Listen to them … children of the night. What music they make!
—Dracula, 1931
7
Children
of the Night
On November 25, 1996, the bludgeoned bodies of forty-nine-year-old Richard Wendorf and his wife, Ruth, age fifty-four, were discovered in their rural home in East Eustis, Florida. Police officials arriving on the scene speculated that intruders must have entered the home through an attached garage, and after stumbling upon Mr. Wendorf dozing on the couch, beat him to death with a blunt object. Mrs. Wendorf, upon hearing the commotion, rushed to her husband’s aid and was in turn killed with the same murder weapon. Panicking, the intruders then fled, taking the couple’s credit cards and their 1994 Ford Explorer.
Yet despite the obvious modus operandi of the murderers, two key facts lent the crime a sinister aspect: the first was a cryptic letter V burned onto the chest of Mr. Wendorf with a cigarette, and the second was that the Wendorf’s teenage daughter Heather was missing.
Four days later and over six hundred miles across the country, five disheveled teenagers, including Heather Wendorf, were apprehended in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, driving the Wendorfs’ stolen Explorer. The arrest made headlines across the nation, and not for obvious reasons such as the youth of the offenders or the heinousness of their crime, but for the startling claim they made to authorities that they were a clan of modern vampires. During the investigation that followed, sixteen-year-old Rod Ferrell, the self-proclaimed leader of the “clan,” claimed that he was a five-hundred-year-old vampire with no soul, who preferred to be known by his vampire name “Vasego.” While he initially blamed the murders on a rival vampire group, he soon changed his story and confessed to beating the Wendorfs to death with a crowbar he found in their garage. Following the murder, he and another clan member named Scott Anderson burned the V into Mr. Wendorf’s chest as a sort of macabre calling card.
Days before the murders, the teenagers had left their homes in Murray, Kentucky, and drove to Eustis, Florida, at the behest of the Wendorf’s daughter Heather, who planned to run away with the group to New Orleans. Heather had been friends with Ferrell years before, when he lived in Eustis for a short time with his mother. After he moved to Murray, the two remained in touch, during which time, according to Ferrell, Heather constantly complained that her parents were abusive. When the teens arrived, Heather joined several of the female members at a nearby cemetery for a blood-drinking initiation ritual while Ferrell and Anderson went to her home to collect her things. Once there, Ferrell made up his mind to murder the Wendorfs in their home and leave his vampire mark on the body of Mr. Wendorf. Heather would later testify that she did not know of Ferrell’s murderous intentions that night and that afterwards she was terrified to leave the group, fearing she would be their next victim.
On February 12, 1998, Ferrell pleaded guilty to the premeditated murders of Richard and Ruth Wendorf and was sentenced to death in the Florida state prison electric chair, making him the youngest inmate on death row until his sentence was later commuted to life without parole. Scott Anderson, his accomplice, was sentenced to life without parole, while the remaining teenagers received sentences of up to ten years. The only exception was Heather Wendorf, who was never charged in the case and who went on to cooperate with author Aphrodite Jones on her book, The Embrace: A True Vampire Story, about the sensational crime.
The Beginnings of a Movement
While stories of bloodthirsty teenage vampire clans roaming the countryside were few and far between in the 1990s, the “Vampire Cult Murders,” as they came to be called, did succeed in drawing attention to an underground movement taking shape in America and Europe of modern-day vampires. As with the vampire myth itself, the origins of the movement are shrouded in mystery, but some twentieth-century authors gave reports of its presence in London in the 1930s.
Elliott O’Donnell, an Irish writer, ghost hunter, and spiritualist, mentions one such group in his 1935 book Strange Cults and Secret Societies of Modern London, in which he describes witnessing a vampire gathering in the basement of an old building, the floors and walls of which the cult had painted blood red. During the ceremony, a group of women dressed in long red gowns with red fingernails filed in. After eating an unknown flower, which O’Donnell’s host claimed was from the Balkans, the women fell into a deep trance. Hours later when they reemerged from their meditative states, each claimed that they had entered the bedrooms of the cult’s enemies in their astral forms and drained their victims of blood.
