Life in the Blood

Evil creatures of darkness. Bloodthirsty denizens of the night, prowling the shadows in search of victims. The undead. Vampires.

I begin with a disclaimer. I am neither an authority on nor a particular fan of vampire fiction. I read Dracula somewhere in the far distant era of my teens, along with Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and the like. Forty-odd years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, which I disliked so much that I neither finished it nor attempted any of the sequels. Rice’s on-again-off-again relationship with the Catholic Church, and Christianity in general, is well attested, but I must leave discussion of her novels to others more qualified.

So, there my vampire reading ended — until many years later, when I read and reviewed favorably Lifeblood (2012) by Werner Lind, a Protestant writer and friend. The novel posits that a vampire can be saved by the shedding of blood, but the blood in this case is the purely human blood of a carpenter named Joshua. This intentional Christian symbolism points toward the greater reality that what is required — for all of us, not merely for vampires — is the shed blood of the God-Man, Christ Jesus. For Catholics, this is made available in the Eucharist, a fact made evident in various Catholic vampire novels.

Legends of vampiric beings extend from 2000 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia to Greek and European folklore to the future worlds of Star Trek. The popular notion of vampires as blood-drinking creatures with aversions to garlic, sunlight, and Christian symbols took greater form in the 18th and 19th centuries with works such as John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and the impressively long Varney the Vampire (1845-1847). Yet, because of its influence, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) can claim to be the granddaddy of vampire novels, with J. Sheridan LeFanu’s earlier Carmilla (1872) the grandmother. Both authors belonged to the Anglican Church of Ireland. LeFanu, raised in a more Calvinist strain, expressed skepticism about Catholicism, whereas Stoker (whose wife later converted to the Catholic faith) was more amenable to it. His novel’s hero, Dr. Van Helsing, is a Catholic who uses sacraments and sacramentals in a spiritual war of good against evil, although in ways not always in accord with — and at times abhorrent to — Catholic teaching and practice.

Not to be left out, Catholic writers, too, have staked a claim (so to speak) to vampire fiction. To take but two examples: F. Marion Crawford penned the short story “For the Blood Is the Life” in 1905, and Frederick Cowles, many of whose ghost and horror stories contain Catholic elements, wrote “The Vampire of Kaldenstein” (collected in The Night Wind Howls, 1938) and “Princess of Darkness” (posthumously published in Fear Walks the Night, 1993). I wrote a sequel to the latter, “Dies Irae,” in my collection What Darkness Remains: Thirteen Tales of the Supernatural and Unknown (2017). Of more recent vintage, a brief and incomplete survey would include the following:

•  Jennifer the Damned (Wiseblood, 2015) by Karen Ullo
•  Order of the Blood (Regency, 2015), The Egyptian Elixir (2017), and The Hellhound of Derbyshire (2018) by Page Zaplendam
•  A Bloody Habit (Ignatius, 2018) by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
•  The Curse He Chose (Pauline, 2025) by Sr. Allison Regina Gliot

Each of these works approaches the character of vampires in a different way. Some of the vampires have an aversion to light; others do not. Some have enhanced senses and capabilities; others do not. Some are totally evil, reveling in their depraved existence, while others are tormented, seeking to escape their unnatural existence.

Zaplendam’s entertaining trilogy features vampire John Grissom. Rather than a creature of darkness, Grissom is a Catholic bacteriologist, unwillingly turned, who abhors the taking of human blood and survives on animal blood. Believing vampirism a disease, he desperately seeks a physical cure but is handicapped by the primitive science of his time. Across the three novels, Grissom and his companions foil various plots against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Although not as theologically rich as the others, they illustrate the struggles of a good man against the temptations of vampirism. In Grissom we see a reflection of ourselves, weak and susceptible to sin, striving for a cure.

Ullo aimed Jennifer the Damned at a young adult audience. The title character, Jennifer Carshaw, was created to be a vampire by her unabashedly evil vampire mother and then raised in a convent by loving nuns. Vampirism begins to manifest in her teenage years. Believing her mother’s lie that she has no soul, Jennifer is torn between the irresistible desire for blood, hatred for her absent mother, and a seemingly hopeless quest to become a normal human, yearning for love. But how can a soulless being, doomed to an existence she never chose and believing salvation is impossible, become human? The answer to her spiritual quest lies in the Catholic faith, in the One who gives His body and blood in the Holy Eucharist. Redemption is possible, even for this mass-murdering vampire, who learns that she does, indeed, have a soul.

