Spooky season always brings the same familiar figures back into the spotlight—ghosts, witches, demons, and of course, vampires. But among all the creatures that haunt our screens and stories, the vampire holds a particularly strong—and often distinctly sapphic—appeal.
The lesbian vampire didn’t suddenly appear in modern media. She has a long, layered history that stretches back centuries, shaped by repression, coded storytelling, and evolving attitudes toward women’s sexuality. What began as a warning about female desire has slowly transformed into something else entirely—a symbol of power, autonomy, and queer longing that refuses to be contained.
To understand why the lesbian vampire still has such a chokehold on pop culture (and on us), it helps to look at where she came from. Let's get into it!
Monstrous Women
Sirens, succubi, vampires—female “monsters” have long been used as a way to process society’s fear of women who step outside of prescribed roles. They embodied anxieties about women who possessed power, agency, and desire that could not be controlled or contained. These myths and stories were often cautionary tales, warning against what might happen if women became too independent or too sexual.
The vampire, however, occupies a particularly interesting space within this lineage. With fangs that symbolically grant her the ability to penetrate and a hunger that is not confined by gender, the lesbian vampire disrupts traditional ideas of sexuality at their core. She is fluid, insatiable, and unapologetic in her desires. And crucially, those desires are often directed toward other women. This is where the lesbian dimension emerges, not as an accident, but as a natural extension of what the vampire represents. From the beginning, she has been a figure of transgression. Her evolution through literature and media tells a much larger story about how lesbian and sapphic desire has been understood, suppressed, and ultimately reclaimed.
Christabel (1816)
“Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, And drew her breath with hissing sound… A snake’s small eyes gleamed cold and mild— Geraldine in her arms she clasped.”
Long before there was language to explicitly describe lesbian identity, queerness often appeared in literature through suggestion and veiled character description. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel is a perfect example of this early form of coded storytelling. The poem follows a young woman, Christabel, who encounters a mysterious stranger, Geraldine, alone and unwell in the woods, and brings her home out of kindness.
As Geraldine resides with Christabel and her family, her behavior becomes increasingly intimate and uncanny. She undresses, slips into Christabel’s bed, and speaks to her in a tender and hypnotic voice. Christabel falls into a trance-like state, left physically weakened and emotionally disoriented by the encounter.
Although Geraldine is never explicitly identified as a vampire, the parallels are clear. The draining of vitality, the seductive intimacy, and the blurred boundary between care and consumption all point toward a vampiric figure. More importantly, the relationship between the two women introduces one of the earliest literary depictions of lesbian-coded desire. Geraldine and her vampiric lust (thinly veiled lesbian desire) is portrayed as evil and sadistic--she corrupts her innocent prey, who is too innocent to know better.
Christabel is a cautionary tale; the first form of the lesbian vampire is distinctly predatory, eerie, and destabilizing, laying the groundwork for what would later become a defining trope.
Carmilla (1872)
“She held me close, and whispered, ‘You will think me cruel, but love is always selfish; the more ardent, the more selfish.’ Her hot lips traveled along my cheek and she would whisper, ‘You are mine, you shall be mine.’”
If Christabel introduced the blueprint for the lesbian vampire trope, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla brought it fully into focus. Often considered the first explicitly lesbian-coded work of vampire fiction, Carmilla centers on the relationship between a young woman and the enigmatic vampire who infiltrates her life. Unlike earlier works that relied heavily on implication, Carmilla is strikingly direct in its portrayal of female desire.
Carmilla does not simply prey on her victims; she forms emotional connections with them. Her approach is slow, intimate, and deeply entangled. She expresses longing, affection, and obsession, blurring the line between love and possession. The language used to describe her interactions is undeniably sensual, making it clear that her desire for women is not incidental, but central to her character.
At the same time, this desire is framed as something dangerous and ultimately destructive. Carmilla’s love is consuming in every sense of the word, reinforcing the idea that queer female desire is deeply threatening. In a cultural context where women’s sexuality was tightly controlled, Carmilla represented a radical departure—a figure who not only desired women but acted on that desire without restraint. Of course, society couldn't let that audacity slide, and perhaps as a threat to lesbian vampires everywhere, Carmilla is ultimately staked through the heart, decapitated, and burned to death. Tracks.
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
Lili: Why are you looking at me that way? Won't I do?
Countess Zaleska: Yes, you'll do very well indeed...
Lili: ...I think I'll go, if you don't mind... Please don't come any closer!
[She screams]
In the 30s, lesbian vampires transitioned from literature to film. Dracula’s Daughter introduces Countess Zaleska, one of the earliest examples of a lesbian vampire in cinema. Due to the restrictions of the Hays Code, her queerness could not be explicitly stated, but it is communicated through subtext, visual cues, and carefully constructed scenes.
In one of the film’s most notable moments, Zaleska invites a young woman to model for her, asking her to undress under the pretense of painting her portrait. The tension in the scene is palpable, charged with an eroticism that remains just beneath the surface. Although nothing is explicitly shown, the implication is clear.
