Lead Story - A Real Vampire

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The world is excited by vampires: movies such as Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, TV series like True Blood and the new movie, Blue Moon, Twilight Saga, starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner. And then there's Vampires Suck. But the actors would all run for their lives if they ever came up against a true or real vampire like those in the following story.


THE VAMPIRE HUNTER

‘One of the worst, a woman
Who kills weekly, has moved
Back to England’

By Ron Laytner
Copyright 2010
Edit International

You wouldn’t want to meet ruby-lipped Randy Belaire on a dark night because she is classified as a walking, breathing, blood-sucking Vampire.

Like King George III of England, the young Toronto beauty suffers from an ancient illness call Porphyria which causes a craving for human blood and an aversion to daylight.

Unlike vampires of legend, Randy won’t die from direct sunlight, though she dislikes it, and she doesn’t sleep in a coffin – yet.

But Randy Belaire has a permanent place in a strange section of recorded history. She’s on the data base of the Vampire Hunter – America’s Dr. Stephen Kaplan – the world’s leading authority on the subject.

With a PHD in Sociology and a Masters in Science, Kaplan, who has studied vampire lore and reality for more than 20 years, believes Randy Belaire is a certifiable vampire.

Author of several books, Kaplan heads the Vampire Research Center of America, which carries out demographic studies on people fitting a certain chilling pattern.

Dr. Kaplan says he got into the field of vampire documentation in 1972 because he felt every myth and legend has some basis in reality.

“I felt that having studied various cultures around the world, that I at least would separate the kooks and the crazies and the psychos and degenerates and maybe come up with what reality was when it came to vampires.”

I never met Dr. Kaplan face to face. We always spoke by telephone. He was afraid to meet many people because of death threats. He also was being pursued by many writers. One of them,he said, Anne Rice, had many phone interviews and later wrote the famed Vampire Chronicles.

Dr. Kaplan says a vampire is someone who must drink human blood, not as a psychological manifestation but as a physical need.

He says there are varying degrees of vampires: Lowest are the young people who dress up in black, wear eye-shadow and like to socialize while talking about death. They are known as ‘wannabees’.

Next are the ‘Yuppie’ vampires – people who have a need for blood and are willing to trade sexual favors for it. Third are hard core vampires – those who stalk and kill.

To date, Dr. Kaplan and his team in Elmhurst, New York have documented 615 ‘real vampires’ in North America out of the many thousands of people they have studied.

The group distributes questionnaires to people who believe they may be vampires and works with sociologists, blood specialists, parapsychologists and police in building an international data base.

From three global census takings the Center has discovered that vampires are not restricted to Europe but are a world-wide phenomenon.

It’s dangerous work.

“I am not really a vampire hunter,” Dr. Kaplan hastens to explain, “I am a vampire tracker, a sort of vampire census taker. I pose no danger to such individuals. My job is not to
turn them in. I don’t want to be stalked by dangerous people.”

Dr. Kaplan has often been threatened. But, under the protective eyes of watchers in public places, he has a fairly safe system of meeting people who think they are vampires and approach him for testing.

In the beginning he wasn’t as cautious as he is today. “I and my group were almost killed years ago by devil worshipers. A woman had us come to a farm on Long Island near New York City. Thank goodness we came two hours early to check it out.

“She and two other women took us into a lonely barn and said we were to climb a ladder into a loft where we’d find evidence of a vampire.

“Just as we began to climb the ladder I looked out a side window and saw a group of men approaching. They were dressed in black and carrying axes and a couple of big cans of gasoline. I cried out a warning to my group and we raced out of the barn and into our van and escaped.

“Next day,” said Kaplan, “The woman who had invited us called in tears saying we had been lured to the barn for human sacrifice by a group who were going to trap us in the loft and kill us one by one and then burn all the evidence. Now, she said, the group was threatening her and her young daughter. What should she do?

“When I heard that some members of the cult were leaders in the local boy and girl scout movements I called the police Then I told the woman to pack up an leave with her daughter immediately for far distance parts of America.”

There have also been funny events in the Vampire Research Center’s history.

“One night we arranged to meet a potential vampire in a cemetery. He didn’t show up and we were spooked by a noise and began running toward the exit.

“That’s when one of our men unfortunately fell into an open grave in whose bottom he lay screaming in terror. All members of the Center are volunteers and he quit soon after.”

But the center’s work is serious, dead serious. “Some of the people we interview are very dangerous. Police around the world have often reported finding bodies completely drained of blood. Some of the people we have interviewed are among those responsible.”

Kaplan says there are many emotionally disturbed people around who become enthralled with vampire lore; blood-drinking bats, haunted houses, screams in the night and novels and movies such as ‘Interview with a Vampire’.

