Thankyou scarlettdraelynkhar for letting me know about that error sometimes i forget, i've spent to much time typing short hand, but its been corrected now.

Back to the topic

Morningstar i agree with your assessment in part, i might seem to be but im not oblivious to the science just some times, i agree that there is an energy transfer for the process to work and that that enegy transfer may be measurable. still the brain is vastly unused in most people and science doesnt understand why or what it does. Some stings in this world are better off kept unexplained in the universe because the truth sometimes can throw you into dispare. as for Vampirism i wouldnt use that term for the fact that it emplys that they r feeding off to suvive as a sorce of food which i beleave to be untrue, as i doute that if they stop absorbing the energy they would starve to death, maybe withdrawal affects like from alcohol or from smorking or some other addictive drug. But the next question is why draw the energy in the first place. If its not for food, what is this energy used for, healing/ regeneration is a posability.

To Morningstar:

Well, it's quite possible, but i wouldn't call it an illusion. Sure, you could even call laws of physics illusory, but not us. Our minds, our souls, our feelings, love! they're too present, too strong, too real, to be an illusion. They're what makes us who we are, beneath this shroud of flesh, sinew, blood, and even energy.

To retribution:

I mostly agree with you, but i think it's more than mere withdrawal effect like in the case of drugs. In addition to providing healing and regeneration functions, this bioenergy seems to provide a certain balance to the body and its functions, sort of like oil smoothing our clockwork. Those "vampires" i know have reported dizziness, sickness, fainting and proneness to becoming ill(perhaps the immune system is regulated by chi as well) if they didn't feed for a long while.

Is it beyond the realm of possibility that these are psychosomatic symptoms? That these people are subconciously willing themselves into withdrawl symptoms?

Perhaps we are being too abstract? I'd like to propose a situation that might happen in reality based around this idea of bio-energy vampirism. In this fictitious situation I shall use my friend Tony as an example, Tony being the least likely person I know to attention seek by pretending to have supernatural powers (but, alas, addicted to the public outburst of piercing laughter at inappropriate moments). Please substitute a similar character in your life.

So picture the scene: Tony turns up on the doorstep late night, unannounced and looking rough. My first instinct is that he's been drinking and then been involved in a fight; he looks pale, and slurs an apology as if he is concussed. He will not let me come near him, literally pushing me away as I reach to help him up the steps. This is not usual behaviour for a guy I've often carried home after too many happy hours; Tony's never too proud to accept help, and indeed revels in his lightweight drinker of the world title.

So we get awkwardly into the flat, and he chooses the chair furthest away from me in the room. After a heavy silence, Tony comes right out with it and claims he's become a vampire, because he's direct like that. I immediately suspect that his sister is in town with her dealer boyfriend, and Tony's had a pill slipped into his drink. But he is one step ahead of me, and informs me that they are getting married on a beach in Hawaii, and spits why does it always have to be about drugs with me, anyway?

So, the question becomes how can I confirm or deny that my friend is what he now claims to be? What practical things could we do to determine the validity of his claims?

I apologize for the late reply. I was unable to reach internet access for enough to write this up to now.

In this fictitious situation you could talk to him, try and get him to open up, and share some details about what happened and how. Also ask what his "symptoms" are, then tell me about it. And then, i could talk to some people and ask them if what your friend describes is consistent...

To be honest i wouldnt know my self what to say, unless i knew exact symtoms i coudent realy make a jujment or a logical responce. sorry if this doesnt help but if u can give more details ill try to help

Morningstar, I don't know what I'd do this fictional scenario. I've certainly had people make more ridiculous statements in my presence. (I've heard "I'm John Lennon reincarnated" at least twice.) I'm assuming Tony is sweating and shaking by this point, pointing to real emotion and fear, and not a giant video-tapped joke for a reality-based TV show on his part. I'm also assuming that as the conversation progresses we can rule out injury, head trauma, tumors or anything else that might warp the perception.

OK, so Tony's not on drugs, has just been to the doctor recently where they performed a CAT scan, and as far as we can tell, hasn't wanged his head on anything, and now he's sitting across from me in the flat on the verge of panic. And, I still don't know what I would do, but hot damn, it sounds like a great way to open a novel.

If a man whose honesty and straightforwardness was sitting across from me and told me he was a vampire, I would believe him. Now, are we talking about a "vampyre" who drinks blood (or energy) to make himself feel better, but for all intents and purposes is a human being who is hyper-aware of life energy, or a straight-from-the-misty-myths, fang growing, animal controlling, walking dead kind of vampire?

Well, that would be the first thing we could establish. Our verbal interrogation reveals that he claims to have hurt a girl at a post-pub drunken session about a month ago just by kissing her. Before I can make a joke, he starts to cry as he recounts the circumstances of the incident.

In typical T fashion he'd gone easy early, and was necking with the usual skank, when the girl turned very quiet; so eerily silent that he had stopped struggling with the last hook, and asked if she was OK. To his surprise, the girl appeared to be in a deep trance. At first he thought she was joking, but then really freaked out as he felt an overwhelming compulsion to kiss her neck. He gently lowered her onto the bus stop seat, but in doing so, his head bent towards the girl's neck, "And I couldn't stop myself... Not like "I really want to kiss that girls neck", more like "I really need to pull my hand away from that flame", or "Shit, I'm going to puke" sort of compulsion." Then the guy who has always prided himself on his honourable nature, the only man I ever met with truthful tourettes, the sort of person who would cut their own arms off to avoid brushing past a woman in an inappropriate fashion, leant forward a few inches closer... and kissed the incapacitated girl's neck.

"The rush and release were incredible. I was filled with joy and energy. All along I was trying to pull away, but another side of me was pushing closer and closer, trying to get more and more of this new feeling."

There was no blood, just a purple hickie the size of a generous hamburger. The skin had not been broken.

From this we can conclude that:

(a) a month ago T acted completely out of character, feeling compelled to perform a lewd sexual act on a semi-conscious woman by an overwhelming urge that brought him great bodily pleasure when he succumbed
(b) T is not claiming to be Dracula

Now what?


PS legal fans, Tony is OK about us using him as an example, he's right here. If I can drag him off the chavscum galleries, I might be able to post this before the thread gets lost on page 2.

[I had to chew over this response a bit.]

At this point in the conversation, we're starting to feel nervous, because Dracula or not, dear, noble friend Tony is either a blood-sucking fiend or a burgeoning pervert. Of course, one bruise on an unconscious girl's neck does not a vampire make (date rapist, maybe, but not vampire), so let's assume T has more than just the hickey to back up his tale.

I try to reassure him telling him there's nothing weird about what happened. His dick did the thinking. Creepy? Yes. Supernatural. Probably not. He responds with a sigh, a haggard look and a, "It's not just that."

Oh?

He studies the laces on his trainers and relates that since that night everything has been "weird." He can hear people's heartbeats and feel their "presence." He can tell without looking how close or far a person is within a say twelve meter* radius. He sees auras, seems to be able to bewitch men and women with his voice and eyes, and animals, which previously loved him of course, suddenly treat him like a rabid wolf looking for a meal.

Almost as if on cue (because that's how things happen in stories like this), Fat Ass our beloved cat (or house pet of your choice) strolls into the room. Fat Ass usually makes a beeline for Tony, because he views T, pretty accurately, as a soft touch who will share whatever edible goodies he may be carrying. But tonight, Fat Ass takes one look at T and stops mid stride. His pupils go wide and black, his ears flatten against his head, and he hisses and growls like a thing possessed. He backs out of the room, fur puffed, and disappears down the hall in a black & white streak of fur. T makes eye contact, and says in his blunt manner, "I'm a monster."

And then we feel it: the crawling flesh along the hairline, an unexplained chilling of the skin in a warm room, the sudden lack of air in the lungs, or creepy cliché du jour. At this point, we're pretty well convinced of T's supernatural presence.

And that leads us of course to the next Big Question. Assuming vampyres are born, and vampires are made, did anything strange happen that could account for his transformation? Say, a Romanian in a cape informing him, "I never drink ... vine"?

~Lady A, pretty sure she's so far away from the original topic, she could send it postcards

*Look Ma'! The metric system!

(Edited because I didn't preveiw before posting. BAD MOD! )



Edited By LadyAttercop on 1124499054

Hehe. When you are talking about things like vampires you have to be careful to distinguish between (possible) fact and fiction.
Before Dracula vampires where seen as more or less just annoying parasites. Little more than walking skeletons.
Also whom said that the method of energy or chi had to be physical? It is a form of energy after all and also one we know nothing about except for conjecture and hearsay. It may not obey any of the laws of physics that we are farmiliar with.

I think this illustrates a facet of our original problem: where do we draw the line of credibility when a person claims to be an energy vampire?

The perceived sexual nature of the modern vampire could cloud any manner of latent deviancy in a person. Perhaps their claim manifests from the fact that they cannot cope with their impulses to indulge in force to get what they want?

As for the excellent idea monitoring animal response, remember that cats were afraid of serial killer Ted Bundy too, and fled the dormitory where he killed his last victim, never to return. Perhaps they perceived a wasteful hunter, a potential danger to all?

