Traits of Real Vampires

Revised Version (for people over 18)

NOTE: If you are under 18 years old, or if your life and sexual experiences are limited for any other reasons, you can take the alternate checklist. It asks most of the same questions.

Not all real vampires will have all of these traits. Everybody is affected by their environment, pressure from parents, friends, and family, personal inhibitions, and opportunity. Some of these traits you may never have thought about before, so consider them carefully.

Each checklist entry has a number in parentheses (1, 2 or 3). For each trait that applies to you, add the number for the trait to your total. Pay attention, because several categories have one or two items with a different number than the rest. Add up the total. For "scoring", see the directions at the bottom of the traits list.

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• Nocturnal Tendencies
  • (3)--You are naturally nocturnal, preferring to be awake at night.
  • (3)--You were a "night owl" as a child, probably to the depair of your parents.
  • (3)--You have excellent night vision.
  • (3)--When on a day schedule, you are a "hot" sleeper -- you get hot and kick off the covers in the pre-dawn hours.
  • (3)--If you are female, your menstrual periods tend to start in the mid-afternoon to early evening.
  • (3)--You were born in the mid-afternoon to early evening.
  • (3)--Your kidneys produce more urine during the day than at night.
  • (3)--You get unaccountably cold in the mid-afternoon to early evening, then warm up as evening progresses.
  • (3)--Your body temperature drops during the day and rises at night.
• Attitude Toward Blood
  • (3)--You are drawn to drink blood for nourishment.
  • (3)--Blood tastes unusual to you -- sweet, spicy, or "fizzy" -- tingling on your tongue.
  • (3)--Blood makes you "high" the way eating when you're very hungry does.
  • (3)--You crave blood and think about it a lot.
  • (3)--You enjoy the sensation of blood on your skin.
  • (3)--You can directly sense the life force within fresh blood.
  • (3)--You have volunteered or worked in jobs that brought you into contact with blood, for that reason.
  • (3)--Your interest in blood does NOT include a wish to cause pain or do violence to other living things.
  • (3)--Blood is not primarily erotic for you.
• Interest in Vampires
  • (3)--You have a strong interest in vampire folklore, movies, or literature.
  • (3)--Your vampire interests began at the same time that you reached puberty, and you aren't sure why.
  • (3)--Your interest might be considered obsessive, if you allowed others to know how deeply involved you are.
  • (3)--You have fantasies about vampires.
  • (3)--You write stories about vampires, or create other forms of vampire-themed artwork.
  • (3)--You deeply long to be a vampire, and wish that one would turn you.
  • (3)--You believe that vampires exist and can't shake the belief even though you may feel silly thinking about it.
  • (3)--You deliberately cultivate a "vampiric" appearance in everyday surroundings (i.e. not just for role-playing, clubbing, etc), or definitely would if your life circumstances permitted it.
  • (3)--You have made permanent changes in yourself to facilitate a vampiric appearance (teeth caps, changed hair color, etc), or definitely would if your life circumstances permitted it.
  • (3)--You drink human or animal blood when you can get it, or definitely would if you could.
  • (3)--You always have felt you were destined to be a vampire, even if you felt silly about it and wouldn't have admitted it to anyone else.
  • (3)--You believe that you are, in some sense, a vampire.
  • (3)--You have adopted eccentricities in your lifestyle that make you "feel like a vampire" (sleeping in a coffin, shuttering up your windows, working nights, etc) for that reason.
• Sexuality
  • (2)--You are bisexual.
  • (3)--You enjoy sexual activity because it allows you to absorb life force.
  • (3)--You experience your partner's orgasms as a rush of energy.
  • (3)--You drink sexual fluids because of the life force they contain.
  • (2)--You tend not to have strong moral attitudes about sexual behavior in yourself or others
  • (2)--You're a sexual opportunist, sometimes a little undiscriminating or exploitive
  • (3)--You obtain blood during sex, but obtaining blood is not your main reason for being interested in sex.
  • (3)--Your partners sometimes experience unusual fatigue, coldness or inability to achieve orgasm when having sex with you.
  • (3)--Sex does not make you sleepy, but leaves you energized and somewhat "high".
  • (3)--Given a choice, you'd rather have sex than eat.
• Psychic and Magickal Ability
  • (2)--You are highly empathic. You feel the pain of other living things.
  • (2)--You are very psychic and intuitive.
  • (2)--You have been drawn to develop psychic or magickal ability through training.
  • (2)--You have natural magickal ability for self-transformation and external change.
  • (2)--You have been able to use healing ability.
  • (2)--You tend not to use "props" or trappings for psychic or magickal work.
  • (2)--You can sense or see auras and energy fields around other people.
  • (2)--You are able to work with the energy fields of other people.
  • (3)--You can consciously draw energy from others as well as feed it back to them.
  • (2)--You have been described as having an "unusual" aura at least twice by people who can see or sense auras.
