Vampire in the Rain

We are vampires, we catch people with these hands and draw blood with these lips… Our time goes by impalpable under the shadow of the human world.
– Vampire Princess Miyu

Vampire. Vampyre. Vampir. Nosferatu. The Immortal Damned. All nouns describing a mythological creature dating back centuries. A fierce and feared creature known to prey on those who unfortunately found themselves out at night when they should have been in the safety of their own homes. Crosses, holy water, garlic, wooden stakes were the only things to help you if you were to run into one of the undead. (Fun fact: It wasn\’t until the movie Nosferatu were vampires able to be killed by sunlight.)

Per Wikipedia: \”A vampire is a being from folklore that subsists by feeding on the vital force (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires were undead beings that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighborhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today\’s gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.\”

Vlad the Impaler is at the top of the list when it comes to being speculated to have been of the immortal damned given his blood lust in connection with heinous acts. Vlad III Dracula had a reputation for cruelty so much so that letters had been written to Pope Pius II in 1462. But it wasn\’t until 1897, until Bram Stoker\’s Dracula which became the first book to make a connection between Dracula and vampirism.

Nowadays with the influence of Western culture, do we find the vampire to have been transformed from the gruesome creature of medieval Europe, to an attractive figure; one we sympathize with on the big and small screen. Many of the mystical traits associated with the vampire have been done away and instead replaced with a scientific explanation i.e. a virus as to how vampirism is spread from one person to the next.

My first memory of vampires was when I was a child. It was a dream actually. I was being chased down a long hallway by two female vampires who were intent on draining me. I ran into a bedroom where I was going to rip the curtains down and expose them to sunlight. However, to my horror, I was met with a full moon. And that is where the nightmare ends…thankfully.

Maybe it was with that childhood dream and a painting from Victoria Frances that influenced the latest photo shoot with Emily.