Think of this as you will. but i am a firm believer in vampires. and i would just like to put down some reasons why I and many others believe in what we do. my name is Bella but don't think im a twilight obsessed fan im only in this because i am a vampire believer and always have been:

1) If vampires are truly as clever, intelligent and evolved as myth and legend make them out to then is it any wonder why they haven't yet been properly discovered and have been able to blend in with the scene of the normal day life of a human with out a hitch?

2) think to a few years back, when scientists said that absolutely nothing could live to a certain point in the ocean as the pressure at the bottom was so strong anything that went down there would inevitably ... die? well years later they found a whole new species! aquatic creatures that we would never of dreamed of. and that shows that people get it wrong, it shows that scientist can be wrong sometimes... dead wrong.

and yes what if vampires have tried reaching out to us? Like if a newly created vampire is lonely and wants, needs to tell someone about him/her so it can take the strain off them, but by the time they try to convince us, a fellow vampire or a coven member has told them the dangers and has convinced him/her vampire that they cant tell anyone or else? and then the lonesome vampire has simply agreed.

4) the last and most puzzling but true reason. Shouldn't we be finding ways to prove why they cant exist not ways to show they do? i mean there is more proof showing they do, from sightings and odd events and history staitments. There is no proof that they don't exist accept from the fact that there isn't any to show 100% that they do. so if anyone ever says they do not exist then ask them for the proof. I bet they cant show you any and never will. I don't know if we ever will know if they 100% do exist but look at the facts and the science of it all. we have prodigies, physics, and extraordinary people in this world which should be impossible so why not vampires?

Thanks for reading

Any questions that are sensible i am happy to answer

Bells.

Well, this is a question that has been asked many times as others pointed out. Believing in vampires is in way like believing in god and i mean no disrespect here. I guess none of us had seen vampires before, and that applies to god, but we heard from nice pious people that there was a miracle here and a miracle there, and saints that could do things beyond our capabilities as humans. So all religions have that sort of myth related to it, and the majority of the world population believe in some sort of a mythical god that we have never seen and probably will never see all based on some books that we cannot verify its source. No one questions that.
it is the same with vampires. We know about vampires because of mythology, which is old and we cannot verify how much true and how much myth in it. So believing in vampires is like a leap of faith, we have to believe in them through second hand information.

I am an agnostic, so I believe that there is a big possibility that vampires actually exist, just as god. I am a vampire buff though, I enjoy the whole vampire scene (not the crazy wannabees who hang around in vampire bars and dress up like freaks) more books, movies and anything that has to do with vampires.

If they are real then I would love to be the "chosen one" to slay them...maybe I could have a cute vamp with a soul I could date and then fight the baddies with...sorry I love Buffy too much.
I personally dont believe vampires exist in the way we see them on tv or in movies. I know there are people out there who claim to be vampires but they are not of the kind you see on tv or in movies. I have read up on them many times and for the most part they seem to be harmless.
Good luck with your paper!

Heres a suggestion you could do for your report, that is if your willing to do some reading

read ALL the Twilight Novels, they greatly depict vampires in a mainstream form. Then compare that to Old Vampire myths, then explain and contrast certain points, explain how and why they changed perhaps.

to do some comparing I would suggest informative resources online.

vampires wouldn't even be popular today if it hadn't been for Lord Byron and John Polidori

look him up

A friend once told me that, "every lie has a little but of truth to it."
Hollywood has made a lot of vampire movies etc but the story had to start somewhere. Lets take "super powers" for instance people have talked about and made countless movies about them but yet people don't seem to dismiss fact that there is a chance super powers exists or will even exist. Same for vampires. If there are angels and demons, then vampire or vampire like creatures would have to exist right since they are demons. I Think one reason why so many people like vampires is the fact that they have super human abilities while still keeping human appearances. very few people would want to become something that doesn't resemble a human what so ever.

The traditional idea of vampires is mostly from Brahm Stoker's book...but if you actually look at the old folklore about what people believed vampires to be, it is much different.

No sophistication, etc., just more like mindless creatures who rose out of their coffins, went out to drink the blood of the living, and then returned to their graves. In fact, this is where staking comes from (originally thought to keep the corpse in it's grave!).

I think it really evolved out of a lack of understanding of the processes of death. They'd see color return, swelling due to gasses, blood out of the mouth, and nails and hair growth, and make some real logical leaps here...

personally i think vampires exist... weather it's a person with a fetish, or a being damned for all eternity, bound to an insatiable hunger for human blood or human flesh who waits in the night stalking every move of its prey. vampires might also perhaps be some kind of parasitic cryptid capable of metamorphosis with an intelligence surpassing that of a normal human being who might have a need for blood.

