Do u believe in vampires? cause this is going to shock you.....

Meet the people who drink blood

In most major cities around the world, communities of ordinary people – nurses, bar staff, secretaries – are drinking human blood on a regular basis. The question is, why?

Was the blood-feeding a religious ritual, a delusion, or a fetish? Before he had met any vampires, Browning suspected they had just blurred the line between fact and fiction. “I’d assumed that these people were bonkers and had just read too many Anne Rice novels.” 

By the time he had offered himself as a donor, however, his opinions had taken a U-turn. Many real-life vampires have no belief in the paranormal and have little more than a passing knowledge of True Blood or Dracula; nor do they appear to have any psychiatric issues. Instead, they claim to suffer from a strange medical condition – fatigue, headaches, and excruciating stomach pain – which, they believe, can only be treated by feeding on another human’s blood.

“There are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s a fad,” says Browning.  Their symptoms and behaviour are a genuine mystery.

So-called "medical sanguinarians" claim that regular shots of blood relieve them of fatigue, headaches and severe stomach pains (Credit: Olivia Howitt)

For many, real-life vampirism is a taboo; over the last few decades, it has come to be associated with gruesome murders such as the notorious case of Rod Ferrell in the US, a deluded killer apparently inspired by a fantasy role-playing game. “When people talk about self-identified vampires, a lot of times these horrible images come to mind,” says DJ Williams, a sociologist at Idaho State University. “So the community has been closed and suspicious of outsiders.” As a result of the stigma, the vampires I've contacted online have asked me to use aliases within this article.

It was not always this way; across history, we can find cases where human blood was considered a bona-fide medical cure. At the end of the 15th Century, for instance, Pope Innocent VIII’s physician allegedly bled three young men to death and fed their blood (still warm) to his dying master, with the hope that it might pass on their youthful vitality. Vampirism, it seems, comes in many shades. The blood-feeding community held jobs as bar staff, secretaries and nurses; some were church-going Christians, others atheists; often, they were very altruistic. “Vampires aren't always skulking around graveyards, attending goth nightclubs, or feasting at blood orgies,” explains one vampire named “Merticus”.  “There are real vampire organisations who feed the homeless, volunteer in animal rescue groups, and who take up any number of social causes.”

Drinking blood can be fetishised, and vampires sometimes have sexual relationships with their donors. Many donors, however, are simply well-meaning friends.