The lie of the land

There has been, of late, an increase in popularity in vampire fiction and films with the shocking twilight saga and the underworld series of films prominent in their genre. The TV show, 'Being Human' also followed the misconception that vampires (and indeed werewolves) are top of the tree as far as otherworldly beings are concerned. I must confess that I expected this to be the case but I have been firmly proved wrong with my misconceived assumption. Vampires are probably the least dangerous and militant of the supernatural bunch, well within my experience. First off the blood sucking thing is a myth, created by that media whore buffoon, Bram Stoker. Vampires leech life-force, energy, from their victims by touch. If you've ever suddenly felt tired or can't justify why you suddenly feel run down then, chances are you've had an encounter with a vampire. Like mosquitos, their parasitic encounter with their victims has a delayed reaction, it takes time for the effect to register, sometimes hours can pass before the energy drain is experienced. They are pretty common, next time you are on a busy high street watch out for anyone purposefully making extended contact with passers-by, most of the vampires I have experienced take a small amount of life-force from each of their victims, little and often prevents attention. I guess it is theoretically possible for a vampire to completely drain the essence of a victims but as they do not have the mythical superhuman strength seen in movies it wouldn't be too hard to fend them off.

The truth about werewolves is just as dull. First of all they are not very common at all, I think I have met two in the past year, that's travelling up and down the country. Over the centuries these shape-shifters have been chased, hunted and persecuted wherever they were encountered. Not translating very well to a community existence many of the werewolves (I generalise, as it is possible for a shapeshifter to have an alternative form in any shape although each individual only has one) gravitated to more rural areas where wolves are experienced. As time marched on wolves were hunted and killed, in the UK we haven't had wolves for many centuries with the situation on mainland Europe deteriorating rapidly. As the bigger more 'wolfy' of the were-creatures were exterminated so the gene pool became depleted leaving the smaller weaker souls to remain. Werewolves can shift form at will and need to do so to feed, as it can be imagined this leaves them, in modern times as a shadow of their former selves, often their animal form is more akin to a reasonably sized fox or dog than a wolf and as such they can roam the shadowy streets with little chance of attracting too much attention. Once more they pose more threat to the wheely bins and dumpsters of the general public rather than any real threat to their health.

So, I hear you ask, who and/or what does pose a real threat to the general populace of the British Isles? Here in the UK it seems that there are elemental creatures, mainly those many generations done the line with remaining powers but a few very powerful creatures of massive elemental force who have very little regard for the lives of us mere mortals. They are the ones I spoke about yesterday and will post more when I feel it is safe to do so.