The Weird Disease That Causes Real-life Vampires

Fortunately for our safety, but unfortunately for the amount of mystery present in this world, vampires aren’t real. My apologies to all the goths out there, but your chances of becoming a familiar and eventually being given the master’s blessing are precisely nil. 

But even if genuine blood-suckers are a tall tale, there’s still the question of why they show up in so many different culture’s mythology. Were ancient people all independently cooking up vampires whole-cloth, or was there actually some real inspiration?

Depending on who you ask, though they weren’t turning into bats or mist, there might have been some actual folks that checked a lot of vampiric boxes. Unfortunately for them, the cause was the opposite of immortality. Historians have suggested that the suspected vampires of yore may have simply been unlucky souls who developed a disease called porphyria. It still exists today, though it’s much more manageable than back then, especially since the treatment is no longer “shunning and wooden stakes.”

Maybe the most prominent symptom of porphyria just happens to also be maybe the most famous facet of vampirism outside of blood-drinking: sensitivity to sunlight. A sensitivity that goes far beyond just a need for sunglasses on cloudy days. In severe cases of porphyria, overexposure to sunlight can cause burning sensations, swelling, blisters and something I would prefer never to have heard of known as “skin erosion.” 

In extremely severe cases, the disease can also cause gums to recede, making teeth appear long and, well, fang-like. It also can destroy the flesh of the nose and ears, which is a bummer, knowing they didn’t even get to be the sexy kind of vampire. 

However, the most surprising crossover of symptoms is the fact that garlic could be toxic to both. That’s because garlic has a high sulfur content that could spark severe flare-ups of porphyria symptoms.

It should be said that, outside of possible confusions and hallucinations, porphyria sufferers are perfectly nice and fine people. The shunning probably did more to make them dislike people than any symptom of the disease. 

As for the actual tales of vampire bites and attacks on humans? That was probably just people with advanced rabies.