Why Vampires? In Defense of a Dark Symbol

            I wrote the following article for “Robin’s Nest,” my web domain of “Den of Insanity” (later called “Artisan’s Republic”) many years ago. I have made just a few changes to update the progress of the manuscripts in progress. Today the issue it discusses is more pertinent than ever. Picture, if you will, a mob of villagers armed with torches and pitchforks, chasing a “monster” down in the dark of the night. The monster? A writer of fiction.

            The writer takes a stand in front of the old, creaking windmill. This is what she says—or tries to, before they cast her down from her pedestal and burn her to death:

Some of my friends who share my Christian faith don’t seem to understand what I am doing in writing my AVS fiction series. It’s true we say people don’t understand us if they disagree with us, but most of the people who disapprove of my writing about vampires haven’t even heard me explain my story and its purpose, much less read a word of it. All they have to do is hear the word “vampire,” and they think I’m doing something terrible. One of them went so far as to inform me, “Don’t you know God doesn’t want you to write about vampires?” It’s interesting that she knows better than I do what God wants me to do, especially when I have been working on this story for years.

Why do I care what people think? These people are my brothers and sisters in the faith. I need their prayers and encouragement over a work whose main idea, I believe, was inspired by the Lord himself. It’s hard enough that this is a crossover novel that may be hard to place with a publisher. I need all the moral support I can get. And I love talking about my writing because, second to God Himself, it is my greatest passion.

It has been hard having my various subject matters rejected by fellow Christians over the years, anyway. Fantasy? No, it has to be realistic. Romance? That’s naughty. Do any characters cuss? Do any characters have sex? Even think or talk about sex? Then forget it! Some people—not all—are quick to condemn everything they possibly can. They seem to think it is their ministry to discourage people like me.

My AVS series has a few scattered cuss words in the mouths of my characters. Shocked? I cuss myself sometimes, mostly when I’m really angry. God hasn’t hit me with a lightning bolt yet. I know that doesn’t prove He approves, but I just don’t feel it’s such a terrible sin to let each character talk in the way that is natural for him or her. I think it would bring more attention to cussing if I censored them each time by always saying “she cursed.” There is a meaning to their words; it’s not just cussing for no reason. They are not the kinds of people who cuss all the time so that their words lose meaning. These characters do not start as Christians, but the stories do have a Christian message. When a few of my characters get involved sexually, it is not on camera, as it were. By letting them do that, I am also letting them be themselves, not condoning their activities but instead showing some possible consequences. What is wrong with presenting human beings realistically? Because of the existence of vampires in my stories, they are a type of fantasy, but when I write fantasy, I work all the harder to keep all mundane details as mundane as possible, to create the illusion that such an event could really happen and to express the realities of human life.

What is it that bothers many Christians about vampires? I’m not entirely sure. For one thing, I think these people make assumptions. Does my writing glorify evil? No. The Bible speaks of evil, including Satan himself. It doesn’t condone evil but instructs in fighting against it. I’m doing the same thing, and in a similar way—through the lives of imperfect people who struggle with difficult issues. Am I claiming vampires are real? No. There are real people who drink blood but not who grow fangs like dogs and live on blood indefinitely. And there are still some people today who believe the undead exist (like Montegue Summers, who wrote books about vampires), but by writing fiction that uses some of these ideas I am not proclaiming my own belief in vampires any more than Tolkien claimed he believed in the reality of elves. My Christian friends may assume that I am trying to copy Anne Rice or some other vampire writer. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t think it was a fresh approach for a worthy cause. Least of all, I’m not copying any vampire movies.

Disclaimer: It is possible to dwell upon evil too much, and I have sometimes done so while writing about my vampires. It harmed my mental, spiritual, and even physical health. I learned from that and sought out greater balance in my life. But you can’t write a story about the battle between good and evil without some evil in it. And what subject is more worthy than good verses evil?

I didn’t think of vampires as a subject for some of my writing until a certain dream suggested a particular story—the one that started it all. But the more I’ve thought about it, and the more I’ve researched the subject, I’ve found many good reasons to write about vampires. This being represents a lot of things that touch us at a deep level, and it can be used to teach us a good deal about life, death, and ourselves.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count said, “The blood is the life.” This quote comes from the Bible. God required the Israelites to drain the blood out of all their meat and give it to him as an offering. He did not want them to partake of the blood of animals. This prohibition shows the vampire as particularly evil in a tragic way; he is driven to break this law and cannot find sustenance any other way.

Jesus said, “He who has the son has life; he who has not the son has not life.” What was he referring to? He spoke of people who did not believe in him as being “dead in their sins.” He said that to enter the kingdom of God, one had to be “born again,” or “born from above.” If, as he said, the road to life is narrow and the road to destruction wide, most of the human race is spiritually dead. That is not an idea that most people choose to believe. Why, then, are undead creatures such a popular fiction, and why do many act as if vampires are real? Could it be related to some innate sense of not being fully alive?

Traditionally, the vampire is undead. He is a corpse animated either by some altered form of the original soul or by a demon. This is a gruesome counterfeit of the Resurrection. Christ is the first example of what the resurrected righteous will be like in the end. Most people today are probably not aware that God promises a physical existence beyond the grave. But I think we all have a craving for immortality. In a world devoid of belief in an end-time Resurrection, the lure of immortality attracts people to the vampire. Why not let them learn that it is those who are born again spiritually, not those fictional beings who are re-animated supernaturally, who will live forever?

The vampire represents a neediness that takes and never gives. He is appetite run amok… guilt, addiction of any kind, seduction, rape, violence, and murder. He is the bitterness that lingers in the victims of such crimes and urges them to be too much like their abusers. He is the darker side of all of us, something so bad that we sometimes cannot face him except in nightmare or horror story. In the largest application of the idea, vampirism is sin. In a sense, we are all vampires.

If God doesn’t want anyone to write about sin, then why did he inspire the Bible?

If all I wrote about was the dark side, from its own point of view, there would be reason to question it. Yet even the noted Christian writer C.S. Lewis’ famous novel The Screwtape Letters used a demon’s point of view to cleverly communicate Christian truths. My book doesn’t even dwell on the darkness as much as his does. Question if you will, but don’t come to conclusions based on nothing but the word “vampire.” That would be as shallow as a vampire who shies away from a cross without any knowledge of what the Cross means.

For you readers of “Den of Insanity, Robin’s Nest,” I write this. For my Christian friends, I have fallen into a more comfortable tactic. Now if they ask what my story is about, I tell them it’s about a teenager who has prophetic dreams. I get glowing encouragement for that. And really, Mary Lodge needs more attention than her enemy, anyway. A commentator on the “Blade” series complained that in other vampire stories the vampire is the most interesting character but always ends up with a stake in the heart. I want my main character to be at least as interesting as her nemesis. People do like Carletta already. Whether she ends up with a stake in her heart is more than I will reveal here. The novels will also reveal more spiritual truths than I have in this article. Hope you will read the books when they’re finished and published! And if these books are not your cup of tea… at least pray for the many people who will develop a relationship with the living God through them. The world is a large and varied place, and God is much bigger. There is no room for fighting against those who serve Him in a little different way from you.

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