Vampires are real!

I’m so in love with so many vampires. Edward Cullen from Twilight. Louis from the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire. Dracula from Bram Stoker’s famous 1897 book. They’re all so romantic – pale, gorgeous and forever young. Oh yes, there is that yucky thing they do, killing people and drinking their blood. I try not to think about that but hey, it’s not like vampires are real. Or are they?



This week I was horrified to read that a teenager died in the US this summer after being bitten by a vampire bat and getting rabies. Yes, a vampire bat, a bat that bites people and animals and drinks their blood. Unlike vampires, which kill people by draining their blood, vampire bats can kill people by giving them a disease.

The teenager, who’s not named in the media, was 19 years old and came from Michoacán in Mexico. He was at home sleeping when the vampire bat bit him on the foot. A week later, he moved to the US to work on a farm in Louisiana, which happens to be the place where the hit TV series about vampires True Blood is made. He became very sick but by the time he went to the hospital, it was too late and sadly, he died.

I thought the only vampire bats were in old black-and-white films about Dracula. I didn’t know they were real. Now experts are saying that because of climate changes, vampire bats, which are usually found only in Latin America, are moving to California. I can't stop imagining a bat flying out of the sky and biting me on the neck. Vampires don't seem so attractive, now that they're real.

Watch a trailer for my favourite vampire movie ever, Interview with the Vampire, based on the book of the same name by Anne Rice: