The Sweet Goth has been spending a few hours perusing the Library of Congress holdings, looking for holdings of vampire books for young children, and holdings between 1897 and 1950, and she stumbled upon The mental vampire per telepathy; sketch and revelations to science of the invisible world, by August M. Becker (published in NY, 1928). It caught my attention because while vampire (and Zombie) economic metaphors are prevalent, as are gold-digger (pimp) metaphors and employer metaphors, Sweet Goth has never really considered the idea of telepaths as being sort of mental vampires.
I had always just considered the idea of being able to look into someones mind as somewhat cool and freaky. But as a metaphor, now that I think about it, it works. A telepath looks into someones mind without their permission (except Spock) taking away someone's very private view of the world. It again plays with a trinity (vampire, victim, blood) = (telepathic human, victim, thought), and what is more personal than thought? Our thoughts are as integral to us as our blood, because without either, we cease.
Bram Stoker's seminal Dracula of course does lead this direction with Dracula's ability to read the minds of the women he has vampirized. He is able -- as are they -- to share telepathically what they are seeing as they see it. This is seen most obviously in Mina Harker -- nee Murray as the slayers, through the hypnotism of Helsing, use Mina's connection to Dracula to trace his travels from England back to Romania.
Pretty cool that someone back in 1928 was making the connections for me. I will be all vampiric and use his/her thoughts send across the invisible time/space world in the form of a book, and spend some time communing in someone's brain. Cool.
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