Are vampires really just zombies that like to go to sleep during the day?...WUT?!!

Don't laugh, I'm actually basing this off a theory I've come up with on my own. I know, it seems silly, right?

But did you know that before Dracula, looooong before the vampire became a romanticized figure, there was a type of vampire known as the "Strigoi", and basically they were horrible, rotting and bloated dead ghouls that rose up out of their graves and sought out the living to consume? Sure, they only came out at night, but doesn't this sound more like the modern zombie? And in case you didn't know, it isn't a hard and fast rule that vampires cannot expose themselves to sunlight.

Now before you jump and scoff at this, poking fun at Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, listen up....before Dracula there was Varney the Vampire. He appeared in what is known as a "penny dreadful" and appeared about 50 years before Bram Stoker wrote his book. Varney romped around in the daylight, and he even felt remorse for being a vampire....but I digress. I really like vampires, almost as much as zombies. I consider myself a little bit of an expert on the subject, but that makes me sound like a "knowitall" and I'm not trying to impress anyone! I just would like for you to think about the differences, and the similarities between the two species of monster, and then consider the possibility of there being a relation.

What do you think?

In Richard Matheson's brilliant novel I Am Legend, his vampires are almost interchangeable with zombies--and in fact, that novel influenced Romero's Night of the Living Dead (and therefore, just about every zombie story that came along since.

His vampires are mostly nonverbal. They gather in huge crowds, looking for Robert Neville's blood (of course, as far as Neville knows, he's the last human, so there would be huge crowds of vampires). Matheson's "scientific" explanation for vampirism is pretty much the standard for most explanations for zombie plagues, and the book is generally accepted as the first "zombie apocalypse" novel.

But he called them vampires, although they have little in common with Dracula, etc.

I wrote four 30 Days of Night novels (three of them collaborations with Steve Niles, who created the original comic books). In those, the vampires are more traditionally vampiric, but there are also elements common to zombie stories (even more so in the movie version).

So I'd say yes, with artistic license, vamps and zombies can be largely interchangeable.

Yes, I always thought of the creatures in I Am Legend as being zombies and not vampires, although the night/day thing seems to be about the only hard difference between the two. I loved 30 Days of Night, but haven't read all of the comics, to be honest. Probably should look into getting them for my collection. I do have an original paperback copy of I Am Legend though!

The 30 Days of Night novels that we did expand a lot on the comic universe--taking it out of Alaska and getting into both the world of the vampires and those hunting them. There are some pretty major differences between the comics and novels and the movie--such as, in the movie, the vamps couldn't speak English (or whatever), but spoke that weird vampire language. In the books, the vampires speak whatever they knew when they were human, since it doesn't seem like dying and coming back would make you forget your native tongue but teach you a new one.

Anyway, if you prefer novels to comics, they explain what happened in the first couple of comic book miniseries, and add a whole lot more.

Yeah, it wouldn't really make sense to me that they would speak their own vampire language, unless they were a species that lived in a completely alternate universe without human influence? If that makes any sense? Like a vampire planet, but then again, what/who would they feed on? Oh geez, I can see myself thinking about this a little too much now. I'll end up going into a weird tangent, LOL!

Maybe I prefer the idea of vampires not being able to speak at all, but communicate through telepathy. That way you automatically hear their thoughts that they project to you in your own language.

That would work.

In the Vampirella comics, Vampi came from a vampire planet where the rivers ran with blood instead of water. Which doesn't make a lot of sense... but Vampirella was always more about the T&A than the story.

I LOVE Vampirella! I've got some artwork somewhere on a thumbdrive with my face instead of hers, LOL! I do that a lot.

I wrote a Vampirella crossover comic once--Vampirella and Wetworks, a team of military-type vampire hunters. It was a lot of fun.

That's really cool! I'm so glad I've met you! We seem to be sympatico!

Definitely a lot of overlapping interests!

LOL, I've just realized that this section is getting more action than the rest of the forum. Perhaps I should've created a vampire forum? LOL!

Oh how these ideas become fun. My son is writing a vampire story for a flash fiction submission right now. I am looking forward to it!

Tell him I said GOOD LUCK!

And yes, yes it is a lot of fun!

Vampires!! Perhaps you should have done a Vampire forum.

Thanks for the discussions on these forums guys... I love reading them... now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out for a bite of dinner....

I might still...you never know.