A self-confessed “needle-phobe”, Browning had not been looking forward to the feeding. “I’m actually pretty fearful of anything sharp approaching my skin,” he says. But as a researcher at Louisiana State University, he was willing to go through with it for his latest project: an ethnographic study of the New Orleans “real vampire” community.
Was the blood-feeding a religious ritual, a delusion, or a fetish? Before he had met any vampires, Browning suspected they had just blurred the line between fact and fiction. “I’d assumed that these people were bonkers and had just read too many Anne Rice novels.”
By the time he had offered himself as a donor, however, his opinions had taken a U-turn. Many real-life vampires have no belief in the paranormal and have little more than a passing knowledge of True Blood or Dracula; nor do they appear to have any psychiatric issues. Instead, they claim to suffer from a strange medical condition – fatigue, headaches, and excruciating stomach pain – which, they believe, can only be treated by feeding on another human’s blood.
“There are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s a fad,” says Browning. Their symptoms and behaviour are a genuine mystery.
there are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone
For many, real-life vampirism is a taboo; over the last few decades, it has come to be associated with gruesome murders such as the notorious case of Rod Ferrell in the US, a deluded killer apparently inspired by a fantasy role-playing game. “When people talk about self-identified vampires, a lot of times these horrible images come to mind,” says DJ Williams, a sociologist at Idaho State University. “So the community has been closed and suspicious of outsiders.” As a result of the stigma, the vampires I've contacted online have asked me to use aliases within this article.
It was not always this way; across history, we can find cases where human blood was considered a bona-fide medical cure. At the end of the 15th Century, for instance, Pope Innocent VIII’s physician allegedly bled three young men to death and fed their blood (still warm) to his dying master, with the hope that it might pass on their youthful vitality.
Later on, it was used to treat epilepsy; the afflicted were encouraged to gather around the gallows and collect the warm blood dripping from recently executed criminals. “Blood was a medium between the physical and spiritual,” explains Richard Sugg at the University of Durham, who recently wrote a book on “corpse medicine” and who is currently writing a volume on vampirism. By drinking the blood of a healthy young man, he says, you were imbibing his spirit and curing whatever afflicted your soul. These treatments only fell out of favour following the Enlightenment, and the onset of a more general sense of prudery that took hold in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
It was a common tale that seemed to resonate with most of the vampires he met. Besides relentless fatigue, other common symptoms appear to include severe headaches and stomach cramps. CJ!, for instance, has been plagued with an irritable bowel, which she says can only be cured after a drink of blood. “After consuming a sizeable quantity (somewhere between seven shot glasses to even a cup), our digestive system works wonderfully.”
OMG. Irritable Bowel IBS @darkknight111 Can you please clue us in on this? Did you not say that this can be from sexual abuse?
Possibly some of these drinkers have been sexually abused and if so have been doing it for years and years waiting for the cure.
wow that's pretty scary to think about, but it does make sense considering all the people that mysteriously vanish and the gruesome stories that our feed to us by TPTB. It also explains all the blood and gore in old folk/fairy tales. While we've been taught to think about many of the stories as entertainment, I wonder if they were really told as a 'warnings' so people wouldn't venture too far out on their own?? I was an elementary teacher, so I also know that teaching the 'original' versions of such stories is greatly frowned upon, so once again, the average person is not allowed access to the 'big picuture'😔
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SuzeQ2018 ago
Why are they not asking HOW and WHY these so call 'conspiracy theories' started? It's SO obvious that they don't want to get to the truth!
carmencita ago
YES Totally agree. CIA and the Deep State uses this all the time on us. Calling us Wacky and CTs. There are cases of Blood Drinkers.
It's not all Conspiracy. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151021-the-people-who-drink-human-blood An article by one Their Own- BBC
A self-confessed “needle-phobe”, Browning had not been looking forward to the feeding. “I’m actually pretty fearful of anything sharp approaching my skin,” he says. But as a researcher at Louisiana State University, he was willing to go through with it for his latest project: an ethnographic study of the New Orleans “real vampire” community.
Was the blood-feeding a religious ritual, a delusion, or a fetish? Before he had met any vampires, Browning suspected they had just blurred the line between fact and fiction. “I’d assumed that these people were bonkers and had just read too many Anne Rice novels.”
By the time he had offered himself as a donor, however, his opinions had taken a U-turn. Many real-life vampires have no belief in the paranormal and have little more than a passing knowledge of True Blood or Dracula; nor do they appear to have any psychiatric issues. Instead, they claim to suffer from a strange medical condition – fatigue, headaches, and excruciating stomach pain – which, they believe, can only be treated by feeding on another human’s blood.
“There are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s a fad,” says Browning. Their symptoms and behaviour are a genuine mystery.
there are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone
For many, real-life vampirism is a taboo; over the last few decades, it has come to be associated with gruesome murders such as the notorious case of Rod Ferrell in the US, a deluded killer apparently inspired by a fantasy role-playing game. “When people talk about self-identified vampires, a lot of times these horrible images come to mind,” says DJ Williams, a sociologist at Idaho State University. “So the community has been closed and suspicious of outsiders.” As a result of the stigma, the vampires I've contacted online have asked me to use aliases within this article.
It was not always this way; across history, we can find cases where human blood was considered a bona-fide medical cure. At the end of the 15th Century, for instance, Pope Innocent VIII’s physician allegedly bled three young men to death and fed their blood (still warm) to his dying master, with the hope that it might pass on their youthful vitality.
Later on, it was used to treat epilepsy; the afflicted were encouraged to gather around the gallows and collect the warm blood dripping from recently executed criminals. “Blood was a medium between the physical and spiritual,” explains Richard Sugg at the University of Durham, who recently wrote a book on “corpse medicine” and who is currently writing a volume on vampirism. By drinking the blood of a healthy young man, he says, you were imbibing his spirit and curing whatever afflicted your soul. These treatments only fell out of favour following the Enlightenment, and the onset of a more general sense of prudery that took hold in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
It was a common tale that seemed to resonate with most of the vampires he met. Besides relentless fatigue, other common symptoms appear to include severe headaches and stomach cramps. CJ!, for instance, has been plagued with an irritable bowel, which she says can only be cured after a drink of blood. “After consuming a sizeable quantity (somewhere between seven shot glasses to even a cup), our digestive system works wonderfully.”
OMG. Irritable Bowel IBS @darkknight111 Can you please clue us in on this? Did you not say that this can be from sexual abuse? Possibly some of these drinkers have been sexually abused and if so have been doing it for years and years waiting for the cure.
SuzeQ2018 ago
wow that's pretty scary to think about, but it does make sense considering all the people that mysteriously vanish and the gruesome stories that our feed to us by TPTB. It also explains all the blood and gore in old folk/fairy tales. While we've been taught to think about many of the stories as entertainment, I wonder if they were really told as a 'warnings' so people wouldn't venture too far out on their own?? I was an elementary teacher, so I also know that teaching the 'original' versions of such stories is greatly frowned upon, so once again, the average person is not allowed access to the 'big picuture'😔