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That guy who wanted to interview us, John Edgar Browning, has gotten an article submitted in the Buffalo News paper, and he speaks of Severus and I about 3 paragraphs from the end :)



That was just off of our first meet up, he plans to shadow us in the future. Anywho, here's the article.



http://www.buffalonews.com/life/article611232.ece



John Edgar Browning studies real vampires.



These are not the immortal, predatory shapeshifters of legend and lore, but modern people who believe that they need to be psychically or physically nourished by blood or energy drawn from other humans.



Browning, 31, a tall, soft-spoken man with an accent that indicates his Tennessee roots, is a Ph.D. student and Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow in the University at Buffalo's Transnational Studies Department. Browning arrived in Buffalo in August after spending several years at Louisiana State University. There, he researched the vampire subculture of New Orleans, which is now the topic of his doctoral dissertation.



Before he met his first real vampire, Browning says, "My fellow grad students would be going to the library to work with books and archives ... When they were headed to bed, I was just packing up and leaving Baton Rouge to drive an hour south to New Orleans to creep around the French Quarter at night looking for vampires, attending clubs one might think vampires might attend and asking questions."



Finally, one night, as Browning sat at the bar of a club taking notes, he says, "The bartender said, 'See those fellas standing against the wall? They're vampires!'"



Browning approached the men and began to talk.



"I think I was being interviewed by them to see if I was someone they could trust and let study them," he says now. Apparently, he was. "I spent from 2009 through 2011 attending the New Orleans Vampire Association meetings, hanging out with them and studying them."



Browning says people who consider themselves vampires are private about their activities.



"They don't go out of their way to advertise themselves," he says. "It's us going to them to study them. It's only recently that they have begun to say, 'We respect who we are, and we're not going to hide it, and if you are interested in what we are doing, we'd rather you understand us than be creeped out and think that we're these terrible people.'"



Browning has become an expert on the topic of vampires throughout history, especially their representation in film. He is co-author or editor of three published books -- "Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture" (Scarecrow, 2009); "Dracula in Visual Media: Film, Television, Comic Book and Electronic Game Appearances, 1921Õ2010" (McFarland, 2010); and "The Vampire, His Kith and Kin: A Critical Edition" (Apocryphile Press, 2011).



Four more books he has written or edited are close to publication, including "Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology," to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. Browning is also one of the headliners -- along with TV host Elvira, Dacre Stoker, the great-grand-nephew of "Dracula" author Bram Stoker, and Nelsan Ellis, the actor who plays Lafayette in HBO's "True Blood" series -- on a summer cruise for fans of the vampire genre, "and I would imagine, some real vampires," says Browning.

Willing 'donors'



What are real vampires? Unlike the best-known vampire, Count Dracula in Stoker's 1897 novel, they are not immortal, cannot change into bats, are not seared by sunlight and, most important, do not prey on unwilling humans.



The Atlanta Vampire Alliance, founded in 2005 to promote unity of vampires in the Atlanta region, defines "real" or "modern" vampires as "generally individuals who cannot adequately sustain their own physical, mental or spiritual well-being without the taking of blood or vital life force energy from other sources, often human. Without feeding, the vampire will become lethargic, sickly, depressed and often go through physical suffering or discomfort."



There are two types of real vampires. The first, sanguinary vampires, collect and consume blood from donors, while psychic vampires use other methods of drawing energy from a person or group.



It's difficult to determine exactly how many people describe themselves as vampires, says a founding member of the Atlanta Vampire Alliance who calls himself Merticus. Merticus, who says he is a 33-year-old Atlanta antiques dealer, does not use his real name when commenting on the vampire community.



"It is virtually impossible to accurately estimate the number of real sanguinarian or psychic vampires or those who identify as real human vampires in the U.S. or world today," says Merticus in an email. He says that some 3,000 to 8,000 people may be participating in the online vampire community, although "perhaps only 20 percent of these individuals are actual real sanguinarian or psychic" vampires.



Browning has learned that donors and the self-identified vampires who plan to consume their blood are both medically tested to ensure they are free from blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis, before any blood is drawn.



"Once they have a piece of paper that says this person has been checked out and looks clear, then they begin the process of taking the blood, and usually they will do that using sterile instruments," says Browning. "One particular vampire, a nurse, will use a sterilized sharp scalpel to poke a tiny hole in a part of the body that isn't usually visible and won't scar easily."



The blood-collection site is seldom the neck, "unless the donor specifies that" as part of the encounter, he says. How much blood is taken in one encounter "really depends on the vampire," he says. "It can be anywhere from a teaspoon or tablespoon to perhaps a little bit more than that."



Browning knows these details firsthand. As part of his research, he was tested to be a blood donor and on one occasion allowed a vampire to make a tiny incision in his upper back and drink his blood.



"He actually didn't take that much blood, but I did feel extraordinarily weak" afterward, Browning says. "I've had blood taken for blood tests before and I never felt weak, but for some reason this instance made me feel really weird."



Although many people react to thoughts of drinking blood with disgust, taking these precautions seems to minimize health risks, says Browning.



One real danger to people who consider themselves vampires is the peril of being discovered and harassed, says Browning. "That has happened, and it's been very detrimental to people's careers. I have heard stories from the vampires in Louisiana that they have had to move out of their hometowns because people found out they were doing this."

No freaking out



Browning has a calm manner and a matter-of-fact attitude toward his research.



"I've been watching horror films since I was a kid, so it's a lot harder to freak me out than it is to freak out most people," he says, smiling.



Browning documents what his subjects say without judging them. But as his research has progressed, he finds it interesting that he has heard the same kinds of things from his subjects in New Orleans -- most of whom were ages 35 to 48 -- that self-described vampires were telling researchers in the 1970s.



"The people then were saying the same things that the vampires are saying now," he says, "People are claiming that from a very early age, generally around puberty, they began to develop this compulsion to consume human or animal blood, or knew that they felt better once they did certain things, which had to do with something that they would call 'energy.' This is something that's been reported all over the country and all over the world."



Now that he has settled in Western New York, Browning has begun a search for local self-described vampires.



"I plan to do a supplemental short-term study of vampires here, to see if there are major differences between the vampires here and the vampires in New Orleans," he says.



Because of his extensive work in the community, making contacts here was easier than his days of haunting bars in the French Quarter. Peopl in national vampire organizations who knew Browning passed along some local contacts.



Browning has already met with a married couple here who consider themselves vampires, whose privacy he guards zealously. But he does say, "If you were to look at them, by the standards of what people consider 'normal' looking, they look and act extraordinarily 'normal.'"



And what about that key feature of being a vampire -- immortality?



"It's part of the requirement in fiction that once you become an undead vampire you live forever," says Browning. But real vampires "do not believe that they live forever, not in the least. Among the vampires I have talked to, there might be a small consensus that they tend to look younger than their age. And I will be the first to agree that when I look at these vampires, they look much younger than their actual ages, to the point where I'm rather shocked."