Driving Oneself Batty

Halloween is creeping up next week, and despite the fact that goblin outfits are being traded in for Giuliani masks, we still like to think of it as fright night.

Though witches, ghouls and ghosts are pretty scary, what could be more frightening than the legions of people who really think they are vampires?

Human mosquitoes are well represented online. A Google search turned up more than 1.5million sites. Talk about wired coffins. Even the venerable Open Directory Project (https://www.dmoz.org) had almost 250 sites, although the biggest category is for TV’s “Buffy.”

At the ODP under vampire organizations, the first of 22 sites listed attracted our attention: the Australian Vampire Information Assn. (https://www.avia.darkrealm.net), which says it is a “resource centre for anyone involved in the fascinating world of vampire reality.” Hmmm. Australia: very sunny. Vampires: ash.

Back in America, there is a National Vampire Assn. (https://www.angelfire.com/id/nightless/begin.html). But the site is hosted on Angelfire, which tends to throw you in a loop of pop-up ads so irritating all you want is a stake. Dudes, you’re the undead. Use the popcorn money to buy a real Web site.

Then there’s Sanguinarius (https://www.sanguinarius.org), “for real vampires, Vampyre lifestylers, and vampiric people.” It offers the Real Vampire Directory, a support page and community calendar. Our favorite was a link to Vampires AMOK, which is a Yahoo message board for vampires living in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. Please.

Yet it gets worse. Darksites’ Vampire/Donor Alliance (https://www.darksites.com/souls/vampires/vampdonor) starts off with an ad for bargain fangs, which is only logical since you really want to cut corners on something your nonlife depends upon. The site does ask: “Do you consider yourself a vampire, and keep quiet most of the time for fear that all your friends and acquaintances will call you crazy (at best)?” Technically, “at best” might be having those friends pay for therapy.

But we’re getting deep into this, so let’s try the “Vampir Top 50” (https://www.topsitelists.com/street/VampPrst). Even the preternatural worry about ratings.

No. 1 when we looked was Tomb of the Vampire (https://www.geocities.com/ddaville/tombvampire.html), which offers you a low-bandwidth or a high-bandwidth entrance. Next is “Frames or No Frames?” OK, guys, the sun is coming up; we don’t have all night. When we landed on an online casino, it was time to backpedal out of there. Of course, it wouldn’t let us. Thankfully, three keystrokes worked like garlic and the force quit got us free.

After all that we needed a drink. The vamp community comes through again with Vampire wine (https://www.vampirewine.com) from the vineyards of--where else?--Transylvania. We wouldn’t trust the whites, though.

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Robert Burns is graphics editor for The Times’ Business section. He can be reached at robert.burns@latimes.com.