Norine Dresser

As a folklorist, Norine Dresser is particularly skilled at sifting through cultural artifacts and events in search of the truth behind many of our traditional stories and myths. In American Vampires, Dresser seeks to uncover the truth about vampires and to determine why we are so fascinated by them. Ultimately, Dresser concludes that vampires are figures of folklore and myth, purely fiction. However, their image has the power to inflict great pain and suffering all the same. In the following excerpt, Dresser presents the story of Dr. David Dolphin and his remarkable vampire hypothesis. Speaking at a professional medical conference in 1985, Dr. Dolphin claimed that vampirism could be explained. He argued that people who drink blood suffer from a rare disease called porphyria. Dolphin's statement incited a media frenzy that...