The city that bites you back? Vampire culture thrives in Philly

By Regina Medina Philadelphia Daily News

NINA AUERBACH is convinced vampire fascination is in Philly's blood. She's viewed it firsthand.
In her 36 years at the University of Pennsylvania, the English professor and author of "Our Vampires, Ourselves," said the subject of vampires and the paranormal has never failed to excite her Ivy League students.
Yet, take the same topic to the West Coast and the discussion deflates into indifference. That's what she found during her time teaching at California State University in Los Angeles.
"The California students weren't interested in vampires at all and here they always were," said Auerbach, who teaches 19th century English literature. "So I thought, it must be a Philadelphia thing. And it is, this dark little haunted city with a past."
Philadelphia is a hotbed of activity in vampire culture, which is currently undergoing a pop culture spike thanks to the smash teen movie and book series "Twilight" and, to a lesser degree, the HBO series "True Blood." Philadelphia, for instance, is home to some spooky real estate that resonates with the vampire-loving crowd: the Edgar Allen Poe House, 532 N. 7th St., and the Mutter Museum, 19 S. 22nd St., which is filled with medical oddities. (One of its most popular displays is the corpse of a woman who turned into soap. Cue the creepy organ music.)
The city's 19th century architecture and byzantine layout of secluded alleys is evocative of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula," the iconic work that is the template for subsequent vampire books, movies and fashion.
Indeed, the city's Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2008 Delancey St., owns 120 pages of Stoker's handwritten notes used to develop and write his novel. The closely guarded notes (use of a ballpoint pen is forbidden in the same room as the Irish author's treasured outlines) is a de facto bible of vampire culture for academics, fans and international media.

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more on the library HERE