It's time to tell my own story.  I think you might enjoy it.


Let me begin with an assurance.  If in all my years of activity with the vampire community I had ever seen anything outright harmful, destructive, or otherwise detrimental...if I had not found that many of the ideas and concepts and philosophies have at least some sound grounding in logic, reason, and reality...if I had not discovered the metaphysical power and purpose of the vampire through my own experiences...I would not be writing this now.


I am here as one representative and one voice of the vampire community precisely because it works for me.  Sure, it probably sounds insane, and I don't bear a grudge against anyone who just can't swallow the idea of real vampirism and all of its attributes.  How could I bear a grudge when once upon a time (a VERY long time ago)  I was in the same place?  What happened is that my mind was open and I began to hear thoughts that actually made practical sense.  If a metaphysical approach means working with energy, and that energy was the essential living energy of the universe (what one might even call divine), then how was that stream of real vampirism any different from what people call religion or spirituality?


I've simplified it here, but my point is that I was not seduced by promises of immortality or a hunger for blood or what have you.  The thoughts of minds that had gone before me captured my own mind and imagination, and my path as a vampire had begun.

I have been involved with the real vampire community since 1985. I am looking to continue working for the community, especially by bringing in my professional assets in the media and in publishing. Additionally, I am open to mentoring individuals who feel the pull of the vampire, but aren't entirely certain what they are.
This is the story of how I have arrived at this point without getting into dull Dickensian description or some morass of pointless self-promotion.  Let me begin by saying I was raised in a philosophically open family. My family encouraged me to use my mind and my imagination, to explore and discover. There was no such thing as taboo. Now I can look back and see where the roots of my vampirism are in my own upbringing. I was raised to be open and aware, and so I have continued to be.

My "awakening", as it were, happened on August 6, 1985--the fortieth anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Actually, that was the day when months of self-examination and reflection crystallized for me. I was not yet 14 years old. I hadn't known the words "empathic" or "psionic" and consequently could not have used them to describe what I had been experiencing. I knew I was living with a different and heightened set of senses, and that the whole of me hungered and yearned for something I couldn't identify.

I had come into the sphere of House Maidenfear (now called Founder's House), a vampire sanctuary, months before through initiated friends that seemed to really understand what I was experiencing. On that day, the puzzle pieces of my thoughts clicked into place. I too was a vampire. I decided that I would never deny that aspect of me--in fact, I could never deny it. I would embrace vampirism and my existence as a vampire.

For the following four years I spent a great deal of time at House Maidenfear, learning and developing my own abilities. My own initiation was in 1989, once I turned 18. However, I had to take the Maidenfear Way and my own life as a vampire on an adventure. I moved away to college, where I studied history and linguistics and became an expert vampire researcher. I was able to enhance that skill in graduate school in Florida. Wherever I went, I made connections with the local vampire communities. I came home to House Maidenfear in 2001 and I was elected to my current station in 2003.

I came to call myself Sappho after a thorough reading of her poetry. Her words have such an ability to wrench deep emotional energy that I came to regard her as something of a vampire herself.  Actually my vampire name has its own code and story.  "Lupia" was the name of the group in which I was initiated.  I chose Sappho for myself.  "Wolf" was the totemic cycle in play at the time of my initiation.  Hence, Lupia Sappho Wolf.  I'm known affectionately as the "Vampire Philosophe" for the amount of time I've spent in the more cerebral aspects of the vampire existence. 

Additionally, I hold with one widely encompassing definition of vampire.  There exists an entity of living energy all around us and in the universe. I mean that this energy is both alive itself and imbues all things with life of one degree or another. A vampire is an adept at energy play, an adept at tapping into this living energy for self-benefit. For some this is achieved through drinking blood, for others it is a matter of psychic living energy. A vampire knows how to take what energy they want and need and use it for their own purposes.

I believe we as vampires are at an exciting time in our history. At no other point in the history of the world have circumstances been so ripe for us to fully express ourselves and be true to what we are. My commitment to the vampire community is to help us achieve our greatest potential.

And so I don't know if this makes me any more or less real than any other vampire, but this is my heritage and my legacy.