With a penchant for custom-made fangs, striking make-up and gothic clothes, members of the London Vampyre Group say it's their fascination with the romantic notion of vampires, rather than any darker intent, that draws them together.
"People who think they're un-dead, hundreds of years old, or that you have to drink blood if you're interested in the dark side of things, we can put them right on that," LVG's Mick Smith, 57, said in an interview in a London pub.
"The drinking of blood is a taboo.
"It's a point of view that we don't tend to represent, but we think it is something that should be articulated," said Smith, wearing a somber black suit.
They may be conservatively attired lawyers or computer programmers by day, but Vampyres are transformed by flamboyant clothes after dark for the Dance of the Damned Vampire Ball and Requiem of the Resurrected parties with gothic belly dancing.
The Halloween Goth Ball in the northern English town of Whitby, where Bram Stoker was inspired to write "Dracula," is a major calendar fixture.
Trips are planned to the Czech Republic's gothic castles and ossuaries, and to New Orleans, setting for Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire."