Dear Miss Van Helsing, frenemy without equal,

Since at least the 1660s, maybe the 1650s, people like you have been trying to prove that I’m a vampire. However, as shall become clear, there is no reason to think I was even alive for the incident in 1663 that you just wrote to me about, so the accusations have clearly all been spurious. Further, nobody has proven that vampires are real at all. I’m going to address the “strongest” evidence you have, and give my own irrefutable counter-evidence.

Before I begin, side note: You allege that the recent surge in movies about Dracula is a sign that we’re preparing for his return. Why would that be the case? Ackshually, it is a sign that people take him less seriously than ever, which would seem to align with your and your family’s interests. Surely you want this “Dracula” to seem weak, right? We would definitely not engineer this normalising effect through a gradually intensifying propaganda campaign to make the masses less afraid of him and easier to manipulate if he shows up in their midst. Not at all. See how ludicrous you sound? Who would be doing that engineering anyway, given you can’t prove vampires exist, and few even among the great unwashed believe in them nowadays?

Okay, now to address the “proofs” that I’m a vampire, aka RUMOURS.

Alleged proofs that I am a vampire

I have supernatural hypnosis powers

No, I’m just manipulative.

My “eyewitness” memories

Yes, I sometimes refer to the 16th-17th centuries as if I were there. No, that does not mean anything. People make mistakes all the time; I’m a humanities person, not a math person, after all. 1997? 1497? They look so similar.

I want to destroy the Sun

There are, in fact, many reasons to want to destroy the Sun, on which I have published a treatise, on behalf of the Compassionate Roumanian Association for Vampire Equality and Nosh. Like, I’m a redhead, duh. Not everyone who sunburns easily literally burns in the Sun. That is an over-literal interpretation, of which your family has made a tradition. There is no sign whatsoever in my treatise against the Sun that I am a vampire.

I lack blood

Common misconception — I think one Frenchman alleged this in a lost draft of his Philosophical Dictionary and somehow it spread from there before the manuscript was burned (by mistake). He was saying simply too much anyway, someone had to stop him. Voltaire, that was his name, right. I hate him for other reasons, utterly unrelated. He happened to recant his belief in vampires just before writing the final draft of that entry.

I do not lack blood. I actually have more blood than the average person. Like, a lot more. By your logic I’m more human than you.

I am—or am related to—Carmilla Karnstein

Wrong. I’m a fan, but we barely know each other. If at all. (You also can’t prove she exists and neither could the Vordenburgs, who tried their best to, for 150 whole years.) Despite many people knowing me under the last name Karnstein, it is a super common last name and does not indicate family ties, and also my last name is clearly Weaver. Not Karnstein, not Varney, not Tepes. And Carmilla/Millarca/Mircalla can’t even lie about the letters her first name consists of.

Those portraits

Allegedly, there were 14-17 portraits portraying someone who looks like me, under various similar names, dating from 1640-2015. However, each of them has been destroyed through happenstance and every photograph of them was deleted from the web somehow. So, good luck using them as “proof.” Also, people always look weird in portraits unless you threaten the artist in some unspeakable ways if they refuse to paint you realistically, which I would not do, so the idea that a portrait of me from 1789 would look just like the real me is absurd. Even if the gown in that one was gorgeous and that “Comtesse Virginie Bathory” person looked cool as hell holding up a flaming skull. No it was not cheesy, stop saying that.

I teach classes that encourage students to think about how to make universities more accommodating for vampires

Okay! Guilty! But it’s just a useful hypothetical.

Disproofs of all possible vampire allegations

• If you stab me in the heart with a stake, I would die, but so would you!

• There are no photos of me doing anything suspicious at all. However, I do clearly show up in photos; see: my profile picture. You can’t prove I used magic to make that work.

• I do not hiss when I am angry. I mean vampires wouldn’t anyway, it’s kind of an offensive stereotype if you think about it (which is not to say that vampires are provably real).

• I’m neither lesbian nor bisexual. Go to the cinemas sometime — it would seem that most (alleged) vampires are L or G or B, which is to their credit. I’m not lesbian or bi. Checkmate. Also stop trying to match with me on Tinder.

• Nobody has proven vampires exist and anyone who claims to have done so has died in ways so ridiculous as to militate against their trustworthiness. Chrysippus, Mr. Holmes, et al., you know who I’m on about. Sillyheads, all.

• I do not glitter in the sun.

• I can easily walk into a church. Sometimes I walk in and out of strip mall churches just to prove this. Sure, there aren’t many cathedrals nearby, and I have anxiety issues; my refusal to go in a cathedral last time we met was just a random anxiety attack. You claimed in an article about the incident that I hissed, which is, again, offensive.

Another issue with past “proofs”:

• Some people, such as you and your grandfather, have alleged I am “around 400 years old,” while ignoring evidence equally as “strong” (lol!) that suggests many centuries older. But I’m more familiar with the various scholarly writings on me than you are, after all.

In sum…

You’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Your family has always been a bit wonky but things have changed, to your disadvantage. Read the room. Most people aren’t afraid of vampires anymore — they want to have sex with them. They have Nic Cage play vampires in the talkies now. The archives you used to rely on as a crutch, at Silas University, are gone. The university cut its library for budget reasons. Relatedly, your former bros, the Vordenburgs, have taken up secretive pro-werewolf activism after getting tired of searching for Carm, because they could never prove any of their allegations against her, having never proven she exists. Werewolves have not been proven to exist either, as far as you know.

Fortunately, whether or not you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, I won’t bite at all. Van Helsing blood has always tasted bad.

Sincerely,
SOMEONE WHO HAS STILL NOT BEEN PROVEN TO BE A VAMPIRE PLEASE JUST GIVE UP!!!!!!

P.S. Yes I’m still up for brunch on Thursday.