Inside the life of a vampire tourist – I’ve even written a PhD about Dracula – iNews

You get a variety of reactions when you say youre writing about vampires. Some people are interested, some visibly recoil. The strangest response was when I told a stranger my PhD thesis was on Bram Stokers novel Dracula and she said it sounded kind of boring.

I remember this because it was so unexpected you dont call someones thesis boring, any more than youd call their baby funny-looking. I also remember because it still confuses me. Ive been chasing vampires for years Dracula above all and I havent got bored yet.

When I was in primary school, our teacher read us Robert Swindells wonderful, chill-inducing Room 13. The heroes are children on a school trip to Whitby in Yorkshire the town is central to Stokers original Dracula and his stay in 1980 was the source of much inspiration.

In Room 13, the children are tasked with killing Dracula who, it turns out, is horribly real. The kids bravely shoulder this burden, arming themselves with vampire-killing tools fitting for the time and place a novelty stick of seaside rock instead of a stake.

I was hooked on Dracula from this point. Over the years Ive made pilgrimages to Whitby, Ive visited the abbey and climbed the famous 199 steps. Ive moved gingerly through a dark, winding attraction called the Dracula Experience.

Ive been to Sighioara, birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Ive tried (and failed) to order the paprika hendl which Jonathan Harker enjoys on his travels. I made the mistake which still haunts me of not buying a gift set of mini draquila bottles at Bucharest airport.

Im one of many vampire tourists. You can find us in Stokers novel itself: years after Draculas death, the surviving heroes return to Transylvania to look once more on the vampires castle. Like the books fascinated readers, they have trouble letting go.

What are we all chasing? Why do vampires and this vampire in particular have such a pull? Actor Bela Lugosi, who was best known for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 film, would say that for women, at least, the answer is in our biology.

It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it, he said. Shudder and cling and cry out and come back for more. [] It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Therefore women are born with a predestination to horror in their very bloodstream.

Im not sure if our biological nature and babies are the answer at least not the only answer. But women and vampires do often share an understanding.

In Stokers book, the main female character Mina Harker has a psychic link to Dracula. In an early work of vampire fiction, Carmilla, that predated Dracula by 20 years, the vampire woos her victim like a lover. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the powers of our female protagonist are demonic in origin, giving her an affinity with the very creatures she hunts.

I think that selfishness may be a factor in our love of vampires especially for women. Vampires face a stark choice: murder or starvation. Not astonishingly, most take the first option.

Then there are subtler forms of selfishness in vampire fiction. Theres Reginald Clarke in the 1907 novel The House of the Vampire this vampire portrait of Oscar Wilde drains people of artistic talent instead of blood. Of course there are Edward and Bella of Twilight these vegetarian vampires dont scruple to invite their non-vegetarian peers to town when their child is in danger.

Most of us would act similarly, if push came to shove. Most of us would be tempted to satisfy our own hunger, to put our families or our own art first.

The vampire is ugly, but its an ugliness we share. I think thats part of their appeal. Theres something to be said for accepting your shadow.

Its especially tempting if youve grown up female. Our world is harder on girls moral ugliness, just like its harder on our physical ugliness. Unselfishness is meant to come easily to us.

The vampire is a friend in the shadows, and when you whisper to it about the things youve thought and felt and wanted to do secret things youre ashamed of the vampire whispers back I know. When it makes humans undead, it doesnt just transform them, it brings out potential that was always lurking.

We all have it in us to be creatures of the night, ruthlessly looking out for number one. As readers and writers, we revel in it for a while. But eventually you may want to put the vampire back in his box. There comes a point in the story when too many have been killed and eaten.

The vampire is often defeated by cooperation, friends working together for the common good. The vampire lets us look at our ugliness squarely once weve seen it, we can accept it as part of ourselves. But its not all we are. We have it in us to prey on those weaker than ourselves and we have it in us to help, to be kind too.

Small Angels by Lauren Owen is out now, published by Tinder Press (18.99, Hardback)

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Inside the life of a vampire tourist - I've even written a PhD about Dracula - iNews