Twilight writer Stephenie Meyer lied to us: Vampires don’t look like Edward Cullen. And also on Viago from “Real Ghouls”. How did we know? Very simple. We found a modern vampire society in Moscow and went to meet with its representatives to see with our own eyes where the modern followers of Dracula live and how they survive in the big city. Spoiler: No garlic and pale skin, but the blood they drink is quite real, human. But first things first.
“I’m looking for a vampire”, “I want to be a donor” – in the discussions of the Brotherhood of Vampires community, although dating is not the most common, it is no less active than during rush hour on Tinder. For almost 20 years, the “Brotherhood” has gathered an audience of more than 10 thousand people, and although the general broadcast has been silent for more than a year, the discussions are updated almost daily – vampires are looking for donors (yes, we are talking about blood), ordinary mortals – “real” vampires . In the vastness of VKontakte alone there are tens of thousands of such groups, but in general there are the same names here.
Modern vampires are reluctant to talk about and about their community, but in the “About Us” section on one of the largest thematic forums, the Vampire Community, it is stated that they have little in common with their direct audience characters. culture. “We are not immortal, we do not become anyone, we are not omnipotent. We don’t have werewolf wars, we don’t fly, we don’t live in Transylvania. We will not turn you into a vampire, we are not ruled by any clan, we have no teachers, lords or princes. We are individuals who exhibit certain symptoms that are often labeled ‘vampirism’.”
Posts on the wall of the Sanguinary and Donor community (VKontakte)
In general, the main purpose of the community is to find like-minded people and share experiences, so there are articles about getting and eating the right blood, and materials about why you shouldn’t tell the doctor you’re a vampire and even that you are a vampire. Branded vampire shop with souvenirs. In 13 years, Vampire Community viewership has grown from nearly 200 to over 3,000: According to the community’s internal data, mostly vampires are between the ages of 20 and 24 (25.7%), most singles (74.1%), believe in magic (85.4%), and don’t tell anyone outside of the community about their vampirism. (52.4%) they do not say.
Here they believe that vampirism is a special physical state, a state of mind, that you are born a vampire and the process of transformation throughout life is called awakening. The latter is characterized by hunger, mood swings, weakness, headache, insomnia, dissatisfied with ordinary food. And then you fall into one of three categories of vampires: blood-fed sanguinarians, energy-fed energy vampires, and hybrids that need both.
In its broadest sense, the modern vampire community has no internal organization, hierarchy, or rules, and all existing large forums and communities serve rather as a platform for the exchange of communications and a desktop encyclopedia for “beginners.” And it is unlikely to call the community large-scale – the Vampire Community has 3.5 thousand active users throughout Russia, the publics on VKontakte and other social networks add several thousand to them, but this is the end of the calculation. What else can be said about modern vampires? Among them, apparently, a few are friendly – we have seen this from our own experience.
Those who call themselves real vampires refuse meetings, send them to blacklists, sometimes request an interview with “an 18-year-old girl and a medical professional to draw blood” (the author’s spelling is preserved), and they rarely act in successful conversations. highly confidential – they are reluctant to discuss anything but blood donation.
“You’re already whispering. Walk carefully through the dark streets,” warns our editor, a user nicknamed True Source. That same night, at around three o’clock, he wakes up to a knock on his door from a girl he doesn’t know. “Do you have anything to fear and be afraid of?” He asks another editor, one of our heroes who introduces himself as Morgant. And the next day he wakes up with a swollen eye and constant calls from unknown numbers. In preparing this material, one editor managed to refuse him, and another had to go to a meeting with a vampire at night – almost the only one out of several dozen who received our request, who agreed to speak.
Calling himself Morgant, the vampire is 25 years old and looks like a normal guy – nothing flashy other than a fishnet mask on his face. He asks all guests of his vampire commune (including us) to wear the same thing – a small apartment where he lives at dusk and by candlelight with four other colleagues. Romance – you say vampires – we will answer. Our hero speaks about himself in a monosyllabic and roundabout way: for example, he refuses to name his age (the quote should be a joke: “And how long ago were you 17 years old?” – “Yes already”), but says that he is himself. he claims that he saw the destruction of more than one state, that it was not reflected in the mirror, but later joked. What he is absolutely sure of is “it is darkness and death”. Also, because his body is dead, human emotions are alien to him, and vampires are ideal creatures.