Vampires do exist, The type of vampire that NEEDS to feed on blood to survive, though not in human form. there are many vampire like animals such as mosquitoes and vampire bats.

Originally posted by kimish
there are many vampire like animals such as mosquitoes and vampire bats.

which also leads me to speculate on humanoid vampires. one thing that comes to mind when someone mentions mosquitoes, leeches, vampire bats, etc. it also raises the idea of reptilians. (i.e. humanoid lizards) well if there has been rumors about things like bigfoot, lizard man, psychic ability used as a weapon (thank you CIA and Mr. Crowley) ghosts sometimes attacking people, my speculation is a vampire could perhaps be a Cryptozoic critter or a supernatural...thing. also another thought, did Vlad Tsepis have descendants and if so what are their thoughts?

There are some with certain skin conditions where the sun will burn them rather quickly. I believe there are multiple blood diseases even though I haven't checked into that area very much. Then there are some people who claim to possess a lot of different abilities or some abilities some would call odd or weird. I don't know if any of that has been proven to the mainstream media. I myself have spotted an extremely large mythical creature here in South Carolina one night best described as a large dark cat that was wider than the width of my car. That's with it's tail out. I say it's mythical because according to the transportation department here, it doesn't exist because no one has hit one with their car. I came within inches of doing so. That thing was lightning fast. I thought I was going to hit it. It's not a wonder to me anymore that no one has hit one because that thing must have lightning fast reflexes and speed. A moving car is simply a slow moving obstacle to such a creature. Could vampires exist? It might be hard to say but I think they could avoid detection if they are clever. Having never seen anyone as depicted in the vampire movies though, I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone close to what you see in the movies. In that respect, the hollywood vampires do not exist in my opinion.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
In that respect, the hollywood vampires do not exist in my opinion.

i guess they only exist in certain nightclubs and music venues

Originally posted by Bella-x
4) the last and most puzzling but true reason. Shouldn't we be finding ways to prove why they cant exist not ways to show they do? i mean there is more proof showing they do, from sightings and odd events and history staitments. There is no proof that they don't exist accept from the fact that there isn't any to show 100% that they do. so if anyone ever says they do not exist then ask them for the proof. I bet they cant show you any and never will. I don't know if we ever will know if they 100% do exist but look at the facts and the science of it all. we have prodigies, physics, and extraordinary people in this world which should be impossible so why not vampires?

There's plenty of evidence that vampires don't exist. DNA is good evidence. DNA makes it impossible for immortality. The physics of the body ... a human can't function without a heart beat. So on and so forth. Depends on the type of vampire you believe in.

And you can't prove a negative. IE you can't prove that my pants don't fly. You do not have access to my pants. Only common sense logic and your experience of other people's pants tells you that my pants probably do not fly. I have to prove the flight worthiness of my pants for anyone to take them seriously.

Side note ... Gaz's post was very good about older style vampires and Bram Stoker.

i believe that during human flight pants fly. we have seen this with the wright bros, mario bros, people in hang gliders and the rocketeer comics and movie. as for vampires, i believe that as a supernatural demonic entity (angry ghost, demon, poltergeist) a spectral vampire can happen. in the field of cryptozoology, i kind of draw a comparison to reptilians (long lifespan, psi ability, telekinesis, attacks humans) as for sunlight vulnerability, i think that would vary from vampire to vampire. and as for vlad tsepis i know that mentioning this ruler as a vampire is a cliche but his classical portrait of in this hat and mustache looks a little bit reptillian to me. i mean human blood for a reptillian vampire is probably their version of crack.

on a personal note if i ever met a real vampire, i would just probably invite him or her in my place to turn me into one of them, and a pint of blood on me

I am pretty sure vampires exist. Like someone said before, lots of people go missing every day... and no one ever hears about it or really cares!

Think about it! They live forever right? So they are able to get a lot of money and power. You can see this happening with old people, who have a lot more money simply because they can save it up. That means the vampires probably are the ones who are the big force behind secret societies with ties to all kinds of companies.

All that gives them tons of resources to get pretty much whatever they want. With all that money and power, they could feed anytime. There are probably even vampire takeout places across the world that they have set up in case they get hungry while away from their normal place of business!!

You just have to think about it!