Why are vampires so popular now? The Twilight Series, Vampire Diaries and True Blood are just a few examples of the pop culture takeover from the creatures of the night. Why is their presence so ubiquitous in today’s pop culture? Is it just a simple fad, or does it signal something deeper and possibly more mysterious than the vampires themselves. The popularization of these ‘de-fanged’ vampires is a fairly recent phenomenon. Twilight was published in 2005. Vampire Diaries first premiered on “The CW” in 2009. ”HBO” show True Blood began in 2008. These three easily display the switch to the “nicer” vampire. Vampire is a word that once conjured images of fanged, lecherous, old men who had sold their souls to the devil for eternal life. Now they are younger and marketed more toward teenage girls. But the vampire is not just a supernatural creature. Merriam-Webster defines vampire, using couple of more modern definitions, “(1) one who lives by preying on others and (2) a woman who exploits and ruins her lover.” These two are much more a part of the modern conception than the traditional Dracula mold. The recent pop culture representations of vampires don’t focus on terror or evil. They have sexy appeal and dreaminess. Frightening aspects of vampires, such as viciousness and evil, in favor of a more romantic image, portray the decline of true religious belief, which is a major component of society’s image of evil. I truly think vampires aren’t scary anymore in large part because of dwindling religion. The allure of vampires, for everyone including teenage girls, is the possibility of eternal life. In our post-religious age of half-empty churches, eternal life is more likely to be brought by a vampire (or vampire virus) than in the story of Jesus. After all, both in a sense demand bloodshed in pursuit of the eternal life. The saga of the eternal vampire is trying to fulfill a wish of humanity that was traditionally filled by religion. We wish to conquer death. This means that Mormon and author of the ‘Twilight’ series Stephanie Meyer is directly profiting off of the void left by the collapse of religion. The last major popular culture revival of vampire was in 1987, which saw the release of two classics in vampire movie genre: Near Dark and The Lost Boys. In these films, the vampires were cool and sexy, but still evil and scary. They had to be killed at all costs by the protagonists. But there was a development in Near Dark that marked the evolution of vampires from evil to just plain cool. At the end of the film, one of the vampires, who murdered countless innocent people, is turned back into a human. This moment is one of celebration. There is no punishment or retribution for the vampire killing innocents for food.