ampires don't exist, right? Blood-drinking vampire bats don't count, and neither do mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers or the primitive, parasitic eels known as hagfish. The definition we're after is number 1 in my Mirriam-Webster: "the re-animated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep." Vampire legends occur throughout the world, and our own seems to have originated in the folktales of Eastern Europe, with a particular rash of eyewitness reports coming out of Hungary between 1730 and 1735 to strengthen the myth.
The details vary. Do they cast a shadow or reflection? Can they change shape or fly? Are their guts on the inside or the outside? Are they halted by garlic or prayers or running water? Killed by fire or decapitation or stakes through the heart?
Still, the essential hallmarks of the vampire are globally unambiguous: a creature, apparently human in form but with deformed or elongated teeth, that can subsist only on blood, that hunts human prey at night and that is rapidly harmed or killed by exposure to daylight. And that's impossible, right?
Oh, sure, there are people out there who dress like vampires or play live-action vampire role-playing games, and there are even a few people here and there who suffer from "clinical vampirism," a psychological disorder that makes them avoid daylight and believe—or claim to believe—that they must drink human blood in order to survive. Not all of these people are violent or antisocial, but their disorder—a form of cannibalism—is loosely associated with other potentially dangerous ones like necrophilia, sadism, compulsions and a general fascination with blood (which would be called hemophilia if that name weren't already taken by a clotting disorder). Clinical vampirism has been implicated in hundreds of murders (some 650 by 16th-century Hungarian countess Erzebet Bathory alone), but these are acts of deranged minds, not of real vampires.
Reflections on real-world vampires
However, many vampiric traits can be mimicked by human diseases in the real world. In fact, these disorders may have played a major role in the genesis of the vampire myth. The first and most obvious of these is porphyria—a disorder of the heme, or red pigment in the blood's hemoglobin. The teeth of porphyrics have a characteristic reddish-brown tinge that may, in some cases, contribute to an appearance of bodily decay, and/or an appearance of having drunk some thick, viscous, reddish-brown liquid. Sufferers also experience bouts of abdominal pain, vomiting, paralysis and hysteria, which occur irregularly but which can also be triggered or exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol. Wasn't it Dracula who said, "I never drink ... wine"?
Porphyric attacks can also be triggered by exposure to bright light, in which case they occur alongside the disorder's most terrible symptom: rapid and serious sunburn. For victims of this disease, the skin becomes incredibly sensitive not only to sunlight, but to the blue and long-wave ultraviolet components of artificial light as well. In the most serious cases, even a few seconds' exposure to fluorescent lighting can raise burns and blisters on the skin. Thus, victims tend not only to lead nocturnal lives, but to wrap themselves in dark clothing, to wear gloves and sunglasses and hats, to walk in the shadows even at night, and to read and live and congregate by the light of candles and kerosene lamps.
In rare cases, the disorder may strike in adulthood, but it's generally hereditary and presents itself in infancy, among extended families well accustomed to its challenges. We might profitably call them the Clans of Night. The victims also tend to be badly anemic, or lacking in iron, and like anemics of every sort, they crave iron-rich foods like rare meat. I don't mean to cast any aspersions on the men and women who brave this illness, which affects well over one person in 100,000 worldwide. But it isn't hard to see how a lifestyle like that could be ... misinterpreted.
Another illness that keeps people out of the sunlight and in the cool spotlight of prejudice is albinism, or lack of the skin pigment melanin. Most humans come in various shades of brown, and darken further when exposed to sunlight. Even the blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned peoples of northern Europe are more beige than white. Albinos, though, have no pigment at all; their skins are really pale, their hair is white and their eyes are pale blue, white or pink.
Blood vessels may also be prominently visible in their skin and eyes—an appearance that people may find disturbing if they're not prepared for it. Still, this is another common disorder, affecting roughly 1 in 20,000 people regardless of national origin. And while its effects are not as damaging as porphyria, the skin does sunburn very easily, and the eyes may be extremely sensitive, leading to "photophobia" or a fear of bright lights. Other vision problems may be present as well.