Jennifer is a complex character, prone to teenage angst. Ullo explores themes of alienation, relationships, and what life might mean for someone who believes she has no soul. Jennifer the Damned is fast moving and imaginative, with plenty of action and conflict. Aspects of the novel, however, give me pause: First is its level of violence, gore, and strong sexual overtones — one chapter in particular is more explicit than might be expected. There is an excess of crude language and profanity — some 20 occasions of the “F-word,” among other things, and, worst of all, the Lord’s name is taken in vain several times. Yes, people talk like this, but do we really need it in Catholic fiction? Yet, for all this, Jennifer the Damned presents a new take on the vampire theme and an affirmation that evil does not have the last word.

A Bloody Habit is the first of three (so far) novels featuring Dominican priest Thomas Edmund Gilroy. Set in England at the end of the Victorian era, Nicholson’s book gives us an old-fashioned Gothic vampire story with a suitably evil villain — no halfhearted bloodsuckers for her. “If evil isn’t evil, and sin isn’t sin, and vampires aren’t vampires, the thrill of the Gothic is reduced to lame angst,” Nicholson says. There’s no salvation for her vampires; as with fallen angels, their doom is certain. Yet, in a sense, this isn’t really a novel about vampires at all — Nicholson has a deeper story to write. It’s told from the perspective of John Kemp, a skeptical lawyer with an aversion to anything and anyone smacking of “popery” and “papists,” though the real hero of the story is the eccentric Fr. Thomas Edmund. While many traditional stories feature generally bemused, borderline-agnostic, and rather impotent Anglican prelates, Fr. Thomas Edmund is anything but. I am reminded of a comment one of Cowles’s characters makes in The Horror of Abbot’s Grange (1936): “These Roman priests are the only chaps who understand anything about occult phenomena. I take off my hat to them when it comes to a real tussle with the devil.”

Fr. Thomas Edmund and his companions are ready for the tussle. And since vampirism, with its bloodlust and caricature of immortality, may be viewed as an inverse of Catholicism, with the vampire as a sort of “anti-Christ,” it is highly appropriate that the task of combatting them is assumed by clergy willing to face the darkness, convinced that the Gates of Hell (gates, of course, being defensive structures) will not prevail. In addition to battling a vampire and vampire minions, Fr. Thomas Edmund grapples with Kemp’s sterile, materialistic worldview in naturally arising theological conversations. If Kemp is not a Christian by book’s end, he at least is on the way. This, to me, is the heart of the novel.

Though I was slightly disappointed by the ending of A Bloody Habit, which smacked a little too much of Hollywood — although the setting, in an incomplete Westminster Cathedral, was a nice touch, as were the chapter headings of quotations from Dracula — the novel is well written, absorbing, and enjoyable. Anyone looking for a traditional vampire novel will not be disappointed. A Bloody Habit is a worthy read even for those ambivalent about the genre. I look forward to Fr. Thomas Edmund’s further adventures.

This brings me to the most recent offering in my scattershot survey of this burgeoning subgenre, The Curse He Chose. Those expecting a vampire novel written by a nun (Sr. Allison of the Daughters of St. Paul) to offer a different take on vampires won’t be disappointed. While vampires typically are unwillingly turned, in Sr. Allison’s telling, becoming a vampire is a choice — a deliberate decision to deny God and one’s humanity, to engage in an act of ultimate rebellion — rather like Dracula, who cursed God and by that act was himself cursed. As vampire Christopher phrases it, “Becoming a vampire can’t happen to you by accident. It’s a choice, an intentional choice. It’s the rejection of everything it means to be human. Life. Death. Love. Transcendence. Family, home, heartbreak, an eternal destiny, everything. Nothing human is considered to have any value. Only when you’re at that point can you become a vampire.”

