Drinking blood sickens me but many people lap it up

A teenager is on trial and the headlines scream 'vampire murder'. These are not good times to be a creature of the night, says Arlene Russo, left, vampire fan and editor of 'Bite Me' magazine

The people I meet whose lives have been transformed by vampires are not devil-worshipping blood drinkers; or if they are, they have never told me. All I know is that they are professors of literature, academics and scientists. They are supermarket check-out girls and housewives. They are everywhere.

The vampire scene catered for by my magazine covers a huge spectrum – from teenage fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer who travel to conventions with their mothers, to "real" vampires who drink human blood, usually from a willing volunteer. I've got a phobia about blood so I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that, but there are thousands of them.

Mostly they make a little cut in their boyfriend's arm, drink a bit that way, and think it makes them a vampire. Others love the fantasy, and it's all in their heads. They've never drunk a drop of blood in their lives. In any case, I'm told blood is disgusting and makes you vomit. The scientists who know about such things tell me it is best drunk with vodka.

Then there are what we call psychic vampires, who feed off the energy of other people; or "wannabes" who think and dress like vampires but are really quite harmless. Some people like only Anne Rice's vampires and will read nothing but her books. Hammer House of Horror obsessives care little for films made post-1973, while Goths look down on vampire fans who wear fangs and cloaks. I have also met people who do not fall easily into categories, like the actor who wants to play only Dracula roles, or the fang-maker who is obsessed with the search for immortality. I myself like Hammer horror and don't care much for vampire role-playing games, or Anne Rice for that matter. I thought there was far too much blood in Interview with the Vampire and recent films such as Blade 2 make me feel queasy.

People are surprised when they see me. They expect a chalk-white face and heavy kohl eyes. As I am of Italian origin, I have always preferred the sun-kissed look and I prefer Dolce and Gabbana and Valentino to shapeless Marilyn Manson T-shirts.

Bite Me was conceived at the world's biggest Dracula party, in Los Angeles in 1997, the centenary of Bram Stoker's book. It has a readership of 15,000 here and overseas. Subscribers come from across the UK, Germany, the US and Sweden. I even get enquiries from Iran and Pakistan.

Contributors include the German forensic biologist Dr Mark Benecke, listed in Who's Who in the World for his contributions to forensic science. In his spare time he is European vice president of the world's biggest Dracula fan club, in New York. He has written reports for Bite Me on spontaneous human combustion and offered a forensic view of impaling.

Another contributor and huge fan of vampires is Dr Raymond T McNally, professor of east European and Russian history at Boston College. He is the best-selling co-author of In Search of Dracula, the first historical biography of Vlad "the Impaler" Tepes. McNally was part of a team that discovered the real Castle Dracula in 1969 in the Carpathian mountains of Romania.

Unfortunately, I have gone off vampires since I started the magazine. To think I may have to spend the rest of my life talking about them horrifies me. I have created a monster, and am tired of having to justify my job. I am also tired of dealing with strange people. Once I received a letter from an inmate of a Dutch prison who wanted me to send a real vampire to drain the warden's blood. He was being entirely serious.

"I have been waiting hundreds of years for a magazine like Bite Me," is a typical comment from my readers. I assume most are in jest, but I know there are people who really believe they have been living for hundreds of years. I met someone in LA who was certain he would live for ever because he had discovered an elixir. He promised he would share it with me when he had completed the formula.

I get mail from people asking for advice on how to become a vampire. If I had the power, I have no doubt I would have queues of people begging me to "turn" them.

For me, however, the vampire is a supernatural being that exists in the realms of our imagination. If there were such a thing, I believe it would exist as a reanimated corpse that had come back to life to feed off the blood of the living. Until science proves this exists, then I cannot believe in it.

I have been interested in vampires since I was a child. At the age of nine I would beg my mother to let me stay up and watch Hammer Horror movies. While other children were reading Black Beauty I was devouring Dennis Gifford's cult classic book Monsters of the Movies, and could quote every word of passages about what you had to do to turn into a werewolf.

It did not happen to me but I can understand how a childhood obsession might develop into something more dangerous. On the other hand, I have met people who find it hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and it's very hard to have any sympathy for them.

My father looks like Christopher Lee, who played Dracula, but he also did a brilliant impersonation of Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. We would shout "do the monster" and have him chase us around the house. He did it once when a friend had come over. I don't think she came back.

So what is it about vampires that attracted me? They symbolise the night, which I love because it is dark, quiet and mystical. As with all mythical creatures you can shape them according to what interests you – so I chose to ignore all the stuff about blood and concentrate on the other side of vampires. After all, they stay young and beautiful for ever, and who wouldn't want that? And look at vampire men: they've got manners, they're elegant, aristocratic. You're not going to find someone like that on the streets of Glasgow.