What Does it Mean to be a Vampire

I found a blog of someone answering questions about vampirism. Is really telling about vampirism if you don’t wanna read about it:

 

Overtime most societies evolve from their original state. The aforementioned statement should be true for vampirism. Has the modern day vampire evolved from the demonized wife of Adam? While I was trying to decide which questions would be most beneficial to my survey on modern day vampires, I decided the best way to historically and comprehensively track the vampires among us is to work from the present to the past. So, with today’s post I am going to attempt to understand the modern day meaning of vampirism.
The easiest way to define vampirism is to research existing information. The dictionary on my computer defines the word vampire as “A Corpse supposed, in European folklore, to leave its grave at night to drink the blood of the living by biting their necks with long pointed teeth.” The cause for the necessity of vampires is not mentioned in this definition so I am going to include the old Slavic definition I found in Vampires of the Slavs by Jan E. Perkowski, “a vampire is supposed to develop from a dead body into which the devil has entered.” I am sure from what I know about modern day vampires both provided definitions are not true of contemporary vampires. Evolution from old vampiric ways is the best way to explain why contemporary vampires may or may not define themselves by the provided definitions.
I determined the best way to define the answer of what vampirism means is to divide respondents by vampires and not vampires. The dividing of respondents will tell us what society thinks vampires are and what existing vampires think vampires are. Therefore, I went on Yahoo! Answers Canada and asked the simple question “What does it mean to be a vampire.” I asked respondent’s to identify whether or not they were vampires in the comment, but not everyone did. I decided if the respondent used indirect terminology such as “they” to describe vampires they were not one. If the respondent used inclusive terms like “we” they were. I got some great responses:
I determined most members of society define vampirism like the dictionaries definition. The definition I felt was a little dated. Eagleo said “well a vampire is = ampires (or vampyres) are mythological or folkloric beings that subsist on human and/or animal lifeforce. In most cases, they are reanimated corpses who feed by draining and consuming the blood of living beings.” I can only determine by the dated answers I have received from non-vampire people about vampires there isn’t really a modern definition society sees vampires with. From this I think those who don’t believe in vampire are still operating on the mythological sense of the word vampire.
The vampires answered the questions in a different form. They distinguished between to types of vampires Sanguinarian Vampires and Psi Vampires. The best example definition I have I from Lurking:

“Vampires are not like those in the movies or books, we don’t drain unwilling victims of their blood. We have kind people who are called donors and they give us the blood or energy we need. Vampires are people who have energy deficiency and need to get that energy by taking it from other people. We don’t die in the sun, can’t fly, no super powers, can cross running water, garlic, holy water and the cross don’t phase us (because we are not demons we are just different to normal people), we can see better at night than in the day, heightened senses, we do age(just not as fast) and we aren’t immortal. There are three types of vampires sang vamp, psi vamp and hybrid.

Sang vamp is short for sanguinarian vampire these are the ones that need blood. They get sunburnt really fast(I can only last 30mins before getting sun burnt with sunblock on). They get sluggish durring the day but really active at night.

Psi vamp is short for psychic vampire. They don’t drink blood but feed from chi energy instead. They can get this from touching somone or just being close to another person. The person doesn’t even know most of the time and only feel a bit drained of energy but that goes away soon after. Most psi vamps don’t even know what they are doing and can even feed while they sleep. They can also go to the astral plane.”

Next post, I will attempt to distinguish between the two types of vampires listed and their origins. If you would like to read the answers to the my Yahoo!Answers question follow this link:

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