“Finally she smiled, and said ‘I think I might know a few’,” he recalls. So Browning sidled up to her, and told her about his study of vampires.
Blood island define professional#
“You could ‘out’ them,” he says – potentially putting their personal and professional lives in jeopardy.Įventually, he found himself talking about his project to the owner of a goth clothes shop, who subtly pointed out a woman standing with her two children in one of the aisles. In fact, his biggest concern was not his own safety, but the vampires. “It helps being a guy who is 6ft 4in, and 220lbs,” he says. Even at the beginning, he was not too scared about the characters he would meet. Walking the streets at day and night, he began to home in on the places (typically goth clubs) where vampires might hang out. He realised that if he was ever going to get the chance to meet a real vampire, it was now. He was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at the time, just an hour’s drive from New Orleans, a city famed for its vibrant subcultures. “This is not a population who are asking to be found,” he says. Thanks to their fear of exposure, these communities have become adept at hiding, a barrier Browning faced when he started his study. “From what we can tell, most major cities across the world seem to have a vampire community,” says Williams. Before the Age of the Internet, they were largely isolated, but through dedicated webpages they have now forged thriving underground networks. But as a researcher at Louisiana State University, he was willing to go through with it for his latest project: an ethnographic study of the New Orleans “real vampire” community.Īnd yet, the practice seems to have lived on among a small group of people. “I’m actually pretty fearful of anything sharp approaching my skin,” he says. After they had cleaned up, the pair went to a charity dinner in aid of the homeless.Ī self-confessed “needle-phobe”, Browning had not been looking forward to the feeding. “He said my blood was not as metallic as it should have been – so he was a little disappointed,” he recalls apparently, diet, hydration and blood group can all make a subtle difference to the flavour. To Browning’s bemusement, he was not quite to his host’s taste. “He drank it a few times, then cleaned and bandaged me,” Browning says today. Lowering his lips to the wound, Browning's associate now starts lapping up the wine-dark liquid. He then punctures it with a disposable hobby scalpel, and squeezes until the blood starts flowing.
Blood island define Patch#
His acquaintance first swabs a small patch on Browning’s upper back with alcohol. It begins as clinically as a medical procedure. In the French quarter of New Orleans, John Edgar Browning is about to take part in a "feeding".
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