What distinguishes Zaleska from earlier figures is her internal conflict. She is portrayed as someone who wants to rid herself of her vampirism and, by extension, her desires. She seeks help, expressing a desire to be “normal,” which frames her queerness as something abnormal and even evil.
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Needy: "I thought you only killed boys?"
Jennifer: “I go both ways.”
Let's turn our attention to a more modern example that I think sums up where society stands vis-à-vis lesbian vampires today. If earlier lesbian vampires were coded, tragic, or hidden behind censorship, Jennifer’s Body marks a moment where those themes resurface in a more self-aware, campy, and surprisingly feminist way.
Technically, Jennifer isn’t a vampire—she’s a demonically possessed succubus—but the film sits firmly within the same lineage. The parallels are impossible to ignore: hunger, seduction, transformation through a bite, and most importantly, an intense, homoerotic relationship between two young women that drives the emotional core of the story.
Jennifer and Needy’s relationship is deeply codependent, charged with a tension that exists long before anything explicitly happens. Their closeness is obsessive, all-consuming, and difficult to categorize, mirroring the same “love mixed with fear” dynamic seen in Carmilla. Crucially, the film only makes that queerness overt after Jennifer becomes possessed. Their kiss, one of the most iconic moments in the film, occurs not in a moment of innocence, but in the aftermath of transformation—suggesting, at least on the surface, that desire has been unlocked through something dark or unnatural.
That ambiguity is exactly what makes Jennifer’s Body so interesting. On one hand, it echoes the long-standing association between queerness and monstrosity: lesbian desire as something dangerous, something that corrupts, something that spreads. On the other hand, the film invites a different reading—one where possession doesn’t create something new, but rather strips away inhibition. Jennifer doesn’t become someone else; she becomes more fully herself, fully owning her own bisexuality. Her hunger, her anger, her desire—all of it is amplified, but not necessarily invented.
First Kill (2022)
Juliette Fairmont: "I guess I'm not very good at being a monster"
If Carmilla introduced the lesbian vampire and Jennifer’s Body complicated her, First Kill does something entirely different. First Kill is a reinvention of the genre, a completely new take. Not a cautionary tale. Not as a metaphor for corruption. Not as a tragic figure doomed by her own desire. Just two teenage girls in love. And while, to be honest, it wasn't my cup of tea, the way it revolutionizes what the lesbian vampire trope can look like in media is definitely worthy of praise and analysis.
Netflix’s First Kill follows Juliette, a soft, slightly awkward vampire from a long line of “Legacy” vampires, and Calliope, a confident monster hunter determined to prove herself. In any earlier version of this story, one of them would have died. Probably both. Their love would have been framed as dangerous, unnatural, or ultimately unsustainable.
Instead, First Kill reframes the entire trope. Juliette doesn’t want to kill; she just has a crush. She’s not a seductive predator lurking in the shadows, she’s a girl next door who just happens to have fangs. And Calliope, despite being raised to see vampires as monsters, is drawn to her anyway. Their relationship is messy and complicated, not because they’re queer, but because they come from opposing worlds. The conflict isn’t “being gay is dangerous.” It’s “our families are at war.” And that shift is massive.
For over a century, lesbian vampires carried the weight of cultural anxiety. They were coded to avoid censorship, punished to reinforce moral norms, or framed as inherently destructive. Even when they were reclaimed, there was often still a lingering sense that desire came at a cost.
First Kill is different. Despite everything—despite the blood, the hunting, the ancient family feuds, the show is a surprisingly innocent and sweet portrayal of genuine lesbian love. After nearly 150 years of lesbian vampires being framed as dangerous, corrupting, and ultimately doomed, First Kill offers something entirely new: a version of the trope where queer girls get to be soft, dramatic, adorably chaotic, and deeply, genuinely in love.
Legacy of the Lesbian Vampire
From Christabel to Carmilla, from Dracula’s Daughter to Jennifer’s Body, the lesbian vampire has always reflected the cultural moment she existed within. The lesbian vampire has been feared, censored, eroticized, punished, and eventually reclaimed, her evolution tracing the ways society has tried to analyze and control lesbian desire. What began as a warning has slowly transformed into something far more expansive.
Today, the lesbian vampire trope has shifted in a way that lets us feel at least a little optimistic about how our culture perceives lesbians. In shows like First Kill, the lesbian vampire is allowed to be soft, to experience first love, to be uncertain, to want connection without that desire being framed as inherently destructive. After nearly 150 years of being cast as a threat, the lesbian vampire is finally allowed to simply exist.
So the monster certainly hasn't disappeared from media (thank god), but she no longer has to be one unless she chooses to be. And as sapphics, we can see ourselves and our crushes reflected in the lesbian vampire trope without feeling like we're witnessing distinctive proof that society hates us. Yay :)