Unfortunately, there is little proof that such nefarious groups existed at the time, and O’Donnell was a rather colorful character with a reputation for never letting a few pesky facts get in the way of a good story. But if nothing else, then such tales do show us that the idea of, or at least fear of, such groups prevailed. This was, after all, a few short years after the premiere of Tod Browning’s 1931 movie Dracula. Blend that with a twist of new-age spiritualism, and it’s no wonder Londoners were seeing vampires lurking in every dark alley.
The first legitimate stirrings of a vampire movement seemed not to have begun until the 1970s as an offshoot of the rising interest in neo-Paganism and the desire by many disillusioned with traditional religious structures to explore alternative forms of spiritualism. Though none of these groups saw themselves as vampires and would have abhorred the negative label, some did incorporate the use of human blood in their magical rituals and ceremonies, giving power and precedence to its consumption. For instance, one magical grimoire or book of spells claims that writing the name of an enemy in animal’s blood on a piece of parchment and then burning it with a black candle will bring about the death, illness, or sorrow of the spell’s target.
Interestingly enough, some love spells also depend on the use of blood to perform, and require the magician to prick the middle finger of his or her right hand and use it to write the name of the intended lovers on a plain white piece of paper in the form of a circle. Three additional circles are then formed around the names, and the paper is buried outside at exactly nine o’clock at night (González-Wippler, 164).
In addition to this popularization of alternative spiritual structures was a new and exciting wave of vampire fiction hitting the shelves, such as the works of Anne Rice, who cast her vampire protagonists in a more seductive and compelling light, making them more human than before. Latching on to the craze was a revival in vampire movies during the 1980s and 1990s that helped fuel the romantic appeal of the vampire myth. Now, vampire enthusiasts didn’t just want to be scared by vampires—they wanted to be vampires. No longer as isolated by their interests, vampire enthusiasts began to form loose networks or groups around self-published newsletters and magazines devoted to vampirism and blood play, with names such as Necropolis, VAMPS, and Crimson.
Nightclubs started featuring vampire nights, and a new wave of vampire-styled musical groups burst onto the scene, creating a unique underground movement unlike anything seen before. Some groups were directly inspired by the works of Anne Rice, including the gothic industrial band Lestat, whose first release, Theatre of the Vampires, debuted in 1990. Many other groups caught the dark wave also and either featured band members who openly claimed to be vampires, like Vlad’s Dark Theater, or whose lyrics resonated vampire-styled themes, such as Bauhaus, the Sisters of Mercy, Rob Zombie, and Type O Negative. Even some mainstream artists belted out vampire-inspired tunes, as with Sting’s song “Moon over Bourbon Street,” about a vampire cruising the streets of New Orleans.
By the time the Internet rolled around, the community was ready to explode. Enthusiasm in vampirism soared to new heights as the age of information ushered in thousands of chat rooms and websites where vampires and those interested in them could meet, mingle, and exchange ideas. It also meant that to some degree the movement lost its underground edge to the voracious beast of consumerism. Amusingly, one indicator of its new status was the rise in vampire-themed weddings in Las Vegas. For the price of a few poker chips, a half-inebriated couple could stumble in off the Strip and be married by a guy with plastic fangs and a cheap vampire suit, all to the scratchy sounds of recorded organ music piped out of a loudspeaker.
Vampyres
When understanding the modern vampire movement, it is important to make the distinction that it draws very little from the creature’s folkloric past, but rather relies on a reinvention of the myth to suit its own purposes—a thought that would make any eighteenth-century Eastern European peasant drop his pitchfork and torch in disbelief. Yet who could blame modern vampire enthusiasts? After all, no one wants to emulate a bloated, disease-ridden corpse stumbling about in the night covered in grave dirt and blood like some mindless zombie. In fact, when referring to themselves, many modern vampires prefer to spell the word vampire with a y, as vampyre, in order to separate themselves from the revenants of Eastern European tradition.