Albinism is a hereditary condition, but an autoimmune disease called vitiligo or leukoderma can destroy pigment in mature individuals, as happened to pop star Michael Jackson. Advanced cases may resemble albinism, and since the major symptom is a rash of white spots on the skin that gradually spread and merge, the main treatment is cosmetic: bleaching of the skin to reduce the contrast (and UV protection) of the remaining pigmented areas. The white get whiter.
Another condition with potentially vampiric overtones is short bowel syndrome, which occurs mainly in people who've had part of their lower intestine surgically removed. This condition presents the same symptoms as most other digestive-tract ailments: diarrhea, cramping, bloating and heartburn. However, in addition to these common complaints, SBS sufferers also have difficulty absorbing enough water, vitamins and other nutrients from their food, and may chronically suffer both malnutrition and dehydration. Thus, they tend to be thin, and to seek out a diet of soft foods and liquids. Juices, soups and liquid vitamin/mineral supplements are ideal, but sterilized blood would presumably hit the spot as well, particularly if the sufferer were anemic, as many SBS patients are.
Staking the heart of the vampire myth
Finally, there is heavy metal poisoning, which arises from exposure to toxic metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium, or overdoses of necessary metals such as copper, zinc, chromium, iron and manganese, which the body requires in small amounts. Heavy metals displace essential minerals in the body, causing symptoms that include digestive complaints, headaches and sweating. There may also be neurological symptoms including dementia, mania, impaired motor skills and "movement disorders" or tics.
None of this sounds much like a Mirriam-Webster vampire, but other symptoms can include discolored or receding gums, which make the teeth appear more prominent, and a bad taste in the mouth, which the sufferer is always trying to wash out. Color vision may also be impaired, and light sensitivity and photophobia are typical as well. Thus these poisoning victims, like porphyrics and albinos, are often creatures of the night, who hide their eyes behind the darkest glasses they can find.
Still, with these and other lifestyle modifications, many sufferers can go on to lead relatively normal (if nocturnal) lives. In point of fact, many of the conditions described above are not "illnesses" in the usual sense. Their owners may be just as strong and agile and witty as you are—or maybe more so if they spend their days in the basement with the library and the exercise equipment. So in a world of 6 billion people, there are probably hundreds of spry, healthy-looking individuals with porphyria and a short bowel, or mercury poisoning and anemia, who live in darkness and subsist largely on beef broth and V8 juice, and perhaps other iron-rich liquids as well.
To call them vampires would be a grave disservice, and it's doubtful that even Anne Rice's staunchest fans would volunteer for such afflictions. But in ages past, when superstition reigned supreme over science and reason, how might these illnesses have been interpreted, perhaps even by the sufferers themselves? Too, it should be noted that when the grave of a suspected vampire was exhumed, ancient investigators would indeed find a clinically dead person, whose receding tissues had mysteriously made its hair and nails appear hideously grown. And if they chopped its head off or drove a stake through its heart, just to be sure, might a bubble of escaping gas not groan its way out between the corpse's lips, creating the terrifying illusion of a creature not wholly dead?
And then, of course, there are the genuine premature burials. By some estimates as many as 10 percent of the bodies buried in preindustrial societies were in fact still alive, and many of these would later wake up to find their darkest fears realized: They were buried alive. The old graveyards were witness to many a clawed coffin, or a grasping hand thrust desperately through the soil with its owner's last strength. Is it any wonder that rumors of the undead were so widely believed? It just goes to show you that ancient people were mostly good witnesses—if lousy interpreters—and even the wildest myths may be firmly grounded in fact.
So, who wants a drink?
Wil McCarthy is a rocket guidance engineer, robot designer, science-fiction author and occasional aquanaut. He has contributed to three interplanetary spacecraft, five communication and weather satellites, a line of landmine-clearing robots and some other "really cool stuff" he can't tell us about. His short writings have graced the pages of Analog, Asimov's, Wired, Nature and other major publications, and his book-length works include the New York Times notable Bloom, The Collapsium and most recently The Wellstone and a related nonfiction book, Hacking Matter.
