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In the late 18th, early 19th centuries, vampirism began to move from horrific folklore to romantic literature, through the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Christabel), Lord Byron (The Fragment), John Polidori (The Vampyre) and others. Its hard to say what the authors intended because of restrictions of the times, but these stories are what we might call today queer-coded.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the queer coding becomes a little less subtle. Irish author Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story Carmilla, published in 1872 is widely seen as the first vampire lesbian story. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and many of its film adaptations, while not explicitly gay, are pretty gay.

Modern depictions of vampires are often explicitly gay, lesbian, or pansexual. Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Charlaine Harris’ True Blood novels and their TV and film adaptations are prime examples. The Lost Boys, while not explicitly gay, is also clearly intentionally gay (kinda like Top Gun).

On IMDB, you can find THE Lesbian Vampire Film List, which lists in no particular order, 100 movies and TV shows with lesbian vampire themes. The list includes the highly regarded The Addiction (Lili Taylor, Anabella Sciorra), cult classic The Hunger (Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon), and loads of absolute trash, such as Embrace the Darkness and it sequels Embrace the Darkness II and Embrace the Darkness III.

There seem to be fewer specifically gay male vampire movies and TV, and most are just trash, such as the TV series The Lair, and movies Vampire Boys and Bite Marks.

But if books are your thing, there are so many choices.

I found several curated lists on Goodreads. Lesbian Vampires has 184 titles. Queer themes and homoeroticism in vampire fiction has 99 titles. Best Gay Vampires (specifically mm romance) has a whopping 684 titles, which seems a little less curated.

Over on Amazon, searches turned up over 3,000 titles featuring lesbian vampires rated 4 Stars and up, and over 9,000 titles featuring gay male vampires rated 4 Stars and up.