The reason I brought up a specific example is that we were drifting around vagaries like "talk to the person", or the implication that we might run tests to establish... something. The problem I have with this is that it implies that someone else should do these things. However, in the circumstances where you might be confronted with this, it would most likely just be you who has to deal with it.

In this thought experiment, Tony is an energy vampire. If we cannot come up with a way of investigating this, then perhaps the concept should be considered beyond the realms of science to investigate, in which case we can only speculate as to the nature of bio-energy feeding. If this is the case, one theory is alas only as good as the last.

I propose that we might investigate the claims of energy transfer with an experiment that measures the electrical activity of the human nervous system. We could measure this quantity in a victim before, during and after a feed, and also run control tests with a person not claiming to be a vampire. Tony has enough friends who might volunteer as guinea pigs for this type of experiment. We could similarly monitor T's system for change during a feed.

Here we encounter my blinkered, science background dogma: the nervous system is not where we store our energy. We store our energy chemically as fat, something Tony is not stranger to from time to time... We activate our chemical energy through the chemical ATP, pulling off or adding on phosphate groups at appropriate moments. Our muscles are adapted for this system. Any motion of the muscles therefore, without claiming magic, has to involve ATP.

Unless we are being clever, and claiming that the vampire is actually absorbing ATP from the bloodstream of its victim, which in itself presents problems with "reality", then how does draining a person's electrical nervous system help create ATP in your own bloodstream? Again, we could propose a controlled experiment that measured ATP in a series of victims, and if we could link this to a raise in T then we might be getting somewhere. The actual mechanics of transfer might become clearer with further investigation.

I appreciate that linking chi with the nervous system is a Western conceit, however, in terms of measurable quantities, metaphors do not make good subjects. If we stubbornly refuse to quantify chi, then we instantly doom our project to non-science, and in doing so limit the ways we can distinguish a real vampire from a dickhead claiming to be John Lennon reincarnate...

We are so far in over my head that I can't even see the surface anymore. My poor lil' Graphic Art major, English/Creative Writing minor brain is screaming for relief. That means there's nothing left to do but plow forward.

So, we're assuming Tony is not a pervert, based on past experiences with him, and that the mechanics of his becoming a "vampire" are irrelevant. He is what is (or is not), and the "whys" and "hows" don't matter.

We're also assuming T is sucking energy rather than leaching blood through the skin/pore by causing abrasions under the skin, because we can come up with no physiological way that he would be able to attain sustenance from this without some major internal mutations that would have shown up on his medical tests.

On to the experiments: How do you measure the ATP in a person's bloodstream? Would he be able to absorb the energy from any living? Would this experiment be feasible with "lesser" life forms such as potted plants? It might be easier to gauge the result of his feeding on a fern than a human being.

Also, what if we devise a set of Accurate, Easy At-Home Vampire Tests but they fail to adequately confirm Tony's vamp status. Are we to assume then that there's some larger psychological problem here, or that there may be more going on here than modern science can detect?

Heh. Don't look at it as lack of intellectual stamina; just look at it as low tolerance for abstract prentious bullshit.

*snerk*

You can definitely test for ATP,they use those tests to determine certain parasympathetic problems in the hearts' nervous system.And I think you could definitely use ferns for the ATP /vampirism test.
But ,(to continue in a properly nerdy manner), I think another appropriate experiment could be derived from Thermodynamics : since heat...and many physiological processses... move fom an area of higher temperature(or concentration) to an area that is lower...that could explain an unaided "draining" of energy from energy laden prey to energy depleted predator in this case.
I still think its' because Tony has figured out how to photosynthesize.

"When the people at the back of the class are ready..." This is inherently nerdy because it reflects the basis of all science experimentation: you look at a real problem as it would present itself. One of the ways that this subject could manifest itself is if someone you knew turned up on your doorstep with a disturbing tale and an even more disturbing "excuse".

The faffing around with theoretical ATP measurements does make for uncomfortable reduction of living things to biochemical reactions, but the bottom line is no ATP, no living energy. If vampirism is related to bio-energy however we define it, at some level it has to overlap with the reality of our biochemical systems. Even FSM admits that we have to be touched by his noodly appendage for a blessing to be received.

Magic must have a point of entry in our measurable universe, or it cannot manifest, and is just wishful thinking after all...

Which... I... guess... is the point... :O

Ahh... hem... X)

Looks like a case of taking-things-too-seriously has leaked into my ability to converse about vampires... perhaps I need to lie down in a dark room and listen to a Kochalka compilation tape...