Outside of the obvious pop culture influences of film, television, and novels, two unique trends developed to help shape the image of the vampire in the twentieth century. The first can be found in the occult writings of earlier, nineteenth-century spiritualists who broadened the concept of the vampire from a primitive blood drinker to a being with an astral nature that fed off the energy of others. This in turn opened the door for those who wished to pursue a vampiric lifestyle but were far too squeamish to engage in the traditional blood play that qualified them as one of the new living undead. The second trend was the introduction of live action roleplaying games, or LARPs, onto the scene. As an offshoot of the popular Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, first published in 1974, LARPs took roleplaying to a new level, placing the gamer physically in the role of their character and requiring that they act out their responses in order to win the game.
In 1991 the LARP Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Games was published, taking as its theme a world in which postmodern vampires interact with one another through various clans to which they owe allegiance. The result was twofold. First, it provided a venue by which those interested in a vampyre lifestyle could interact and play out their fantasies. The second result was altogether unexpected, in that the fantasy game began to inspire new traditions or ideals in the vampire mythology unlike anything seen before, proving that in some cases life does imitate art.
For instance, the game is based on a series of rules that govern the interaction of the players; taking their lead from the game, many modern vampires adopted an ethical system known as the Black Veil 2.0 or “The 13 Rules of the Community.” As published in Michelle Belanger’s book The Psychic Vampire Codex, these guidelines spell out how vampyres are to treat each other and members of mainstream society. Several of these rules emphasize that discretion should be exercised at all times—both when revealing one’s self to the outside world and during blood play. Other rules state that donors should be treated with respect and never harmed either physically or emotionally, and that the utmost safety precautions should be used when drinking another’s blood. Finally, each vampire community has its own rules and hierarchy, which must be respected by members of other communities (Belanger 2004, 265–68).
While some within the subculture have criticized the list as being too closely associated with the roleplaying game that spawned it, others claim it provides a systematic overview within the community, stressing qualities such as respect, safety, diversity, and responsibility.
Lifestyle Vampyres
Although the term vampyre in its modern sense is a catch-all phrase for a wide range of practices and beliefs, there are two important types that deserve further examination. The first is perhaps the most numerous, and participants in this group are known as lifestyle vampyres, because while they do not believe they are actual vampires, they are fascinated with everything associated with the topic. Many dress in dark or Victorian-style clothing, lighten their skin with makeup, or wear special contact lenses and prosthetic fangs. Some diehards even go as far as to sleep in a coffin at night to get the full effect.
While the majority do not consume human blood, some engage in the practice on occasion out of curiosity, as part of a group ritual, or as a form of eroticism. Lifestyle and other vampyres often claim that they live in two worlds or have two natures, consisting of a dayside and a nightside persona. During the day many hold regular jobs as teachers, construction workers, or doctors. At night, however, they don their vampire clothing, pop in their fangs, and mingle with others of their kind at vampyre clubs or other similarly themed establishments.
Real Vampyres
The second type of vampyre includes those who do not define themselves by their style of dress or may not even associate with other vampyres, but who believe that they must feed off the blood or energy of others in order to survive. Members of this group, whom we’ll call real vampyres, see their vampirism as something inherent to their genetic makeup rather than a choice they make. While some resent their cravings and the social stigma it places on them, others have come to accept the need as a normal part of their lives. A few even believe that the act of feeding from another human gives them supernatural powers, including heightened awareness, night vision, premonitions, mind reading, and aura perception.
This consuming need to feed often takes one of two forms: drinking the blood of a willing donor or absorbing some of their very life energy. Those who ingest human blood are often referred to as Sanguinarians and usually do so in very small amounts, because large quantities act as a natural emetic causing nausea and vomiting. They may feed anywhere from once every few months to daily depending on their need, but many real vampyres report that if they abstain for too long they grow physically weak or sick and in some rare cases can die.
