An Armenian-vampire connection running through our veins

If you follow entertainment news, vampires appear to be having a moment — and not just because it’s October. In just the past three years, we’ve seen vampires in movies such as “Sinners,” “Abigail,” “Dracula,” “Renfield” and two remakes of “Nosferatu”; TV shows such as “Interview with the Vampire” and “What We Do in the Shadows”; and even Broadway, with “The Lost Boys” (based on the 1987 movie of the same name). Vampires haven’t really left the public consciousness since Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” was published, though. While some consider this supernatural renaissance a recession indicator, it has finally allowed me to enter my vampire era. I’ve always been partial to pirates when it comes to the historical fantasy genre, so I missed out on the “Twilight” craze of my youth, even though “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” did feature Angela Sarafyan. All of this vampire content of late has really sucked me in. If you ignore the fact that they’re portrayed as evil, murderous characters, it’s easy to fall in love with the beauty, magic and fantasy of the Hollywood vampire — at least in its human form. They’re often stylish, mysterious and worldly, which makes sense, given their geographic origins and advanced age. But I think there’s a deeper connection here — as an Armenian. Like vampires, we too come from a part of the world that many people would struggle to find on a map. Yes, Transylvania is a real place in Romania, not far from the country Armenia is most often confused with: Albania. Vampires feed by drinking the blood of humans. In Armenian, we have an unusually high number of gruesome phrases of endearment. “Jigyart udem”: “Let me eat your liver.” “Sirdt udem”: “Let me eat your heart.” “Mernem janit”: “Let me die on your body.” And somehow, all of them are used to mean “I love you very much.” That’s what a vampire would say. I guess, like vampires, we simply have a flair for the dramatics. Even our cherished cultural symbols can resemble a gory scene. The ruby-colored seeds of our pomegranate fall from the flesh like small drops of blood. Armenian red wine often carries a dark garnet hue as it flows from a karas like a gushing wound. The deep crimsons characteristic of our rugs, daraz and altar curtains come from a dye extracted from the Armenian cochineal, a beetle native to the Ararat plain. How gothic is that?! There is one big difference, though. Armenians love garlic. We even have our own variety of garlic. We add our beloved skhdor to everything from khash to madzun, so there’s no way we could actually be vampires. All kidding aside, as an Armenian, I do feel a strange kinship with the vampires I see on screen. Why do I feel this connection? Am I the only one who feels this way? In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to get to the bottom of this. Historian and educator Thomas Simsarian Dolan, Ph.D., said, “Armenian performers have long been called on to play the Orient, of which the Ottoman Balkans were of course a part. Known for their exotic, sallow, swarthy or mysterious looks, are people like Arthur Edmund Carewe (Hovsep Hovsepian), who was considered for ‘Dracula’ in 1931, Akim Tamiroff, Ken Davitian in ‘Borat,’ or Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in ‘Lord of the Rings.’” Perhaps it is simply the fact that, traditionally, vampire characters could pass for Armenian. Often brooding, wearing dark clothes and sporting black hair — slicked-back or long and curly — many fantastical characters, not just vampires, look like they came from our community. In the TV series “The Vampire Diaries,” Raffi Barsoumian played Markos, not a vampire but a witch. He recalled, “I had conceived of Markos as a sort of messianic figure. He was the leader of a group called the Travelers who were a threat to the vampires and seemed to operate in a cult-like fashion… “There was a day we were slated to shoot a scene where Markos is speaking to his followers, but it was meant to play under a voice over, so the scene would be a visual story point without sound. Our director for that episode, Paul Wesley [who also played the vampire Stefan], asked if I could give them something that sounded like an ancient language just for playing the scene in the room. “TV sets move fast and I had to come up with something quick. I figured this character might be leading his followers in a galvanizing prayer of some sort, so I said, ‘Well, I could speak the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian.’ So, there I am standing in front of a bunch of background actors doing the Lord’s Prayer, sort of under my breath…I assumed no one would ever hear it. Cut to the episode airing where, to the discerning ear, Markos is clearly praying in Armenian to his followers.” Eric Bogosian also touched on a kind of ancient, religious connection. Bogosian currently stars as Daniel Molloy, an interviewer who becomes a vampire, in the television series “Interview with the Vampire.” “Armenian Christianity was catalyzed into its existence by Saint Gregory the Illuminator, a monk imprisoned in a deep hole (Khor Virap) for 13 years. In other words, Armenian Christianity emerged from darkness. So, I guess I could say that the Armenian identity is vampiric adjacent,” he told The Armenian Weekly. Centuries of persecution have driven many Armenians from their homelands, creating a vast and dispersed diaspora around the globe. Each new generation roams the Earth, seeking out the community we thought was lost. The excitement of meeting another Armenian “in the wild” is evidence of the dark past that shaped us and the longing we feel today. Just as vampires skulk through society, their disquiet hidden beneath the surface, we too are not often seen as our true selves. Because the Armenian Genocide continues to be denied, there is an anxiety, an uneasiness about us. We’re still fighting for recognition and reparations. And sometimes, it can feel dangerous to bare our Armenian identity for fear of continued persecution. Like vampires, Armenians have had to adopt a survivalist mindset to stay alive. We adapt, trying not to appear “too foreign” in this new land, in the hope of one day reuniting with our people and returning to the home that may or may not still exist. But it can be difficult to fight against your true nature and deny or push down who you are. Simsarian Dolan said, “There is some (limited) scholarship on Armenians in Transylvania and the often quite proud Armenians in Romania, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and what become other Habsburg spaces despite their often quite forcible conversion and in some cases absorption. The point might be that Eastern Europe provided a refuge to Armenians, beginning with the deportation of Paulicians from the Byzantine Empire (and Romans’ and Persians’ sometimes suspicious views of Armenians even earlier), and the thriving merchant and banking communities these Armenians formed at the behest of host states.” Sev Ohanian, producer of the 2025 film “Sinners,” also reflected on this idea. He told the Weekly, “When making ‘Sinners,’ I took on an early responsibility to really research and understand vampire lore to make sure we’d be doing something fresh with our vampires. One of the most interesting things for me was that, unlike most monsters, they can pass as humans. In other words: vampires can assimilate. “And in our movie, Remmick [a centuries-old, Irish vampire] essentially offers our heroes that same opportunity. He basically says, ‘Join us and you won’t have to face the same subjugation you’ve dealt with your whole life.’ But the cost is giving up a part of who you are. “That’s something I really related to as an Armenian-American immigrant. Like so many immigrants, we’ve had to figure out how to assimilate wherever we’ve ended up. But it comes with a cost. How much of yourself do you give up in order to belong? Obviously becoming American isn’t the same thing as becoming a vampire, but there’s something about that tension in ‘Sinners’ that always felt very Armenian to me: the promise that life might be easier if you blend in, and the fear of what you might lose if you do.” “Sinners” also integrates Irish, Choctaw and West African folklore to tell a story about community, tradition and music. So, perhaps folklore is one source of this Armenian-vampire connection. As Bogosian pointed out, “I’m not sure if every culture has a resident vampire, but we do.” Indeed, we do: the Dakhanavar. The Dakhanavar lived in the mountains and was fiercely protective of its land. However, rather than drinking blood from a bite on the victim’s neck, as is customary among the vampires most often portrayed, the Dakhanavar would drain blood from a bite on the feet. Vampires tend to be an expression of society’s fears. They often symbolize conflicting feelings around mortality, desire, xenophobia and assimilation. In distressing times, these are the topics that become the focus. And we either challenge the status quo and society’s taboos or reinforce them — questions that we, as Armenians and as survivors, have grappled with for generations. This year, in honor of this cultural connection, I’m adapting my tried-and-true pirate costume to have more bite: a vam-pirate, complete with a gold coin headdress. Happy Halloween!

An Armenian-vampire connection running through our veins

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Rosie (Toumanian) Nisanyan

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This story is FREE for you...

Rosie (Toumanian) Nisanyan

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