We interviewed our very own Luna Luv about her ongoing research project on the narrative themes in identity development and social history of people within the Vampire Community.
In providing you with a closer look into some of the goals, challenges and other details pertaining to this research effort, it is our hope you will be motivated to be part of the survey and tell your friends.
Black Rose Society is assisting Vampire Community Researcher Luna Luv with hosting a survey that hopes to identify trends in the social history and identity formation of self-identified vampires.
The results of this independent study will be drafted up into an article/paper titled “Social Functioning and Narrative Identity Themes Within Self-Identified Vampires,” which will be published and distributed exclusively within the vampire community, including the Black Rose Society’s website.
You are invited to share the link to this survey between your friends within the community. We are looking for responses from all corners of the Online Vampire Community
Our purpose:
Self-identified vampires, that is, people who choose to identify themselves as a vampire or as possessing vampiric traits, often come from vastly different philosophical and ideological backgrounds. This survey asks for historical accounts from individuals who identify as vampires (or vampire-adjacent, i.e. medsangs, vampirekin, etc.) which pertain to both their identity and social development. Responses, while anonymous, will assist us in finding trends in social history and identity narrative development that may exist between identity types, or further serve to individuate them.
This survey will take approximately 10-20 minutes to complete. Responses cannot be saved to come back to later, so please set aside appropriate time for yourself to complete the survey.
Please provide as much or as little information as you are comfortable.
NOTE: SIGNING INTO A GOOGLE ACCOUNT IS REQUIRED TO PREVENT APPLICANTS FROM FILLING OUT THE SURVEY MULTIPLE TIMES. NO ACCOUNT DATA IS STORED OR RECORDED BY THE RESEARCHERS INVOLVED.
Interview with Researcher Luna Luv
BRS: What motivated you to conduct a survey?
Luna Luv: I’ve always had a lot of interest in why people do what they do, vamps included. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a concise answer to that question, but I do think that there are ways of getting a little bit closer to that understanding in some cases. Extending from that, I thought that this research area might be very valuable, especially since psychological perspectives have generally been considered distasteful within the community — and definitely not for no reason. Most articles in psych journals mentioning “real vampires” are often sensationalist or align us all with sexual deviancy and/or pica, which in my opinion displays a fundamental misunderstanding or perhaps disinterest in our psychology. I thought a survey like this would be a way of showing the community that a psychological approach isn’t intrinsically invalidating, and can actually serve to provide us with meaningful insight into what makes us align with the archetype “vampire.” I figured a survey would be a good way of obtaining some qualitative and quasi-quantitative data on the topic.
BRS: How have the responses been so far?
Luna Luv: I’ve really been surprised by how much interest this has gotten. The survey has only been out for around 3 months and we already have close to 60 responses. I definitely see us being able to hit our goal of 100 by the 1-year mark, and hopefully if this keeps up we’ll be able to greatly surpass it. I’m really humbled by how many people have reached out to me and expressed the potential value they see in the study, and I’m so excited to share what we find with the community.
BRS: Can you tell us about your background?
Luna Luv: I’ve got a Master’s degree in mental health counseling and am currently working out of the US, with hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in psychology in the future. Consider this survey practicing for my thesis, haha.
As for my relationship to the vampire community, I’m a lifelong medsang who only discovered the word roughly 5 years ago. I’ve dabbled a bit in the offline scene but I’ve made my home in the online spaces, primarily Black Rose Society.
BRS: What are your goals for this survey?
Luna Luv: My primary goal is to identify if the existing relationships we’ve seen between one’s social development (how they learn where they belong) and identity development (how they learn who they are) can extend to the development of one’s vampiric identity, and if so, what the primary influential factors are. What lessons have we learned to tell ourselves, and when did we learn them? Or what other struggles may run parallel — perhaps our vampiric self-discovery coincided with other unique discoveries about ourselves, such as our gender identity or sexuality. I believe it would be worthwhile to see if we can find any significant correlations in these areas.
BRS: What is the timeline for obtaining the results?
Luna Luv: Initially, I wanted to run data collection from March 2024 to March 2025 and have the paper out by the end of the year. However, considering how much traction this survey has gotten thus far, and how we’ve only recently begun expanding to other social media sites, that deadline is likely to be pushed. I wish I could give a definitive answer — all I can say is that I’m going to try for December 2025, but this may not end up being feasible. 2026 at the latest! Haha
BRS: What challenges did you encounter while organizing this survey in the OVC?
Luna Luv: Honestly, and I should’ve expected this — mistrust. Which is entirely fair; the Vampire Community holds anonymity as something sacred, and in designing this survey it was my intention to preserve our respondents’ anonymity as much as possible. The purpose of utilizing Google Forms to host the survey, in addition to not having access to a more secure survey-hosting site at the time of development, is to prevent (or at least minimize) the submission of multiple responses. However, this requires a respondent to log into a Gmail account, which a few people were not thrilled by. This is why I make a point to emphasize that no account data is stored or recorded by any of the researchers involved in the study, and the email address utilized to access the study is not collected.
BRS: Are there any potential biases, either from your role as the survey organizer or among the participants?
Luna Luv: Oh, absolutely. The primary one being that the survey is being shared almost exclusively through social media, and as such the majority of the responses involve people who primarily participate in the online community. Unfortunately, I personally do not have much access to offline community spaces which may be able to blast this study to community members who may otherwise not see it. Regarding my own biases, I definitely have my own perspective on vampirism based in my personal experiences and knowledge-base. I do not intend on hiding this fact — rather, I simply wish to add my own perspective to the pool of discussions surrounding the nature of whatever it is we’re all going through. Perhaps we will find a more substantial relationship between the specific flavor of one’s vampiric identity and other common factors in their social development history, or even demographic information.
BRS: Lastly, is there anything you would like to say to our readership?
Luna Luv: I appreciate each and every one of you for taking the time to even look at my little project. I’m not trying to pretend that this is some extremely thorough and well-put-together study that’s going to have groundbreaking ramifications on the community… This is just something that I’m really interested in and passionate about, and I’m so humbled by how many people have expressed interest in what I’m doing. I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am for the support I’ve gotten. Thank you all so much for reading, and participating if you have!
BLACK ROSE SOCIETY 2024