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Chapter One: Separating Fact from Fiction
While preparing this book, I have been asked, by many skeptical people, questions like: "How could vampires really exist?" or even, "Are you serious?" Most went on to add that the bloodsuckers of fiction seem a bit hard to believe in; after all, if they really feed on humans like they are portrayed in the movies as doing, wouldn't there be an enormous number of victims found in alleys, or perhaps even in graveyards, on any given morning? There obviously haven't been any such victims, though, because their blood-drained bodies and the familiar punctured neck wounds would have attracted enough media attention to make belief in vampires commonplace by now.
These types of arguments make it a little hard for most people in the twentieth century to believe in the existence of an order of being that can live forever and feed off the vitality of humans. In this technological age, who among us finds it easy to accept that such a creature can escape the notice of science?
Before we get into the hard-to-believe nature of the vampire's attributes and abilities, let's do away with the need for any pre-existing scientific skepticism. I consider those who are interested in the occult to be the scientists of the future. If everyone were to accept that what cience has not yet discovered does not exist, science would stagnate and society could not advance. Keep in mind that a lot of things that the ancients considered mystical have been explained by science—and the ancients believed in vampires.
Let's apply some rational, scientific thinking to the subject of this book's study. The truths presented in these pages have been proven empirically, both by myself and by others before me. In each case presented in the chapters that follow, all the evidence (which takes many different forms) is presented fully to show how certain conclusions were drawn. In other words, don't take my word for the bizarre, yet true, facts you are about to read. Please judge them for yourself. My intention in writing this book was not to create a fantastic tale of vampirism and expect others to believe it; that is what vampire novels are for (and there are a lot of those—around the time of this writing, two or three are published every month, with even more coming out near Halloween). Instead, I wanted to present the first complete treatise on the subject—one that looks at all the realities of vampirism in detail and separates the truth from the fiction.
Doing away with preconceived notions is one of the hardest things that an investigator of the paranormal has to do. It is important to keep an open mind when dealing with things that do not lend themselves to easy observation—to my knowledge, no immortal vampire has ever knocked on a medical scientist's door and asked for a physical exam. The subject of our study is a covert one, and we therefore have to look for covert clues. Solving the puzzle of vampirism requires that we see all the pieces and recognize them for what they are. Keeping an open mind makes that possible.
In the case of vampires, we have to remember that they are not fictional creatures created by early novelists. The undead are creatures of folklore, and the first literature mentioning them was in every way considered nonfiction by those who penned it; in fact, most of those early treatises were written by the respected scholars of the day. Few people, however, are aware of the various tales of the undead that were not "made up" for the racks of bookstores, but were instead documented for preservation in the libraries of the time.
Fortunately, age-old occult literature about vampires still exists. From various firsthand accounts, diaries, and investigations, one can quickly see that something very real was being described. There are, however, several distinctions between the vampires described in those texts and the beings portrayed in popular fiction and movies.
Before looking for the reality behind the legends, it is important to first separate the legends from the fiction. Writers like Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, Tanith Lee, and Brian Lumley, among countless others, have created fantastic attributes and powers for their vampires, but those beings are not the subject of our study. Trying to find the truth behind those fictional creations is as ridiculous as trying to find the truth behind the monster created by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein. Therefore, let's begin our uncovering of the truth by defining the attributes of the vampire of folklore—the creature that you might be surprised to discover exists in more than one form.