Contrary to most movie images, real vampyres do not creep into open windows at night and bite beautiful young women on the neck. In fact, the human bite is one of the most unsanitary methods available and can lead to serious infection. Instead, real vampyres feed on willing donors by making a small incision in the skin with a medical lancet or razor just superficial enough to draw a small amount of blood but not deep enough to scar. There are of course risks involved in the practice, including the transmission of bloodborne pathogens such as hepatitis and HIV. Small groups of trusted vampyres and donors frequently form what are called feeding circles to help minimize the spread of such diseases. A portion even choose to feed on the blood of butchered meat when they cannot find a trusted donor or because they disdain human blood altogether, but this too carries its own set of problems. What’s important to understand about real vampyres is their belief that blood carries within it a rejuvenating power, and while most find human blood a satisfying source, many believe the blood of another vampyre is more powerful because it carries within it the essences of those whose blood they consumed as well.
Another means of feeding is known as psychic vampirism and occurs when the vampyre feeds off the living essence, life force, or energy of another person. Many religious traditions, especially those with Eastern influences, believe that humans, and all living organisms for that matter, are in part comprised of invisible auric and pranic energy that acts as a vital living force running through the world. While psychic vampyres only ethically feed in this manner from willing donors, much as their blood-drinking cousins, some less scrupulous choose to conduct their feedings on people who are unaware that they are the target of a psychic attack.
The notion of psychic vampirism was first developed in the spiritual circles of the nineteenth century by writers such as Violet Mary Firth Evans, who used the pseudonym Dion Fortune from her family’s Latin motto Deo, non fortuna (“By God, not fate”). In her 1930 work Psychic Self-Defense, she laid the groundwork for this form of vampirism, claiming “that psychic attacks are far commoner than generally realized, even by occultists themselves”(p. xiv). Dion Fortune highlighted many cases of psychic vampire attacks and claimed to have been the victim of several herself. More importantly for the vampyre community that followed, she and other writers like her removed the notion that vampires now and in the past subsisted only on human blood.
Psychic vampirism is believed to occur on a number of levels, ranging from non-intrusive surface feedings where the vampyre draws upon the faint cast-off energy of those around them, to deep feedings in which they siphon large amounts of energy from a single person. A few even claim the ability to leave their body in astral form while asleep and seek out victims whom they feed upon remotely in dreams. Finally, some are said to be completely unaware that they even possess the ability and drain those around them unconsciously.
In Konstantinos’ Vampires: The Occult Truth, the author and occult expert recounts his own brush with a psychic vampyre while at a party. After entering a mildly altered state of consciousness from exhaustion, Konstantinos gazed across the room to an older woman sitting by herself and was horrified to find he could see her dark vampiric emanations, which he described as a “dark purple aura that emanated about two feet from her body. Towards its edges the aura seemed to darken so that it looked almost black, yet the darkened area did not prevent me from seeing through it to the purple area. From the dark edge of the aura, several thin, black tentacles were protruding and moving towards the group of party guests” (Konstantinos 1996, 148).
Some conditions require that all a vampyre has to do is sit in a crowded room and soak up the ambient energy around them, while at other times the vampyre can imagine a tendril of psychic energy extending from their body towards another person, which latches on to their victim’s being and drains it of energy. Usually after a vampyre is done feeding, the donor or victim may experience fatigue or exhaustion and on some occasions even illness or worse, while juxtaposed to this the vampyre is left refreshed and rejuvenated. We’ve all known people who leave us mentally and emotionally drained after spending any length of time with them just as they seem to become more energized by our presence, never realizing that we may have been the victim of a psychic assault.
As strange as many of these practices may seem to some, it’s important to note that although lifestyle vampyres and real vampyres represent the vast majority of the vampyre subculture, there are other variations or hybrid groups mixing at various levels with everything from gothic to punk to sadomasochistic eroticism. Even within the major groups that represent the modern vampyre there is much overlap, and distinguishing between a real fang and a fake fang can be difficult at times. While interest in vampires will always cycle between periods of dormancy and sheer mania, it’s exciting to watch the new face of the vampire being applied by modern enthusiasts, adding yet another chapter to the creature’s legend.