Darkness Vlad Tepes, a young Englishman who has been living as a vampire for the last 13 years, says he is regularly bullied for his different lifestyle and just wants to be treated as a normal person.
He might not be affected by garlic and sunlight, but the 25-year-old who changed his name by deed poll a few years ago calls himself a vampire. He sleeps in a custom made-to-measure wooden coffin, wears eyeliner for a darker look and regularly consumes cow and and pig blood, as well as a human blood substitute.
"To be a vampire is to believe that I have a living body but a dead soul," Darkness says. "But I think there's a lot of preconceptions about being a vampire from films and books like Twilight or Dracula."
In an interview with the Lancashire Telegraph, Darkness Vlad Tepes revealed that he became interested in vampires as a teenager growing up Galway. "I was taking my dog for a walk through the woodlands and I saw a group of girls dressed up and I thought they were zombies. I ran home because I was scared at first, but then I became really curious," he recalls. "One day I found them again, and they initiated me into their coven, and I have been a vampire ever since." But because he knew his lifestyle was different than what most people were used to, he chose to keep it a secret until two years ago.
He never had many problems after coming out as a vampire until recently, when he received verbal abuse for his appearance. "I went into the pub with two mates and a lad piped up and asked if I was abused as a child when I was young because of the way I look," Tepes told the Telegraph. "I felt so ashamed and embarrassed 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," he added. "People have got to accept the fact that what's normal to them is not normal to us, and what's normal to us is not normal to them. I might be a vampire but I just want to be treated like everyone else."
Darkness Vlad Tepes claims to be high up in the ranks of an East Lancashire coven of real-life vampires called Underworld.