“A vampire in human society will never let him sleep. Human fear is strong, and I think that the moment a human falls asleep, they try to kill a vampire – that’s the most logical thing to do. What else could threaten me? Knowledge is the main force of living humans. But humans are to us and we to them.” “We’re drawn to it – that’s nature. People are interested in everything, they’re too curious to refuse, some even brave enough to try to interact.” But according to our editor, Morgant, “eat, but not to your liking”: “Personally, I prefer Asian women. I love their scent.”
Speaking of food, what unites all vampires exactly is their food preferences. They really drink blood (this process is called feeding), and it is not like the Twilight scenes, where people are caught in dark streets: before the meeting, as a rule, donors are tested for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis, blood used antiseptics and various tools – from knives and syringes to needles and scalpels. Dinner is provided by donors (who are also breadwinners) – people who are ready to give their blood to feed the vampire. Usually they do not pay for it, the main thing is a minute blood union with a supernatural being.
“Maybe it will hurt – you need to know your pain threshold and whether you are afraid of blood. It does not matter to me, but I will worry about my man. The procedure looks like this: the hand is tightened with a tourniquet, as in donating blood, then you need to work with a fist, and in the vein about four millimeters. I will make a cut. Let me warn you right away: I do not like wounds and prefer not to leave any traces of me. I only get what I need, ”explains optimistic Ilya (not to be confused with optimistic people by personality type), that is, the person who only drinks human blood. The other will not fit because of the “vampirism virus” , but that’s okay – as it turns out, there are plenty of people who want to offer themselves as donors.
In general, vampires are all about health and safety, so their donors are treated with care and respect, although the risk of infection still remains. Besides the danger to the vampires themselves – according to hematologists, the use of blood is fraught with the occurrence of many diseases.
And on forums they often say that “feeding” leads to close relationships between vampires and donors.
Nelya Cekalova
“People are attracted to vampires because it’s an artificially created image of superpowers. They have power, cause fear – these are emotional images, bright, rich, captivating the soul. For some, it can also be a way to join the upper class, to be a part of their community, to be special,” explains Gestalt therapist Nelya Chekalova about the psychology of donor behavior.
His words are confirmed by Alexander, a former breadwinner who, according to him, has been looking for a vampire for several years to achieve “immortality, eternal youth, and superpowers,” but is disappointed with vampires after an unsuccessful appeal. Now, he calls his obsession with supernatural beings nothing more than “a desire for something unusual, new, magical stemming from a lack of emotion and impression.”
“If a person appears as a vampire, there is a certain need behind it – as a rule, this is to attract attention, to suffer and suffer, or to challenge and oppose society. It happens that fantasies turn into pathology. This usually occurs during adolescence, school years and can last for several months. As a result, if critical thinking stops working, it becomes a disorder, pathology, autism. A person falls into loneliness and isolation, fantasy does not control the flow of information. Stereotypes and monotony, emotional involvement, passivity appear,” explains Nelya Chekalova. According to him, in such situations at a certain stage the development of the personality stops – there is a lack of imagination, there is no distinction between one’s actions and fictional ones, contact with oneself is lost. However, members of the Vampire Society did not agree with him – in their own words, they consider themselves a more perfect species than human, at least surpassing him in their minds.
Psychology explains vampirism as an escape from reality: “If a person begins to see himself as a non-existent character, he clearly has problems in reality. Why do people start dreaming, flying in illusions? It’s a way of being in a place where they feel good without chemical doping. And while modern vampires have little in common with the images of Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries or Lestat and Louis from the Interview, Hollywood movies and romance novels over the past 50 years have continued to make him a cult. Vampire. Today’s Edward Cullen is more of a subculture than a supernatural phenomenon. At least until proven otherwise.
Text: Anastasia Pavlova, Olga Trukhina
Source: People Talk
