Ever sat back after a long day, gulped down a delicious slurp of beer and thought: “I wish that’d been a nice glass of lukewarm human blood” instead.
No? Neither have I, because I really like lager. Oh, and I’m not a vampire. Or a cannibal. But apparently, according to recent research there are mass communities of ordinary folk drinking human blood on a regular basis.
According to American professor John Edgar Browning – who spent five years examining the real-life vampire communities of New Orleans – “vampires walk among us.” But it’s not as creepy and Dracula-esque as you’re probably imagining…
As John explains:
“Theyre not real in the sense that they turn into bats and live forever but many do sport fangs and just as many live a primarily nocturnal existence. These are just some of the cultural markers real vampires adopt to express a shared (and, according to them, biological) essence they need blood (human or animal) or psychic energy from donors in order to feel healthy.”
Umm OK. But why does someone become a blood-sucking human, and where do they source human blood from? Despite hating needles, the professor (clearly dedicated to his research) allowed one modern-day vampire to “feed” from him.
Unlike the neck-breaking “feeding” we’re used to seeing in Buffy, the everyday vampire experience is a lot more medical. After swabbing a particular delicious looking area on John’s upper back with an alcohol swab, the “vampire” punctured his skin with a disposable hobby scalpel, squeezed until he started bleeding and then started drinking from the wound.
Perhaps in the ultimate insult, he told John that his “blood was not as metallic as it should have been – so he was a little bit disappointed.” If I let someone literally drink my blood, I’d hope they’d be a little bit more appreciative than that. Anyway, they then cleaned up and headed off, as if nothing had ever happened, to a charity dinner together. Because, according to John, these vampires are “competent and generally outwardly “normal” citizens”. Basically you, me or old Fred next door.
So despite my assumptions that these people got into blood-sucking after reading a few too many Twilight novels, it appears that real-life vampires claim to suffer, not from psychiatric issues, but instead from a strange medical condition.
Sufferers claim to experience “fatigue, headaches and excruciating stomach pain” that is only relieved when they drink human blood, and additionally many have a “marked lack of knowledge about vampires in popular culture.”
But some real-life vampires like mum-of-two Julia Caples engages in “blood-sucking” as a way of feeling ‘young and vigorous’, saying that guzzling down other peoples blood makes her feel “stronger and healthier”, sometimes drinking up to half – a – gallon a month.
As Browning explains:
“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…Its a condition they claim to be unable to change. So, they embrace it.”
I’m not sure if I’d embrace those thoughts, no matter how strong they were, but the Professor makes a strong point that, “real vampires can also help us understand… some of the ideological baggage each of us carries… They show that being different doesn’t have to force you onto the margins of society.
So, next time your mate asks for a taste of your red stuff, maybe brush away your judgement, grab an alcohol wipe and let them suck away.
But heaven forbid your taste isn’t metally enough…
H/T: BBC Future, John Edgar Browning
source http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/13/real-life-vampires-why-these-people-are-drinking-human-blood/
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