Vampires have always walked among us.

Through each generation these blood-thirsty fiends have skulked, feasting upon our fears, lurking in the shadows and haunting the darkest corners of our imagination.

And that first bite can lead to an eternal hunger ... for vampire lore.

"Dark, brooding and seductive," says Joules Taylor, author of Vampires, "the image of the vampire haunts the modern consciousness, a temptation to give in to the darkness that dwells within us all."

Today, instead of moonlit alleys and desolate castles, vampires are far more likely to haunt the shadows of bedrooms, where readers cower beneath the covers clutching their horror novels or in darkened movie theaters where lovers cling to one another over popcorn.

Since Bram Stoker's Dracula first unleashed its progeny of fanged blood-suckers in 1897, the appetite for vampires continues. It was with that revered literary classic that Steve Whitton, professor of English at Jacksonville State University, first discovered the rare combination of charm and terror that makes the undead so spellbinding.

"The vampire is going to show us a bit of the unknown," he says. "And in some of the vampire lore, they give us the choice between life and death, which is something we don't have as human beings. We can make the choice, and if we choose death, we'll live forever."

As a young man growing up in Columbia, S.C., Whitton started reading Dracula three times, but as Jonathan Harker approached Castle Dracula surrounded by the demonic baying of the "children of the night," he had to put the novel down as darkness encroached his own bedroom.

"I always ended up reading the scary part right at nightfall," Whitton remembers with nervous laughter. "I finally learned to start reading at lunch time and was fine ... but there are still some moments in that book that are really, really frightening."

From Béla Lugosi to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anne Rice to The Lost Boys, vampires in pop culture truly are eternal. And with the second of Stephanie Myers's Twilight saga, New Moon, poised to hit theaters Nov. 20 and the HBO series True Blood becoming the cable network's highest-rated show since The Sopranos — not to mention the endless parade of Twilight-inspired teen novels to have flooded the market in recent years — vampires have once again created a feeding frenzy.

But the looming question is not so much why vampires now ... but rather, why vampires ever?

For Diana Laurence, author of How to Catch and Keep a Vampire, who has published several vampire novels — along with comic books and fortune-telling cards — this broad appeal for the undead comes from the ability to "straddle the line between the fantastical and the human."

Having come of age watching the spooky soap opera Dark Shadows with its main neck-biter Barnabas Collins, Laurence remained fixated with the dark duality that vampires present to writers. Whether sexy or savage, suave or sulking, vampires have become cultural icons to be perpetually rediscovered and reinterpreted by an endless crop of readers and moviegoers.

"Obviously vampires have supernatural aspects, but they are also human beings," Laurence says. "So a writer can explore the fantasy element — mind control, immortality, magic — and also the human issues — guilt, lust, redemption — at the same time. It makes for a lot of possibilities, which is why vampires have played a part in so many of my creative projects."

A darker Peter Pan

Vampires aren't the lone monsters of myth and fiction — witches, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Cyclops, Medusa and the Boogeyman, to name but a few, have each given fans their fair share of nightmares. But the allure of vampires seems eternal — as if each new generation resurrects the genre, adding another layer to an increasingly dense myth.

Jamie Sellers admits she wasn't much of a reader, but a few years ago when she was an eighth-grader living in Birmingham, she had to write a book report on any novel she chose.

It was the end of the year and Jamie was lost. Having no clue what she wanted to read, she simply wandered around the Barnes and Noble bookstore up at the Summit shopping center.

It was there that she literally stumbled across Stephanie Myers' Twilight saga.

"I was just staring up at the ceiling and complaining to myself about how stupid the whole thing was," Jamie says with an embarrassed laugh. "And I practically tripped over this pile of books. Feeling stupid, I pretended to do it on purpose and just grabbed the first book I saw and started reading.

"I didn't even know it was about vampires."

For reasons even she can't explain, the story captivated her. Jamie has since read the entire series of books multiple times and has branched out from there to read not only other vampire titles — like L.J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries, as well as other "creepy stuff" like the satirical Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

"I guess I have kinda strange reading tastes," says Jamie, who's just turned 16, "but at least I'm reading. It's not so much the fact that the books have vampires that makes it fun to read. I like the stories ... but the vampires keep it interesting."

Simply convincing young people to read is often a challenge. Vampires speak to young people on a unique level. It's an age-old story that they are largely already familiar with, even without having read Dracula, any of Anne Rice's books featuring the Vampire Lestat, Stephen King's Salem's Lot or more recent titles such as Elizabeth Kostkova's The Historian.

And for young people, there is an additional element that's an underlying theme in virtually every addition to the vampire catalogue — sex.

"(Young people) are often made to feel sex is a forbidden topic, and sexual lust is dangerous and/or wrong," Laurence says. "However, blood lust is something one can speak about. Vampires stand in as sex objects that don't technically involve sex. They are a permissible way to explore the issues that burn so fiercely for adolescents — sex as well as feelings of alienation, rebellion and confusion."

It was that suave sophistication that first appealed to Doshia Mundy of Anniston, who discovered vampires by watching the horror classics starring Christopher Lee as Dracula.

"That's back when vampires were sexy and cool and feared," she says.

But Mundy's interest wasn't held to the iconic movie version of vampires. Instead, she investigated the rumored inspiration for Stoker's classic villain — Count Vlad Dracula, Prince of Wallachia, better known as Vlad the Impaler, a sadistic tyrant who enjoyed torturing his enemies by leaving them to die a slow death on tall wooden stakes.

Though scholarly opinion varies as to whether or not Stoker borrowed more than Vlad's name for his classic retelling of the vampire legend, for Mundy, the seed was planted. Back in the age before the Internet, she would spend afternoons and weekends in the library learning about Vlad and the history or Romania.

"It was just something that grabbed my attention," says the 44-year-old mother. "And I remember the first time I saw Vlad's castle and realized that he was nothing like the vampires on TV. That's really where it all began for me."

From that point, she discovered the novels of Anne Rice and Stephen King. Though Mundy hasn't read any of the Twilight novels, having been "oversaturated" by the media blitzkrieg promoting the series, she did see the first movie mostly out of curiosity. Still, she understands the attraction that younger audiences have for vampires ... for she has experienced it herself.

"They don't grow old, and they never die," she says. "It's like a darker version a Peter Pan. Vampires get to do whatever they want and are never held accountable.

"What's not to like?"

Contact Brett Buckner at brett.buckner@yahoo.com.