Unspeakable Horror!

Is Bartholomew a Vampire?

In the upcoming comic book, Bartholomew of the Scissors, I created a new set of paranormal powers and monsters that are unique to this story-world.  However, since “everything has been done before” in one form or another, there are many connections between Bartholomew’s story-world and the gothic/monster-movie tradition.  For example, the white blob in my story is very divergent from the old blob of drive-in movie days, but you could say that the white blob is definitely in the same sci-fi/monster tradition dating back to the fifties.  In regard to Bartholomew, there are definitely some vampire-like qualities to the undead boy, but he is definitely not your typical Dracula-type vampire.  

Bartholomew has a spectral phantasm, a ghost-like organism from another dimension, living inside his brain.  No one is sure how the phantasms entered our world, but now the creatures are passed down from generation to generation inside human brains, the only place they can exist in our dimension.  In order to survive, they feed off the intangible “life” in human blood (like Bela says in Dracula, “The blood is the life”).  In the case of Bartholomew, the boy is murdered while his spectral phantasm is still dormant.  After he is buried, the phantasm wakes up, and resurrects Bartholomew.  Basically, Bartholomew is undead like a vampire.  However, since Bartholomew was technically dead, Bartholomew’s blood can no longer provide what the phantasm needs to survive, so Bartholomew’s phantasm needs an infusion of blood in order to exist in our dimension.  In this sense, Bartholomew is a vampire because he needs to feed on blood, but not just any blood; specifically, Bartholomew must feed on the blood of someone who is a host to another spectral phantasm.  That is why Bartholomew must drink Jessica’s blood.  

One of the things that has been the most fun about creating this story-world is putting a new spin on monsters and paranormal phenomena.