Is THIS how you imagined the vampires?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

I mean, by definition, when Tolkien uses the term 'vampire', he is referring to a bat or bat-like entity, not vampire in the sense of the walking dead Nosferatu variety vampire.

I would agree with you that Tolkien employs the cultural dislike of bats as another form of creature which inspires unease and dread in humans (elves and dwarves too?), similar to the creepy, crawly spiders.

Tolkien seems to have split up what you call the walking dead Nosferatu variety vampire. We have, for instance, the Dead who are cursed by Isildur and who walk the Paths of the Dead until Aragorn releases them from their oath (and Isildur's curse). Granted they are not the blood-sucking variety, but they are a form of dead who walk the earth in unhappy thralldom.

Then we have the similarity I noted above of the ennui of longevity. The aesthete is part of the vampire tradition (well, some of the tradition; it is so various) and elves certainly have aesthetic sensibilities, although perhaps without the sense of uncontrolled appetite. If we take Tolkien's comment that LotR is about death, I find it intriguing that he would consider the effects of longevity and create a race such as the elves rather than Stoker's version. Was Tolkien writing against type?