Although the individuals in this category are repudiated and unwelcome among Vampire-Identified People and in the Vampiric Community, they need to be discussed here. For the average person on the street, these people--and none others--are what come to mind when the notion of "real vampires" in any sense is brought up. They are frequently included in popular books about "real life vampires" and are the primary focus of "vampire" documentaries. Vampire-Identified People and the Vampiric Community need to clearly distinguish themselves from these individuals and their labeling by the psychological establishment and the media as "vampires."

A vampire-like predator is a person who has a sociopathic mental illness that leads him (they are almost invariably male) to behave like a vampire, and sometimes to actually self-identify as one. In most cases, this identification is with folklore/fictional vampires such as Dracula, Anne Rice's characters or the vampires in role-playing games. But more usually, vampire-like predators are simply obsessed with blood and will commit brutal crimes without remorse in order to see, taste, and feel it. They may also take on some of the trappings of Vampyre Lifestylers by wearing capes or trenchcoats, sleeping in coffins, filling their homes with skulls, bones, and souvenirs stolen from cemeteries, and so on, but they should not be confused with true Lifestylers.

Several notorious criminals in history are considered by scholars and psychologists to have been vampire-like predators, including Fritz Haarman, Gilles de Rais, the Marquis de Sade, John George Haigh, Richard Trenton Chase, and Elizabeth Bathory. These individuals appear over and over in non-fiction books about vampires. There have been more recent cases, of which the most notorious is probably the Rod Ferrell murders in Florida. In 2006, the Kimveer Gill shooting in Canada was the direct cause of one "real vampire" website, Some Lives Are Different, being terminated by its ISP.

"Clinical vampirism" is the term used by psychologists to describe vampire-like behavior such as blood drinking, believing one is a supernatural or fictional type of vampire, and so on, whether or not criminal aggression against other people is a factor. Richard Noll, in Vampires, Werewolves and Demons (1991), proposed naming the pattern of escalating "vampire-like" behavior described in psychiatric case histories "Renfield's Syndrome," based on the fly-eating character Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Renfield's Syndrome is described as having four stages:

1. a trauma or "critical incident" in childhood in which the patient discovers that the taste and sight of blood is "exciting" or attractive;
2. "autovampirism," the drinking of one's own blood (autohemophagia);
3. "zoophagia," or the consumption of blood from animals;
4. and finally "true vampirism," in which the patient must have human blood, and may resort to stealing blood from medical facilities, or serial murder.

In addition to criminals like these, there is another form of human vampire-like predator that stalks the Vampiric Community itself. These include individuals who frequent chatrooms, messageboards, and social networking groups looking for impressionable people (usually the predator is male and the targeted victims are young women, but there are exceptions) to entice with mysterious promises of "hidden secrets" or offers of "turning." The predator's real goal is rape, if not worse. There have been too many grim stories in which victims agreed to meet a self-avowed "vampire" they had met online and wound up having an extremely negative--sometimes fatal--encounter. In other cases, victims were drawn into an extended relationship or a cult-like situation in which they were abused over a period of time before they finally were helped, or escaped. These predators tend to be charming, manipulative, coercive, and adept at telling their targets what they want to hear, and can often seem very convincing. Every news story about one of these criminals does inestimable harm to the public perception of the real Vampiric Community and its members.

For more information about vampire-like predators who prey on the Vampiric Community, see:

Real Predators on the Vampiric Studies website
Social Predators by SphynxCat
Sociopaths by SphynxCat

Many leaders in the Vampiric Community recommend Isaac Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame to individuals seeking to join an offline "House" or group for Vampiric People. This frame has been used for many years in the Pagan Community and has become more important in the Vampiric Community with the proliferation of offline organizations and groups. SphynxCat has written a valuable article on the topic of joining a Vampire House or similar group, Joining a House, Church or other Organization.

© 2007 By Light Unseen Media. All Rights Reserved.