So you have decided you want to be a vampire. To stalk the night in your tight pants, your moppet face, and the ability to sparkle in the sunlight. You make me sick. Ok, we get it, you're Emo and no one understands you, but lets take a look at a few alternatives to the world of body glitter before you decide to become a denizen of the night.
Every world culture has its ideas about vampires, but one thing always stays the same. A vampire should be respected and feared, and not look like it just stepped out of an episode of America's Next Top Model. Granted, some do try. In Malaysia, there is a vampire species known as The Penanggalan. During the day, she is a normal beautiful woman capable of living with, and being the wife of kings and mortal men. But at night, her head flies off of her body, carrying along with it all of the woman's entrails. The body is left behind while the Penanggalan goes to feed on the blood of the living. Now, while you would think it would be pretty hard to feed on someone while guts are smacking them in the face, the Penanggalan has found a way around this. She sucks the blood from your feet with her long proboscis tongue. Just like a mosquito. Any woman can be a Penanggalan, primarily those who practice dark magic or just plain become possessed one day by an evil spirit. There are only two ways to dissuade the Penanggalan from attacking you. The first is to put bushes with thorns around your windows and door. The second is to steal its body and fill it with dirt, so that when it returns it can't get back in. Both of these methods rely on two things. One, the Penanggalan's entrails will start to dry up without its body, and soon they die in horrible pain. That, or they are discovered to be monsters by their husbands and the townspeople, and soon flee to the mountains in shame. In retrospect, that's exactly like the contestants on America's Next Top Model.
Then again, not all vampires are beautiful. In Africa, the Ashanti people had a vampire called The Asasabonsam. This vampire looks mostly human, save for the orange hair growing on it and it's unusually long legs that it uses to grab people. Oh yeah, they live in trees and just pluck people from the group with its talon-like feet. Then it chews on you with its iron teeth and extracts your juices like you would squeeze an orange. But don't worry, as long as you stay out of the jungle you should be ok. While not much is known about this vampire, it is safe to assume burning down the forest it resides in would only piss it off and force it to kill you in the most horrible way possible. Try to avoid that in the future.
Closer to the vampires of TV and Movie myth we are all familiar with is The Chiang-Shih from China. These are vampires that result from improper burial rights or from someone who had died a sudden death, like in suicide. The body would become angry and a lesser spirit called the p'ai would control it, first raising it from the grave and then turning it into a flying hairy monster with huge fangs and talons. The p'ai is one of two spirits that resides in a person until the time of death. The higher soul would go onto the afterlife, while the p'ai if not given proper burial would wreck the place by controlling the body. Granted, the Chiang-shih has a lot of weaknesses. One of the reasons you only ever hear of a Chiang-shih being an unburied body is because they can't dig themselves out of graves. They also have a weakness to garlic, rice, and loud noises. It has been said that fireworks can cause one to have what basically amounts to a heart attack. But, these weaknesses only work until the Chiang-shih transforms into an ugly flying hairy monster. After that point, only bullets, loud noises, and fire can stop it. Did I also mention it jumps out of the shadows to tear a person to shreds and laps up the leftover pieces? Their main trait is their joy in ripping humans to shreds, and often times when they caught a woman they would rape her, tear her up, and possibly rape her again. So in other words, not the best date.
So take off those tight pants, wash off the body glitter, and for God's sake quit being a mopey little bitch. Get out there and be the best vampire you can be, because it's either go big or go home when it comes to the world of the undead.
For more info on Vampires, check out The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead by I. Gordon Mel
ton.
