My Vampire Bad

 

Folklore has developed fairy tales that on closer inspection provide strong warnings for people of all ages from the Grimm brother’s ‘Hansel and Gretel’ to ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’. It seems that now, in 2025, all of these tales are relevant at once. The Friday night Hammer Horror fest seemed innocent enough in that the movies provided courting couples opportunity to ‘support’ each other. When the Dracula myth got retold as ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, it was intended to return to the original intention of the Irish author. But it is only now that the penny has dropped for me at the psychological interpretation of this truly chilling story.

A central property of a Vampire is that they do not create a reflection in the mirror. This is the idea that the reflection is a psychological construction and that evil cannot be seen. An individual is unaware of the evil that has captured him. In that sense it is a story of everyman.

Another chilling memory of that movie is when the vampire figure cuts his own tongue with a cut-throat razor in order to savour the taste of blood. He smiles to convey his satisfaction and perhaps he is also aware that his now forked tongue allows him to deceive like the serpent of old.

Vampire movies invariably tell of the seduction of a beautiful maiden and the attempts of an ardent young suitor to save her from the dirty old man. The vampire’s desire is to add to his harem of lost souls that over eternity retain the appearance of eternal youth. Over time they become totally captured by evil such that they know no other way of life. Indeed, they know only death. They have so resisted the inevitable wrinkles of age that they have sold their soul for the empty promises that usually belong to Nivea potions. They refuse to grow up.

So how does this apply to me? No, I’m not about to confess that I’m a dirty old man; I refuse to see that possibility in the mirror. Nor am I about to slice into my own tongue that I can more easily lie and deceive to grow a harem of conquests. I have enough of a challenge to live my life fully in the present moment and to bring out the best in others. I cannot however deny that like every other man with a pulse I am attracted to beautiful women and the attraction may persist until my coffin lid is nailed down.

So, since temptation is as natural as life itself, let me be first to step into the sunshine. It has always been both an essential component of physical recovery and the purest means of disinfecting against evil; light overcomes darkness. It will help me to be as transparent as possible ‘this side of the sod’. But to put the mind of any beauty to rest, I will not be going to bed with a string of garlic cloves around my neck.