BY KEVIN SAWYER – This 25 year old Brit just wants to be treated like a normal, regular guy. The thing is, though, for the last 13 years, Darkness Vlad Tepes, yes that is his real name, has been living his life as a blood drinking, coffin sleeping vampire. He had his coffin custom made from wood, weighing 55 pounds, for his 6’6″ frame which, he says, wasn’t an easy thing to have done.
He drinks a human blood substitute but has, in the past, availed himself of both cow blood and pig blood. He says that he “just wants to be treated like everyone else” and, for the most part, has received his wish. Recently, though, while out drinking at a local bar with some friends, he realized that not everyone is so open minded as he is.
Dressing in a rather goth-like way, even going so far as to use eye liner for that vampire affect, Darkness encountered some people at a bar that asked him why he dressed and acted in this way. They asked him if he had been abused as a child.
“I felt so ashamed and embarrassed”, Darkness said, “that I would get asked such a personal question based on my choice of lifestyle. Everyone has their beliefs and I don’t believe I should be persecuted for following mine. People have got to accept the fact that what may be normal to them is not normal to us. I might be a vampire but I just want to be treated like everyone else.”
He wasn’t always this way, he says. He had led a secret life for 11 years until he decided to come out publicly about two years ago. His fascination with vampirism began when he was 12 years old. One day, he says he was walking his dog out in some nearby woods when he says he saw a small group of girls dressed rather differently. He thought the girls were actual zombies, got scared, and raced home.
A short time later however, out dog walking in the same woods, he encountered the same group of young girls. He approached them and they took him in. He said that they eventually initiated him into their coven and he has been living as a vampire ever since that day when he was 12 years old.
He took his new name, Vlad Tepes, in honor of Vlad the Impaler, the first Count Dracula. Darkness tells of covens everywhere and, in England, this community is known as “The Underworld”.
“To be a vampire,” Darkness says, “is to believe that I have a living body but a dead soul.”
PHOTO CREDITS: The Lancashire Telegraph