It sounds dark, and it is. Vampires plumb the depths of human depravity. Yet, as Sr. Allison said in a recent interview, “I appreciate stories that don’t shy away from the darkness, since that is a part of human experience, especially as a consequence of sin. But I personally prefer stories that place dark things in the context of Christ’s victory over death and the salvation He offers us, or at least that show that God is near to us even in the darkest nights and chooses to share in our sufferings out of love for us. Darkness is real, but hope is also real and can be much more difficult to grasp, which is why it’s so important to explore in stories.”

The evil vampires in The Curse He Chose — Kin-Slayer, Shadow, Ripper, and the Enchantress (vampires don’t have names, merely descriptors) — have fallen totally. Christopher (a.k.a. Half-Drinker, so called because he no longer kills his victims) develops regret about his choice to embrace evil but, like Ullo’s Jennifer, sees no escape. The reasons for his choice are not explained; they will have to wait for the subsequent two books in this trilogy.

The heroine, Elizabeth Collins, is a devout young woman who finds herself strangely attracted to this mysterious young man, not realizing initially his vampire identity. But events take a drastic turn, and before long, she and Christopher (the name she gives him) are on the run from a vampiric trio bent on their demise. More importantly, Elizabeth sees something in Christopher that he himself doesn’t recognize: a trace of goodness, a hope, be it ever so fragile and forlorn, that he might be freed from the effects of his curse — that he might, in fact, be saved.

It isn’t an easy road on which Elizabeth sets out. Not only is Christopher in need of healing; so, too, is she, for there are aspects of her life that require the touch of God. And God is not silent or absent. When Elizabeth calls on Him, He answers. There is power in faith and in the name of Jesus. This is a book about faith — specifically, the Catholic faith — as well as hope, trust, courage, and the need to listen to God, to have the willingness to reach out to another, and the importance of standing firm, of being devoted to the sacraments and Scripture. Each chapter begins with a Bible verse, and Sr. Allison provides a helpful “fact vs. fiction” appendix relating to vampires and a section on prayer.

But why vampire fiction? Sr. Allison explains, “Vampire stories may not literally be true, but they speak to the very real struggles we face against sin and evil in all its manifestations.” Paul Prezzia, writing at CatholicAnswers.com, echoes this: “Few modern metaphors for sin are as precise as vampirism. Vampires, for instance, cannot see their reflections, just as serious sin alienates us so much that it even separates us from ourselves, to the point of forgetting who we really are.” Sr. Allison makes this abundantly clear in the character of Christopher.

In short, “the wages of sin are death” — a sort of living death for Jennifer and Christopher, and eternal death in the cases of Jennifer’s mother, mentioned above, and Nicholson’s vampire Count Popescu. “What shall it profit a man to gain the world [eternal youth] but forfeit his soul?”

Can we see a portrait of ourselves in these stories? Perhaps we ourselves are vampire-like, separated from God by sin, believing the ancient lie that “you shall be as gods,” placed under a curse, living an undead life, harming not only ourselves but others as well, and even, given our nature as a violent species, taking the lives of others, as Cain spilled Abel’s blood.

Yes, this outlook is bleak. Yet Jennifer and Christopher are spared eternal damnation. How? Though the grace of God, specifically, the grace of God made manifest in the Eucharist. The reason the Eucharist is the most powerful weapon against vampires, and is the cause of our salvation, is because it is Christ Himself present under the appearance of bread and wine.

The road to transformation, to regaining humanity, is not easy, neither for vampires nor for us; the lives of the saints tell us that. But the result of these struggles for those who persevere is eternal life — something materialists deny, yet for which man has always longed — true immortality, not the counterfeit, which vampirism represents. As Bishop Robert Barron noted, “We are linked, whether we like it or not, to the eternal God who stands outside of time. When the proper religious sense of immortality is suspended, we produce the weird ersatz of the vampire who cannot die. I say ersatz, because authentic immortality has nothing to do with endless life in this world; rather it has to do with being brought outside of time into the eternal realm of God.”

Whet your appetite on Lind and Zaplendam, and then sink your teeth into Jennifer the Damned, A Bloody Habit, and The Curse He Chose, because therein is much wisdom, as well as doctrine, presented under the cloak of fiction. If these novels awaken us to our own vampiric natures and encourage us to shake off the shackles of sin and abandon the false promises of this world, instead to embrace the Risen Lord as He makes Himself present to us, then they will help lead us to His eternal realm. For truly, life is in the blood — His precious blood.

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