What are the defining characteristics of a vampire?
There is now a visible and vibrant community of people who are using the label to describe themselves, but to this day there is no functioning definition of a real vampire. This is primarily because no one knows what the cause of the phenomenon actually is, and the community has coalesced around a set of loosely shared perceptions and symptoms rather than a central organizing principle. Therefore, we can describe some common experiences involved in being a vampire, but these shouldn’t be taken as a definitive vampire checklist. There are no known necessary and sufficient conditions to be met before you can be a vampire. Likewise, there’s no single definitive sign that someone is not a real vampire. That said, the most common experience vampires share is the need to take in life energy or blood, from sources outside themselves, to maintain spiritual, psychic, and physical health. Blood-drinking, or sanguinarian, vampires have to consume small, polite amounts of human blood from willing
