Are Harry Potter Dementors Vampries?

While skimming one of the many vampire encyclopedias I have collected, I came across an entry on dementors, the evil creatures from the magnificent world of Harry Potter. Not once while reading the Harry Potter series or while watching the movies did I consider a dementor a vampire. But, when you stop and think, maybe they are. Does blood make a vampire? I asked that a few years ago. Does feeding on blood make a vampire a vampire? Or does feeding on a person’s energy, happiness, soul… etc. also count?  With that in mind, it is possible dementors are a kind of vampire.

Dementor-harryDementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them… Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.” – Remus Lupin to Harry Potter

Dementors feed on people, they take their happiness and eventually their soul. If you push the classic idea of what a vampire is out of your mind then yes, dementors are definitely a kind of vampire, or rather, they are vampiric.

But what do you think? Do you prefer to keep the definition of vampire simple? Vampires feed on blood and that is that. Or do you think they are open to interpretation? Do you think a dementor is a kind of vampire? Share your thoughts below.

– Moonlight

By Moonlight

Moonlight (aka Amanda) loves to write about, read about and learn about everything pertaining to vampires. You will most likely find her huddled over a book of vampire folklore with coffee in hand. Touch her coffee and she may bite you (and not in the fun way).

5 comments

  1. Absolutely, the Dementors are vampires! The real vampire community calls energy-taking vampire “psi”, and even Count Dracula clearly drains Mina’s life force, not just her blood.
    One of the best movies about energy-taking vampires, 1985’s Lifeforce, will be issued on Blu-Ray on April 30th.

  2. You know a creature is called by another name than vampire for a reason. They are obviously vampiric, but still called dementors cause they aren’t exactly vampires.
    In pop culture in at least 9 cases out of 10 only undead blooddrinkers have vampire as their primary name these days.

  3. I suppose they are. I never read the books so I didn’t know that the dementors are actually acquiring sustenance from their victims. (Or maybe that’s clear from the movies but I didn’t catch that.) In that case, they’re similar to the creatures in The Deaths of Ian Stone.

    As for definitions and categories, I think that while a lot of different characters and creatures can be called vampiric, within that category of ‘vampires’ there are different degrees of conforming to the archetype of the vampire – a sentient, evil, (mostly) nocturnal walking dead that requires human blood. (As opposed to the more generic ‘humanoid entity that feeds on humans somehow’) So even if we have a big tent definition of vampires we can recognize that some things are more archetypal than others. Of course there are arguments over the specific nature of the archetype (sun vulnerability, fangs etc.)

  4. They most certainly are Vampires; any creature that feeds on the living energy (blood is living energy) is a Vampire. Even in Vampire mythology the Vampires (including incubi and succubi ect) are only seen on top of the individual making them sick and weak;they assume they are feeding on there blood but this is not always the case. So any creature that feeds on the life force of a human is a Vampire. Zombies and werewolves feed on flesh while Vampires feed on life itself…

  5. I’ve done a lot of research while writing blog pieces, characters, quests, etc. for Raincrow Games and I’ve discovered there is a tremendous range. The blog post I did called Lilith, for example, says she drains the energy, soul and life from young men, women and children as well as, but not always, their blood. I would say dementors are vampires.

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