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Dwayne Marshall doesn’t have fangs, doesn’t sleep in a coffin, and he knows he won’t live forever – but he’s convinced he’s a vampire and even drinks his friends’ blood.
Bizarrely, the 23 year old insists his desire for human blood is a genuine medical illness, even though experts dismiss it as a fetish.
“I’m a normal person with an illness and human blood makes me feel better,” he says.
Worryingly, since the release of the Twilight films and the TV series True Blood, hundreds of teenage girls have contacted him, begging him to sink his teeth into them.
Speaking from his home in California, the novelty lamp salesman says: “Girls think I can turn them into a vampire and they can then live an eternal life, which isn’t true.”
Dwayne was just 15 when he began to think he was a vampire. He says: “When I hit my teens I became very sensitive to the sun – my skin would blister and my eyes would hurt after a few minutes outside. Doctors just told me to wear high SPF lotion and sunglasses.”
He adds: “I also had so little energy it hurt to move and had constant aches and pains. It took a lot out of me to just hang out with my friends, and the doctors couldn’t explain it. Then I read a book on real life vampires and realised that was my problem.
“I discovered real life vampires don’t actually live eternally, die in daylight or burn if they touch silver.”
Bizarrely, he claims: “They are normal people with an energy deficiency and there’s no cure for it. It’s like diabetes, but instead of taking insulin, vampires drink blood.
“I was really freaked out. But I was also relieved to learn something could help – even if it was blood!”
Dwayne then told a 15-year-old classmate called Faye about his discovery and she agreed to let him experiment by drinking her blood.
After being tested for STIs, Faye pricked her neck with a sterilised knife and squeezed out a few drops of blood.
He recalls: “It tasted gross, but after drinking eight tablespoons I felt healthy for the first time in years.”
Dwayne drank Faye’s blood monthly, but when he told his girlfriend, who he refuses to name, she dumped him.
He recalls: “We’d been together two years and I was gutted, but she didn’t believe I’m a vampire. Very few friends have been understanding, too.”
Then, in 2005 a teenage girl emailed Dwayne after reading the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, asking him to bite her.
He explains: “She found me on an internet forum for vampires. I didn’t reply, but since the Twilight films I’ve been bombarded with messages from girls offering their blood.”
Now Dwayne, who continues to drink seven tablespoons of blood a month from a donor friend, is dating Courtney Daly, 19, an Australian student he met while she was on
a university exchange in September 2008.
He says: “I’ve told her I’m a vampire, but she understands. She loves me and even lets me drink her blood when she’s in America.”
Courtney confirms: “I don’t mind Dwayne drinking my blood. If anything, the experience brings us closer. I don’t see the problem with it, as long as we do it safely.”
Dwayne, who has never told his parents about his blood drinking, is aware most people think the practice is strange.
He says: “People call me a freak and accuse me of faking my symptoms, but vitamins don’t help. A psychiatrist told me it’s a sexual fetish, but I know it’s not.”
Clinical psychologist Dr Vincent Egan, who’s based in Leicester, says: “Drinking blood wouldn’t help an energy deficiency. This is a fetish that could cause infection.”
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