Lesbian vampire media has roots stretching all the way back to the 1800s, and in 2025, we’ve seen an even greater surge of books, movies, and other media from the same genre. Why is this reemergence occurring? Why are we still so obsessed with lesbian vampires?
The Roots of the genre
One of the earliest vampire stories, the story that inspired the iconic Dracula by Bram Stoker, was Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla was published in 1872, 26 years before Dracula, and is one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction and lesbian vampire fiction.
The novel follows Laura, living a solitary life with only her father for company. One evening, a carriage crashes in front of Laura’s home, and in the aftermath, Carmilla is left behind to wait for her guardian. A friendship — and a little bit more than that — begins to bloom between Laura and Carmilla, and the mysteries around Carmilla start to unravel.
Carmilla was one of the first novels to establish the lesbian vampire trope, and it’s especially influential in the general vampire genre. Carmilla is portrayed as an empowering female character, contrasting the helplessness of the men in the novel. It’s not only popular for how it established the lesbian vampire genre, but also for how it influenced other vampire stories.
After Carmilla, a large explosion of lesbian vampire films occurred in the ‘60s and ‘70s. One example is Dracula’s Daughter, which is “the first, most famous and perhaps only example of an early Hollywood lesbian vampire film.” The movie was released in 1963 and was heavily censored under the Hays Code.
The Hays Code was a set of guidelines that regulated “the moral content of films produced from 1934 to 1968” and “how certain topics should be shown on screen.” This led to queer-coded characters being villainized to avoid censorship by these guidelines.
The genre of lesbian vampire stories has a substantial history, which I’d recommend exploring further if you’re interested. It has a long history with roots tracing back to Carmilla, which fundamentally shaped the genre, and we still see this influence today, with it blossoming in 2025.
I’d recommend Carmilla to anyone interested in learning more about the lesbian vampire genre, because when you read later releases in the genre, you can see Carmilla’s influence in those works. Without Carmilla, the genre wouldn’t be the same today.
2025’s Surge of Lesbian Vampire Media
Lesbian vampire media has been extremely popular in 2025, especially in the book world. One of the most popular releases was Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, which was released in June 2025.
The novel follows three women, Sabine, Charlotte, and Alice. Their narratives seem to be separated from one another at first, but throughout the novel, we eventually see how their stories converge into one.
Schwab was inspired by “the ‘classic’ vampiric lore — ‘everything from Carmilla essentially up through Anne Rice.’” With Schwab’s novel, we see the influence of Carmilla on the vampire genre.
Schwab was also a producer for a recent TV show, First Kill. First Kill premiered on Netflix in 2022, but was canceled after its first season. The show is based on a short story in an anthology titled Vampires Never Get Old. First Kill is about two high schoolers who fall in love, Juliette and Calliope, but here’s the catch: one is a vampire, the other is a vampire hunter, and their two families are rivals.
Another example of a recently released novel influenced by Carmilla is Hungerstone by Kat Dunn. The novel is a “compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla,” as it follows the same plot of the original classic with a carriage crash and a female vampire named Carmilla.
The story follows Lenore and her marriage to Henry, as Henry’s company relocates them to the countryside. One day, similar to the original Carmilla, a carriage crash occurs, bringing Carmilla into Lenore’s life.
Hungerstone shows how Carmilla has directly influenced the vampire genre, especially through its retelling of its story to further explore themes of female rage, desire, and bloodlust in lesbian vampire stories.
Another book that was especially popular on BookTok was A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson, though it was released in 2021, not 2025.
Why is lesbian vampire media so popular?
In an interview about her book, Schwab discusses her inspiration for writing Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, and she captures why vampire stories are so often associated with queer stories. She says, “I thought that one of the greatest forms of liberation that a queer person, a fem-presenting person, a person in a non-cis white male body could feel would be going from prey to predator. And I just wanted to explore the inherent queerness of the vampire lore.”
The power of vampire stories is the liberation that the power provides for queer individuals. This is especially true for queer women, where being a vampire allows lesbian characters to exercise their own power and freedom without any restriction.
Vampire stories are also a way for authors and directors to explore the passion and desire that accompany hunger in vampire stories. This is powerful in queer media, especially stories with lesbian vampires, as women are allowed to feel the full, liberating force of their passion and desire through the agency that being a vampire allows them. Vampirism allows the “taboo” of desire to be explored through a liberating lens for sapphic women.
In the past, with films like Dracula’s Daughter, the horror genre has used a “monster” figure to villainize queerness. For example, in older lesbian vampire stories, the vampiress is the evil seductress who tries to entrap the other female main character, and these depictions stereotype lesbian relationships as predatory or harmful.
However, in recent years, the representation of queer people in the horror genre has become more well-rounded and mainstream. Instead of using the horror genre to villainize queer communities, authors and directors are shifting away from villainizing queer characters for their sexuality to including their sexuality as an integral part of their character.
An example of this is Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Though Schwab describes the book as “toxic lesbian vampires,” the “toxic” and “lesbian” are separate from one another.
The genre of lesbian vampire stories has progressed tremendously since Carmilla’s release in 1872. Not all of the depictions of lesbian vampires have been inclusive or accurate portrayals of queer women, but with the explosion of the genre throughout the years, the representation of queer women has become better and more inclusive.
The representation of lesbian vampires in novels, books, and films, whether it’s good or bad, has paved the way for the medium as we know it today. Without Carmilla, we wouldn’t have classic media like Dracula or newer works like Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.
With Halloween coming right around the corner, it’s also the perfect time to pick up one of these vampire stories or have a spooky movie night with friends. Even though the genre has a long history, it’s always a perfect time to learn more about lesbian vampire stories and experience for yourself why they’re so popular.
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