Bram's Vampire Hunting Handbook

Chapter 1 - Identifying a vampire

The first thing any hunter needs to know is how to identify a target correctly. No one wants to go to jail for mistakingly murdering a goth teenager, after all.

A vampire hunter cannot abstract away from the observational skills that allow them to identify a disguised vampire. It is true that most hunters have half-vampire heritage, thus being able to feel a vampire in any circumstance, but there are no certainties when magic is concerned. It is not wise to be overconfident and let your guard down.

That said, the first piece of knowledge that any hunter needs to know is the precise definition of 'vampire'.

Figuratively, people call 'vampires' any creature that feeds on some kind of life force. Howeveer, not all of them can be counted as a valid target by a vampire hunter. Since the Amsterdam Treaties of 1899[1], the Vampire Hunter Association defines 'vampire' as anyone who is accepted as a member of the Vampire Society, regardless of biology. Luckily, most of the Vampire Society members are common Eastern European vampires or their variants, which means that I can focus on them and only mention the exceptions when they are relevant. Those vampires are the ones which are primarily humans, but with a magical condition that changes their bodies and inflict them an energy deficit that leads to blood drinking. Almost all of them are contagious.

Now that it is out of our way, allow us to enumerate the classical tell-tales of vampirism:

Appearance

While the media has a very definite standard look for vampires (red eyes, dark circles under their eyes, paleness, fangs showing, black clothing), very few of them actually look like that.

The paleness was once common among vampires, since they are naturally nocturnal and the sun limits their powers. However, from the 19th century onwards, they started to stay up more and more during the day, so they could conduct their business without having to rely on human intermediates. This led to tanner skins. Nowadays, the average vampire do not look different from the average human in regard of their skin tones. Similarly, the dark circles only show up if the vampire is sleep deprived for some reason, just like it does with humans.

About the red eyes, common Eastern European vampires do not have red eyes: their irises are all devoid of colour; the red you see is due to the blood vessels in their retina. They only need a quick and almost effortless spell to get some pigments in their eyes, usually matching the colour determined by their genes. Since the spell is so small and easy, it is usually the first one to fail when the vampire experiments anger or stress. The typical eye glowing that accompanies elaborated spells is red in vampires, but not all creatures that glow red eyes when doing high magic are vampires.

The fangs, in fanged vampires (not all of them have fangs[2]), can also be hidden with a little spell. Hiding their fangs among humans is seen as an act of politeness by vampires, like taking your hat off when entering a building. When they feel comfortable with their human company, they usually stop being formal and let the fangs appear. Baring the fangs can be seen as anything from a light insult to a display of aggressiveness.

Even when not hidden by spells, the elongated canine teeth are difficult to see in normal speech. A little side effect of having fangs is a little gap between the mandibular lateral incisors and the mandibular canines to accommodate the elongated maxillary canines. It is hard to notice when a person is talking, but, as long as you are creative, you might find discreet ways to peer other people's mouths without looking mad.

Violet/UV lamps[3] will disrupt any glamour spell that the vampire might be using, but flashing a strong light at somebody's face is seen as rude at best and as an attack at worst, so you might want to do it only if you want to make sure that the person already attacking you is a vampire.

Behaviour

A more subtle approach at detecting vampires is paying attention to certain behavioural patterns. Please notice that normal humans can display one or more of those behaviours naturally. They only work as an indicative of vampirism if most of them are present, along of other clues that there is a vampire around. Even then, the aforementioned flashing of a violet/UV lamp is highly recommended before jamming a stake through the person's heart. I will remind you yet again that you do not want to inadvertently murder a goth teen.

Back to track; keep you eyes open if your target:

1) Eats very little, only a few times a day, and seems confused at how to handle simple food.

While vampires can safely ingest small amounts of certain kinds of drinks (water, tea, coffee, juice and other simple ones), they definitely cannot digest food. They may swallow some to avert suspicion, but will have to regurgitate it after a while. People that are born as vampires (and/or are vampires for extended periods of time) are not used to how food works and might show it when unexpectedly invited to eat. Those vampires, more often than nothing, have no idea how often and how much humans eat, which can lead to some amusing situations.

2) Has no dark circles under their eyes and other signs of sleep deprivation, and yet seems incapable of staying up during the day.

As much as humans like to think otherwise, they are diurnal creatures. If a human cannot keep themselves awake during the day, they are usually sleep-deprived or suffering from some kind of disease. Vampires, however, will look healthy and energy-filled, and yet they will have all kinds of trouble to stay awake during the day. Bonus points if they blink a lot due to the sunshine being too strong for their eyes and avoid direct sunlight to noticable lenghts.

3) Does not seem to know how to attend to basic human needs or seems oblivious to common human cultural behaviours.

Vampire culture is very different from human culture in some regards (specially courtship and marriage), and their biological needs differ in many aspects, particularly in nutrition. It does not matter how up to date a vampire is on these aspects, if they have a close relationship with a human, they will eventually slip on something.

4) Either has a close knit group of friends, or tries hard to form one.

As much as movies try to portray vampires as lone monsters, they are social beings - even more than most humans. If they do not live with other members of their family, they will work hard to make a 'family' of their own. Depending on how desperate for companionship these vampires feel, they will eventually 'groom' that group of friends into becoming vampires themselves. The first step of this 'grooming' process is to gradually alienate the targets from human society, until they identify more with the vampires that with their human roots. 'Grooming' is not always a conscious process; it works almost as an instinct. Once you learn the steps vampires take when grooming, it is hard not to notice it.

For your information, these are the steps of 'grooming' (they usually, but not necessarily, happen in this order):

A - Forging a strong bond with the target
B - Convincing the target that said bond is stronger than the one that the target feel with other humans (usually by stressing how special and unique are the feelings that the vampire has towards the target, even if it is not the case).
C - Slowly adjusting the target's sleep schedule by making them stay awake at night more and more (might be achieved by inviting targets to dance clubs, or by keeping them awake in online games and/or facebook chats until the early hours of the morning).
D - Finding ways to change saliva (or other bodily fluids) with the target, so they slowly become infected enough to be considered a half-vampire.
E - Meeting the target often (usually daily), until the the half-vampire instincts are jump-started.
F - Teaching the target how to deal with the changes brough by the partial infection, without ever mentioning how to supress them.

While those steps of 'grooming' do sound like the warning signs of an abusive relationship, it heavily depends on the morals of the vampire doing them. Well educated vampires will accept 'no' as an answer and stop as soon as they notice what they are doing. Others use the process as a way to earn slaves. A vampire hunter can only interfere if we have strong evidence that it is the latter case. It is always important to notice that a great number of humans are more than happy to embrace 'grooming' and the eventual turning that comes with it. It is not the role of a hunter to interfere with people's choices, even if we cannot fully understand that choice.

As a final word, I cannot stress enought that pale people using black and heavy make up are almost always just goth/emo teens. Those do not regenerate. Avoid legal trouble with the human police and the eventual jail time by making extra sure that somebody is a vampire before trying to stab them.

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[1] We will study the Amsterdam Treaties in a future chapter.
[2] Next chapter is about feeding, and we will explain it better.
[3] See the chapter on vampire hunting weapons.