I’m not saying I do.
I’m not saying I don’t.
As Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” We all believe in things today that people were burned at the stake for thinking two hundred years ago. Beliefs change. I don’t believe in the literal vampires of movies and TV. But over the years I’ve seen people who live on others, in a variety of ways.
My first novel, “BITE MARKS: A Vampire Testament”, is in bookstores and for sale online now, and it opens with an ad clipped from the back page bulletin board of the Village Voice:
DO YOU BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES?
Book researchers seek true stories of encounters with psychic or supernatural vampires. Don’t send proof until requested. Mail your story to POB 1408 Brooklyn, NY 11217.
Village Voice Bulletin Board
December 1986
The question haunted me while I wrote “BITE MARKS”, immersed for almost a decade in a mysterious nighttime world of virtually immortal beings with abilities beyond human, vampires with lives that spanned many human lifetimes. Creatures with time to consider the great ideas of the ages. Time to grow, to learn, and see the world in perspective. Time to live. Time to love.
Time to kill.
I started this website to promote my book, but it soon occurred to me that it was also a way to explore the questions that arose while I wrote the novel, as I created my own vision of what their lives would be like. What is a “true” vampire? What are they like? What if somewhere out there right now, a being who’s lived many times my lifetime is reading these words and smiling, knowing the truth? What if they are real? If so, someone must have met them, seen them or their traces, and lived to tell the tale.
Tell us all what you’ve seen. Go to the “Vampire Encounters” page and share your experiences. If you have more to tell, pictures or video for me to share, go to “Contact” and e-mail me. Let’s start to put together the pieces we have, share our stories about real world vampires we have met — supernatural, psychic and otherwise — and see what we shall see.
This site is an experiment, an exploration, of my digital boundaries as I build it, and my curiosity about the worlds I write about. I work in horror. I don’t live there. But I can’t help wonder what’s still happening in that world when I shut down my computer at the end of my day, usually your morning. I’m not inviting it in, just trying to bring the vision into sharper clarity. As my characters say in their ad — Don’t send proof until requested.
As I gain information I will share it. If there is none, I will shut this site down, and breathe a sigh of relief. Until there is an answer, enjoy my idea of what vampires could be like, and how they might deal with us and each other, in my first novel, “BITE MARKS: A Vampire Testament”. For more on the Vampire Testaments, what they are and what’s to come, go to “The Vampire Testaments”.
Pleasant dreams,
Terence Taylor