these people" and provoke them into bothering us so much.

Apart from the outright trolls, I was distressed by the fact that most of the owners of messageboards appeared willing to tolerate, and sometimes even encourage, personalities on their boards that I saw as being highly destructive to any "community" spirit and discouraging to other posters. The most active and verbose posters, it seemed, tended to be strongly opinionated and blunt-spoken egotists who were always ready to lecture, attack and abuse anyone they disagreed with--and on top of that, made it clear that they didn't identify themselves as "vampires" or vampiric people of any kind, but needed to explain to all of us why we were wrong about things. There were also some individuals who were very obviously (to me, anyway) quite mentally ill, yet were praised for their poetic wisdom and truthful insight. I communicated at length to other messageboard moderators about my concerns, and my feeling that we all needed to raise our standards and have the fortitude to moderate much more strongly on behalf of our more humble members who were being intimidated by these overbearing individuals. The other moderators chose not to agree with my advice.

By spring of 2000, I was fed up with handling the problem posters and being flamed to cinders on my own messageboard. I closed my messageboard and other fora down and retreated from participation in any and all Vampiric Community fora. In retrospect, I probably should have had a thicker skin. But there were other stressors in my life at that time, and I decided that I wasn't being rewarded for the investment of time and energy I was making. Sarasvati offered to take over my Server.com messageboard, stating that she felt it was important to some of its core members, trolls regardless. I turned the messageboard over to her, and it is still running as Echoes of Night.

But I was far from the only frustrated moderator in the online community. Most of the Server.com messageboards became moribund or were shut down, and a number of key individuals and leaders largely retreated from participating in online fora. Those that remained began to set up fora on servers with EZBoard or similar companies that required members to register and log in before they could use the forum. This virtually eliminated the problem of trolls, spamming and nuisance posts. However, some members of the online community were not comfortable with having to register as members, and others (including me) did not like the format of the new fora. These individuals refused to participate in the members-only messageboards. Many well-known websites, some of them with extensive and high-quality information, were abandoned or taken down during the next couple of years.

But, like the undead, the Vampiric Community was to prove more resiliant than it might have appeared. Because I was keeping such a low profile, I have primarily an outsider's perspective on the developments of the next several years. However, this period of time has been marked by several interesting changes:

• Informational websites became less numerous, with many folding or abandoned--but those that survived accumulated a wealth of valuable articles and material.
• Messageboards grew into multi-faceted forums serving a broad diversity of interests. Many not only include fora for Sanguinarians, "psi-vamps" and "hybrids" but also have topics like magick, Paganism and Wicca, health, fiction and film discussions, news, survivalism, support for teens and "donors," classified ads, and other themes depending on the individual board.
• A couple of different "Leadership Councils" formed and met to discuss community concerns, usually via a chat channel. I am not entirely sure of the current status of these, but I know at least one is still meeting.
• Several organizations, or "Houses," began hosting events where vampiric people could gather in person. House Kheperu, for example, hosts an annual Open House gathering. "Vampire Meet-ups" began to occur on an informal level throughout the United States, with varying numbers participating.
• The "Otherkin community" appeared and began to grow as fast, and in much the same way, as the "psi-vamp" community had done. A small minority of "Otherkin" (sometimes just "Kin") defined themselves as vampiric; most described themselves as faery, dragon, angelic or were-animal souls. But the Kin community began to work with the Vampiric Community in some venues, most notably the Shadowlore network, which organizes meet-ups and gatherings.
• Some vampiric people attained a fairly high public profile. These include Don Hendrie ("The Vampire Don"), who was featured on MTV's "reality program," Real World, and Michelle Belanger, whose books are being published by Samuel Weiser, and who is lecturing at universities about real life vampirism.
• The Atlanta Vampire Alliance launched an ambitious, multi-year project in which it distributed two questionaires, comprising nearly 1,000 questions altogether, to vampiric people and "energy workers." It is presently collating and analyzing the data and issues periodic progress reports through the survey website, Suscitacio Enterprises.

© 2007 By Light Unseen Media. All Rights Reserved.

Updated 9/1/07