Vampires - Fiction or Reality?

Everyone knows at least something about them, yet even conflicting things.

Some believe that crosses, garlic, holy water and stakes can kill a vampire, others think these things simply injure the vampire but do not kill it… Others think it doesn’t affect them at all.

So many beliefs; so many insecurities.

But these creatures, these dead living things, are they real

Again, opinions differ…
Personally, I want to believe they are, these beautiful creatures as described by Anne Rice, these dark things as described by Bram Stoker… But skepticism…

There are many theories about how vampires came to exist:
- Coming through God cursing Cain
- A violent blood-hungry spirit taking possession of a body
- An evolutionary Human
- The Angels of Death, with the mission to control and thwart the demonic offspring of the fallen angels

Yet, one theory sticks out as being more likely, easier to accept:
The Human Imagination

Porphyria…

Cutaneous Porphyrias affects the skin, people with this part of the illness get blisters when they are exposed to sunlight, their skin itches and swells…

And, in Bram Stoker’s book Dracula, he mentions the growth of hair on uncommon areas, normally where hair should not occur, this is also one of the symptoms of Porphyria.

Strangely, these are all symptoms of what make a vampire as well. But there's more!

Garlic can turn a mild form of Porphyria into a very painful form, and it is believed that in the old days they believed that feeding blood to a Porphyria patient would be a remedy.
Because, as it is understood, the red pigment in hemeglobin isn't produced by one of the enzymes in the body of a Porphyria patient.

Now we know that this wouldn't have helped: the human body can't take the heme directly from the blood, and could actually do more damage than good.

It is very likely that all of these symptoms created the myth about vampires; creatures that drink blood, are intolerant to garlic and very pale (seemingly dead) and can't stand sunlight.

In the old days it was very common that superstition and fear caused by ignorance, lead people to blame it on the devil and create a logical explanation for it for themselves…

A vampire.

This of course is entirely my opinion, I do not intend to force it on anyone. As I said, we all want to believe vampires exist, even I do.
We all want to think something’s out there, something infinitely more powerful than any human…whether we know it’s impossible or not, we want to believe.

It’s a part of being human.



© [FlowerGirl21]