By: Josiah Sanon
Vampires are an iconic staple in horror; they are often associated with themes of repressed desire, loneliness, and class struggle. These themes are only elevated when Vampires are Black. The Black experience is full of these struggles already, and when it intersects with vampirism, a plethora of special and compelling stories are told.
One of the first stories to explore the Black vampire is named “The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo,” written by Uriah Derick D’arcy, who may have actually been author Richard Varick Dey. The book was published in New York in 1819 following the story of a former slave who was killed by his master and resurrected as a vampire. He returns as a mysterious prince and seeks revenge on his former master. The Black vampire prince does a number of things to his captor and his family, like kidnapping their children and turning his wife into a vampire. However, the story ends with the prince being betrayed and staked while the slave catcher is revived and reunited with his wife.
This was the first recorded horror media centering a Black vampire as not only one of the main characters, but the main antagonist. The unsatisfactory ending of having the slave master be rewarded with a second chance at life and happiness shows the horror 1800s Americans felt at the possibility of Black people seeking out retribution for the constant oppression they’ve been subject to since the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
This story villainizes black rage in the same manner other vampire stories demonize different marginalized groups. In a similar fashion, the book “Carmilla” features a female vampire preying on another woman by drinking a bit of her blood every single night. The story served as a cautionary tale against homosexuality, but in current times has been reclaimed by the lesbian community and is now considered a tragic vampiric lesbian love story.
“The Black Vampyre” cannot be reclaimed in this way, however, as the ending and message of the novel are shamelessly racist and anti-black. The Prince is not a threat because of his vampirism; this is simply the supernatural force that allows him to enact his vengeance. The real reason he is the story’s antagonist is because he is a Black man getting retribution on his white captors and slavers. Stories like “The Black Vampyre” made it clear that even when Black people are blood-sucking monsters, their skin color is still the main reason they horrify readers and watchers across all different forms of media.
More current pieces of vampire media no longer use vampires as stand-ins and allegories for marginalized communities—instead vampirism has been glamorized, and vampires have been turned from antagonists into our main characters and heroes. “Twilight” is perhaps the biggest reason for this switch in the perspective towards vampires. The vampires in “Twilight” aren’t sun-avoiding stalkers and predators of the night; they are instead pale supermodels who shimmer like diamonds in the sunlight, rather than burn.
Vampires are barely monsters anymore; they are not portrayed as otherworldly creatures whose motivations are simultaneously evil but also fascinating and, in some cases, like “The Black Vampyre,” completely understandable. Now they are just quirky, sort of mean, usually White people with pointy fangs who are sometimes completely immune to the sun, which goes against one of the main things that make vampires, vampires. Now that the image of the vampire has been completely sanitized, suddenly Black vampires are rare to see, whereas back in the 1800s vampires were actually seen as monsters; a Black vampire was a central antagonist.
When Black vampires grace the screen, everything that makes vampires interesting is on full display. “Sinners” by Ryan Coogler was a horror thriller that came out in 2025. It takes place in 1930s Mississippi, and the main antagonist is a vampire named Remmick, an Irish man who tries to convince the mostly Black cast to join his vampiric hive mind. The potential of a new life is especially alluring for our black main character, as shown in one of the movie’s songs, “Pale, Pale Moon,” sung by the character Pearline, a mysterious woman who abandons her husband to go to the Juke Joint where Remmick launches his attack. The song talks about how Black people can only truly have fun and be themselves under the secrecy of the night, as they are forced and expected to work tirelessly and mind their manners around white folk while the sun is up. Lyrics such as, “Leave the day by the, by the door. I don’t care if the sun don’t shine once more, that’s what I said.” The overall message draws a strong parallel between the lifestyle of Black people and the endless night that vampires must keep themselves in lest they surrender to the sun’s deadly light.
Both groups are only allowed to truly come out and act on their desires when the moon comes up; Pearline gets to sneak off from her husband and sing at the juke joint, Sammie gets to play the blues, which was known as “The Devil’s Music,” and all the black people in town get to take a break from the seemingly endless work of the day to enjoy their culture and each other’s company. The desires and needs that Remmick indulges at night are far more nefarious, however, and his constant attempts to manipulate his way into the community of the Juke Joint and have them join him show that his immortality is one of constant loneliness, and he will do just about anything to have half the love and support that Black people are able to provide each other under the moonlight.
The mere presence of Black people can drastically elevate the narrative of a vampire story, even if they aren’t the vampires themselves. However, now that we have mostly moved on from the blatant anti-blackness of the 1980’s, when Black Vampires do grace the screen, their stories handle them a lot differently.
The horror of the intersectionality between being Black and being a vampire is handled in the heart-wrenching tragedy of Claudia in the show “Interview with The Vampire.” Claudia is one of of the show’s three vampire protagonists. Louis and Lestat turn her into their daughter at just 14 years old. Claudia wants to find more vampires like her, however one thing leads to another and the vampires she finds are the ones who lead her to her death. The scene is intentionally framed as a hate crime where Claudia is the subject of a mock trial and at the trial’s conclusion she is exposed to the sun in front of a live audience, her death is made into a spectacle for the all white audience, as all hate crimes usually are.
Unlike the prince’s death in “The Black Vampyre,” however, Claudia’s death is not framed as a heroic triumph by the vampires; it is instead the biggest mistake they’ve made in their lives and haunts Lestat and Louis for the rest of theirs. The audience is forced to sit with the horror of knowing that, even among her fellow creatures of the night, her skin and appearance not only set her apart from them but also was enough of an excuse to end her life just when it was finally beginning.
The added layer of horror that Black characters bring to Vampire stories is unique. The terror of knowing and seeing that the only thing truly separating the black experience and the fictional torment of the vampire is the hunger for blood and averting the sun. Despite all the supernatural abilities that vampires have or the wealth they are usually synonymous with,when they’re black we remember that they are not just rich castle owners or pretty people with fangs, they are monsters whose immortality is a curse. The loneliness even amongst those oppressed in similar ways to you, the desires that can only be pursued in secret, or the often justified anger at your circumstances that can lead to your demise.
Black vampires set themselves apart because they are reflections of what oppression can do to someone, they remind us the circumstances that motivate fictional blood sucking monsters are also reality, and that should horrify everyone.