April 9, 2025
My thoughts regarding the horror genre, death, and vampires as explored in my Feral Rebirth novel series: Revenance, Toxicosis, and Dark Visitations:
Suffering and death are the great atrocities of Nature. When I was a child and first found out about death after my kitten, Pussywillow, died, my formerly blissful existence was forever shattered. Now that the concept of death had entered my life, nothing was ever the same. I could not banish the thought. Life seemed a big cheat—why tell kids that everything will be all right, you will always be there for them, when you know it’s all a lie?
Even though I believe in an afterlife and its blissful release from suffering, I still seethe with that anger whenever I hear about animals and people in misery. What purpose can there possibly be in such anguish, and why do some people seem to love inflicting it on others?
Horror literature, film, art, etc. arises from this awareness of death and suffering. Vampires, like ghosts and other supernatural beings existing beyond death, represent our fears and hopes regarding life beyond the grave. Bursting from the coffin of the body, like a phoenix, a winged desire, the vampire combines aspects of the physical, such as sensory delights, but minus most of the body’s physical limitations. The vampire’s “body” is like an astral or ethereal vehicle fueled by the desire to live, experience, savor. Vampires are transfigured beings, but like mortal life forms, they depend on sustenance.
Although some view vampires as evil because they can only survive on the vital energy of the living, my view of them is that they are otherworldly entities (perhaps a mixture of human and some ancient feral spirit) that can be either amoral or essentially as good or evil as they were when they were mortal humans. They are, in my view, a separate subspecies combining human, animal/primal instincts, and supernatural abilities that liberate them from most bodily restrictions. However, to survive , they must consume a form of energy. All life consumes some form of energy. Plants take it from the sun,. herbivores take it from the plants, omnivores take it from plants and/or animals, carnivores take it mainly from other animals, and vampires take it from the blood of the living.
Unfortunately, most horror movies involving vampires, especially the older ones, focus on the supposed moral superiority of mortal humans vs. vampires. The war depicted between humans and vampires in these movies reminds me of the dualistic, often brutal, battle between humans and animals, particularly the ones involving predators such as wolves and similar animals considered evil or vicious just because they interfere with human interests, when, in reality, the people torturing and exterminating these animals are the evil ones. Horror movies use vampires and other so-called monsters as scapegoats as part of their crusade against anything considered “other” and thereby dangerous. In real life, however, humans, are the ones who intentionally inflict suffering for no reason except to control, enslave, dominate , and destroy others.
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