A man in England has written and described to me the Dracula-like vampire organization he heads. I consider him a poetic idiot. If he ever met a real vampire he’d never stop running.”

But he also points out that of the hundreds of blood-drinking people his center has investigated, a small number actually have a true need for human blood and actually drink a few ounces of it every day – in addition to their regular diet.

“They could be considered conservative vampires. They range in age from 19 to 62 and all believe blood-drinking is keeping them youthful and will extend their lives.

Kaplan says, “Their need to drink blood must be satisfied at any cost. They report that if they do not have this daily portion of blood they become irritable, depressed, fee weak and become very aggressive.

“They wear inconspicuous clothing, look average and do not have fangs. They sleep in ordinary beds, are light-sensitive and prefer to sleep during the day and work at night.”

Kaplan’s research center says these people will do almost anything to obtain blood. “They take part in sadomasochistic rituals that include blood-letting and blood-drinking. They exchange sexual favors in return for blood and many belong to blood cults.”

But there are others, he says, who are much worse. “We’ve talked with people who admit they stalk humans and kill them for their blood. They approach us through loneliness trying to find others just like themselves.”

Beginning in 1979 and continuing over a number of years Dr. Kaplan’s Vampire Research Center received dozens of phone calls from a highly-educated woman with an old English accent who called herself ‘Elizabeth’, said she’d been born in England in the 1900’s and was currently living in Florida
.
The woman fascinated Kaplan’s research staff with descriptions of how she stalked victims and drained their blood and secretly disposed of their bodies.

She stopped calling in the late eighties. “She told us she missed walking along the Thames. Finally, she moved back to England.”

Over the years many murder victims have been found drained of blood, says Dr. Kaplan. “Police don’t tell us about these cases for a number of reasons. First, most police officers aren’t the brightest scholars. They themselves are victims of the media Dracula syndrome and don’t want to be ridiculed.

The reality is most people still do not believe vampires exist.” Police will substitute the word vampire with madman or psycho or blood fetishist rather than use the word vampire because it conjures up too many complications.”

Randi Belaire may become Kaplan’s 21st documented Toronto vampire. She lives in the basement of her mother’s home in a middle-class section and sleeps on a black water-bed inside thick curtains. The windows of the basement are painted black and Randi never awakes before 2pm. She always goes to bed by 4 am, well before sunrise.

Does she ever feel like grabbing someone and ripping a hole in their throat and drinking their blood?

“Heavens no,” says Randi, “I am afraid of people like that! I think blood tasting and sharing should be a peaceful experience.”

Dr. Kaplan wants to test Belaire to rule out anemia as the cause of her craving. That’s because a vampire must drink blood to serve an actual physical need. Randi fits the pattern.

“When I was nine I made a blood-sister oath with another girl. Later, we sucked on our fingers to make the blood stop flowing. Her finger wouldn’t stop bleeding so I sucked on it too. That’s when something snapped in my taste buds. I grew excited. I could feel the beating of her pulse.

“I kept on and on until finally, she nervously pulled her finger away. We never mentioned it again.”

(According to Dr. Kaplan a true vampire benefits from blood. “I don’t want psychos out there to start experimenting. If you or I drank human blood our bodies would absorb very little nourishment and we’d probably get hepatitis. But vampires thrive on it.)

For many years after the ritual oath incident Randi went into the meat section of super markets and when no one was looking, made a hole in the end of fresh meat cartons and guiltily drank cold blood.

“I did this for years and thought I was crazy until I revealed it to my best girl friend. She was fascinated. I cried with shame but my friend told me there was nothing wrong and said I could have some of her blood.

“We cut her finger and drew some blood into a tiny glass but it was no good. It tasted like cold coffee. The next time we made a little cut on her arm and I drank from it directly.

“We both liked it and it soon became a once a month happening. I would drink directly from a vein for about 15 minutes. I never drank till I was ‘full’. I drank until I was fulfilled.

“After a while I found a second girl. She liked it too. And I have kept her for years. Once a month we meet in my cellar. We lie back on my dark water bed and sometimes hum or play psychic music. It’s very intimate – the giving and receiving of life’s force.

“I had a third girl join and then a fourth. She moved away to the States. She called me once and said she missed giving blood and was looking for someone else like me.”

Even Randy’s mother doesn’t know her secret.

“But these are enlightened times,” says Randy, “The gays have come out of the closet, the witches out of the broom closet, and I guess you could say I’ve come out of the coffin.”

-The End-

This story is based on a series of interviews for a book ‘Vampires I have known’. They came to an end when Dr. Stephen Kaplan, 54, may have broken his rule about meeting people. He was found dead at home, front door unlocked, eyes open, a look of horror on his silently screaming face. Police said he was victim of an apparent heart attack – or was it something else?


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