About

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Hi, my name is Emily Bishop, and I’m the girl behind the podcast series “The Vampire Tapes.”

You’re currently listening to Tape 0 in this series. Think of it like a prologue or introduction to the other tapes.

 

This series is my capstone thesis project for the Honors College at Western Washington University. It’s the culmination of four years of college, and over 200 credits.

But how did we get here?

 

When I was a freshman in college, I wrote an essay for a class comparing Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" and Anne Rice’s "Interview with the Vampire." Both are technically epistolary novels, and I argued that "Interview with the Vampire" made better use of the format than "Frankenstein" because you can remove the framing of "Frankenstein" and have basically the exact same story. You can’t do that with "Interview with the Vampire." Also, the boy, who is interviewing the titular vampire, works as a stand-in for the audience, asking the questions and follow-ups we might ask were we in that situation.

Later that same year, I did a research project into the portrayal of vampires in film and television starting in the 1930s. I followed how over the decades, the vampire character has changed from being a flat villain to a sympathetic and relatable protagonist.

And then I went “wouldn’t it be really funny if every time I had an assignment with an open prompt and I didn’t know what to do, I just made it about vampires?” So that’s what I did. This series you’re about to listen to is my sixth vampire themed project.

 

I’m a journalism major. So, it made perfect sense for me to interview vampires for this project. I’m also minoring in psychology and religion and culture, so you’ll see questions connected to those fields asked throughout the interviews.

 

I contacted all my sources through the internet and all interviews were conducted over video calls. Some sources I found through the r/realvampires subreddit. Others I reached out to directly through their social media or blogs.

Before our interviews, I asked my sources to fill out a form with basic information about themselves that would help me curate the interview to them specifically. If you hear me mention a fact about a source in a question that wasn’t stated earlier in the interview, it’s probably because it’s information I got from the form they filled out.

I felt I needed to have at least 3 sources in order for this project to be successful. So, the fact that in the end I had five is amazing.

I’m so incredibly grateful to the people in this series who took time out of their day to sit down and talk with me.

I’d also like to express my gratitude to my advisor on this project.

Thank you to my parents and family who have spent the last 4 years hearing me talk about this project. To my friends who were always supportive of this endeavor. And to you, for listening to this series.

For more information on “The Vampire Tapes,” check out tinyurl.com/vampiretapes.

There, you can find transcripts of the interviews, additional information, and behind the scenes content.

 

I couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out, so thanks again for listening to this series.  

 

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