In the first place, Vampires are not “made.” Members of the Mafia are “made.” In dime novels and b-movies we find mafiosi and vampires, and we find that notable cliché that says that vampires are “made” by other vampires. If you “drink the blood” of a vampire you will become a vampire and “live forever” and so forth. It is true that this ritual exists among us. It is a religious nicety, and it has not been taken seriously by our kind since the Middle Ages. So, let us stuff cotton in the cheeks of Bela Lugosi, and lend him a Brooklyn accent and a violin case. For if any Vampire was ever “made” it was he. The operative word is “turn.” One who becomes a vampire, turns. This can happen with or without the help of another vampire, and with or without whatever occult nonsense you please. The cold blooded truth is that the birth of a vampire is a biological process. It happens to be called hematophagogenesis (Greek: haima, blood; phagein, to eat; genesis, generation). During the European Renaissance, enlightened vampires sought a more rational explanation for themselves than had been offered since the Dark Ages. How in fact does a human being turn into a vampire. As might be expected, it was first explained as “metamorphosis” – something akin to the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, the tadpole a frog, etc. But of course that is not quite right. Metamorphosis is part of the life cycle of a species, and it is universal in the species. What occurs in simian hematophagogenesis has nothing to do with the life cycle of the species as such, and is hardly universal to it.

The birth of a vampire is closer to molting – where the bird replaces its feathers, the rhinoceros a horn, the beetle its suit of armor. But here is a molting far more physiologically profound than that. A ductile tissue obtains, internal organs thicken, new layers of muscle insinuate themselves everywhere, the blood becomes thin but oleaginous, and bone cartilaginous. The heartbeat is slower, the metabolism quicker, and the nerves sharper. And the lifespan much, much longer. No, we are not immortal. We age and we die, if possible, a natural death, eventually, but very slowly. I am 371 years old, and I can feel the last century in my back already. So the vampire is virtually another species, though not quite, since we can mate with ordinary people, although we prefer if they are at least somewhat extraordinary.

Vampirism is exceedingly rare in humans. Almost certainly a genetic predisposition is involved, and this would explain the incidence of Vampire “families” and “bloodlines,” though not every vampire has such a legacy. Mordi Kildare comes from an ancient Vampire line, I on the other hand do not, but each of us was born as human as the other.

Vampirism occurs spontaneously, for the most part. However, certain viral infections may act as catalysts in hematophagogenesis. This lends credence to the view of vampirism is a “transmitted” condition. My own turning was the outcome of an illness I suffered after being bitten on the shoulder during hand-to-hand combat in the navy. Our frigate had been rammed and boarded by a privateer. One of the invading sailors was a maniac who bit three of my shipmates and myself – yet only I succumbed later to a strange illness.

Many a vampire has tried to turn a human being into a vampire, and failed. Vampires, after all, fall in love. But only in books and movies does the vampire manage every time to take his mortal beloved with him to eternity – barring of course her steely will not be taken. Yet I can vouch from a heart many times broken that the real world is more disappointing than that. There is nothing more painful than to watch ones beloved wither away into old age and die, against all the best and bizarrest efforts to keep her, as it were, undead.

On the other hand I have “made” seven vampires in my life, but they would not have been my first choice. In the long, who becomes a vampire is mostly if not entirely out of the hands of vampires. We do not create new vampires in the world, but we are important to their survival. The “Vampyric Turn” is not a pleasant ordeal. Without help it is very often fatal. So it is not uncommon for an older vampire to take a newborn, as it were, under his wing. I was not so lucky. I did not learn that I was a vampire or, for that matter, what on earth a vampire was, until I was over a hundred. ‘Till then I had thought I was only another very hardy New England Yankee who had gone stark raving mad.

It is possible that some antibiotics and certain powerful steroids can stem the oncoming of vampirism in humans. Early signs of hematophagogenesis are clinically ambiguous – fever, delirium, stiffness in the joints. From there it gets much, much worse. But if it is allowed to run its course, the vampiric turn resolves finally into a tremendous feeling of levity, release, heightened senses, boundless energy, ecstasy, and heartbreaking lucidity. Far be it for modern medicine to let it get so far! It is possible the birth of many a vampire in this century has been stanched.

Can I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mordi Kildare and I are the last remaining Vampires on earth? On this teeming planet where the living outnumber the dead … can I prove such a thing? Naturally not. But the din and screech of protest we’ve endured on account of our claim only underscores our point: anyone in a Halloween costume these days is ready to spring forth and pronounce himself a vampire. And in all of Christendom we find nothing to read about vampires but light novels and dense superstition. So, to those who remonstrate with us, I turn the question around: what is to convince Kildare and I that anyone else who calls himself or herself a vampire is anything of the kind! In all fairness, are Kildare and I to blame for reasoning that we must be the only vampires on earth, when in so reasoning we spite only the ignorant?

Casper Freake.