  • (2)--You have had one or more paranormal experiences, including any of the following:
    • awakening at night with the sense that you are not alone
    • experiencing a "ghost" or poltergeist
    • seeing a ufo or other paranormal phenomenon
    • a "night-hag" experience in which you awoke feeling paralyzed and felt something physically touching you
• Relationship of Physical and Astral Bodies
  • (2)--You often feel detached from your body.
  • (2)--You are prone to dizzy spells, fainting or light-headedness that have no conventional explanation.
  • (2)--You trance out deeply and easily.
  • (2)--You have vivid dreams.
  • (2)--You dream about flying.
  • (2)--You have experienced spontaneous astral projection or out of body experiences.
  • (2)--You have achieved astral projection by conscious means.
  • (2)--You are able to visualize vividly.
  • (2)--You have an uneasy relationship with food, possibly an eating disorder.
  • (2)--You are overweight or underweight.
  • (2)--Your health (despite underweight or overweight) is above average. You come down with fewer illnesses than others around you.
  • (2)--You have had at least three illnesses which could not be diagnosed by your physician.
  • (2)--You tend to react oddly and unpredictably to medication, experience muted effects, and avoid taking non-prescription remedies.
  • (2)--You have experienced a pronounced sense of bodily alterations (change in position, size or proportion) while meditating, in trance, or on the edge of sleep.
  • (2)--You have trouble staying grounded and centered without conscious attention.
  • (2)--You appear significantly younger than your actual age.
  • (2)--Aging markers such as skin tension, metabolism, body fat percentages and so on would indicate that you are significantly younger than your actual age.
  • (2)--You suffer from migraine headaches.
• Sensory Awareness
  • (2)--Your hearing is acute, and you can hear very low and very high frequency sounds that most people don't hear.
  • (3)--You are photophobic, and can't see well in strong light or bright sunlight.
  • (2)--Your sense of touch is acute -- you prefer soft clothing.
  • (3)--You dislike sunlight and feel that it is burning or damaging your skin.
  • (2)--You have a keen sense of smell.
  • (3)--You can see slightly further into the fringes of the visible spectrum (infrared and ultraviolet) than most people.
  • (2)--You tend to avoid sensory extremes -- they are too painful for you.
  • (2)--As an infant and young child, you were hyper-sensitive and easily over-stimulated.
• Personality Traits
  • (1)--You have passionate emotions both positive and negative.
  • (1)--You experience life to the fullest, for better or worse.
  • (1)--At least three different people, in different kinds of relationships to you, have told you that you're "too intense" or "very intense".
  • (1)--You often can't understand why people react to you as they do -- they seem to be over-reacting to what you did or said.
  • (1)--Especially if you are male, you have difficulty managing your anger, which seems overwhelmingly intense at times
  • (1)--You are both drawn and repelled by people who seem very like you.
  • (1)--You frequently need to withdraw from others and spend time in solitude.
  • (1)--You enjoy socializing but easily become "overloaded" and need to withdraw.
  • (1)--You enjoy attention and are not shy about performing or speaking in public.
  • (1)--You cultivate a striking or unusual appearance in some way.
  • (1)--Your personal style of expression tends to be dramatic, if not melodramatic.
  • (1)--Sometimes people withdraw from you or avoid you without being able to explain why.
  • (1)--Your love affairs and friendships are on the stormy side, with high turnover.
  • (1)--You are above-average intelligence and creatively gifted, but may not feel that you have been able to use either to full advantage.
  • (1)--You feel at odds with the society you live in, and may retreat into a "subculture" such as the Pagan, fannish, gay/lesbian or Goth communities.
  • (1)--You feel misplaced in the era of time in which you live.
  • (2)--Other people, especially children, have said you looked like a vampire or asked if you are "into vampires".
  • (1)--At times in your life you have been prone to deep depressions and a sense of inconsolable loneliness, as though no one else like you existed.
  • (1)--At least once, another person has characterized you as "a black hole" or used a similar term.
  • (2)--You sincerely believe that you are not human, even if you aren't sure what you might be instead.

Scoring Your Results

• If you have from 176 to 220 points total, you have most of the identifying characteristics of a real vampire.
• If you scored between 110 and 175, notice which categories are the most true for you. The first four categories -- Nocturnal Tendencies, Attitudes Toward Blood, Interest in Vampires and Sexuality -- are the most significant markers for real vampires. For each of these four categories in which you checked every item, give yourself 15 additional points. If this raises your total above 175, you might want to think more carefully about the traits you did not check in the other categories.
• If you scored below 109 points, you are not actively displaying the characteristics of a real vampire at this time, or are not conscious of them.

So what does this mean...?

Go to Followup for more information about your checklist score and what you can do now.

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