I’ve seen a few vampire movies in my time and admit that the vampire lifestyle does seem pretty cool – you know ‘sleep all day, party all night, never get old’ – but I don’t think for one minute that I would ever actually want to live my life as one.

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The same can’t be said for everyone in this world as evidenced by 25 year old Darkness Vlad Tepes from Blackburn who has apparently been living as a vampire for the past 25 years:

I sleep in a custom made coffin and have drunk cow and pig’s blood, as well as a human blood substitute.

My life was always a secret until I came out two years ago.

I first learnt about vampires when I was 13 and growing up in Galway.

I was taking my dog for a walk through the woodlands and I saw a group of girls dressed up and I thought they were zombies.

I ran home because I was scared at first, but then I became really curious.

One day I found them again, and they initiated me into their coven, and I have been a vampire ever since.

To be a vampire is to believe that I have a living body but a dead soul.

But I think there’s a lot of preconceptions about being a vampire from films and books like Twilight or Dracula.

Garlic doesn’t affect me and I can quite happily walk around in the sunlight.

The coffin is purely a choice option to being a vampire, it’s one that I do because it feels right.

I’ve lived in Blackburn since 2012, and I’m high up in an East Lancashire coven of vampires called Underworld.

Being a vampire is difficult and of course there are struggles in everyday life.

But I’m happy to stand by my choice. I haven’t had any problems with other people really until recently.

I went for a drink with friends at a pub in Oswaldtwistle where I was openly abused because of the way I dressed.

I went into the pub with two mates and a lad piped up and asked if I was abused as a child when I was young because of the way I look.

I felt so ashamed and embarrassed that I would get asked such a personal question based on my choice of lifestyle.

Everyone has their beliefs and I don’t believe I should be persecuted for following mine.

It’s this kind of behaviour that cost the life of Sophie Lancaster in Bacup in 2007.

I might be a vampire but I just want to be treated like everyone else.

People have got to accept the fact that what’s normal to them is not normal to us, and what’s normal to us is not normal to them.

Wow. I mean I suppose people do, but on the other hand this is a guy going around pretending to be a vampire and sleeping in a coffin and drinking blood. How could anyone not find that abnormal?

My favourite line in there has got to be ‘I might be a vampire but I just want to be treated like anyone else’. I mean seriously, surely the WHOLE REASON that you decided to become a vampire – it seems like it was his personal choice from the interview – was so you could be different to everyone else? Suck it up and get on with it if that’s what you want pal. Oh yeah, maybe don’t live in Blackburn either. Can hardly imagine it’s the most tolerant place in the world.

Of course, Darkness (lol) isn’t the first vampire we’ve seen on these pages and I’ll doubt he’ll be the last either – what about the vampire pimp who was jailed for 27 years earlier this year?