Editor’s note: One of the most popular articles on our site is a piece by Georgia Institute of Technology researcher John Edgar Browning about his work with the real vampire community, published in March 2015. In it, Browning discusses what a real vampire is, how they live their lives, and what researchers are hoping to learn about them. Here, he expands on the difficulties of finding and studying this enigmatic group of people, as well as the lessons he’s learned in the process.
With Christopher Rice’s tantalizing tweet about the new Vampire Lestat television treatment and news of Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker’s Dracula prequel, Dracul, due out from Putnam in October, the topic of vampires again looms nigh for lovers of fiction and the supernatural. What happens, though, when the borders between fact and fiction fade into gray uncertainty?
