Author Adriana Ryan recently blogged about what superpowers she wouldn’t want. She ruled out fat manipulation, a prehensile tongue, or bubble generation. Gotta agree with her on those.

The post got me thinking about supernatural creatures, and more specifically, which one I would choose to be if I had to be one of them. Think vampire, werewolf, zombie, ghost, witch, mermaid, avenging angel, troll, etc. And I’m not talkin’ Cullen vampires, Quileuete werewolves, Hogwarts witches, or Casper. I’m talking the blood-gulping, flesh-ripping, brain-eating, head-removing, sailor-drowning types of creatures.

When I was around thirteen years old, I had a dream about a vampire chasing me. It felt VERY real as he caught up to me and grabbed me. I woke up still feeling that hand on my shoulder, and I actually saw the vampire standing next to my bed for a second.

People in my clinical work have said they’ve seen/heard/felt unusual things just before going to sleep, or just as they wake up. These experiences are called, in psychological jargon, hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, and they are considered normal. But being grabbed by a vampire—dream or no dream—is scary. Unless the vampire resembles a Cullen, that is. But that’s another kind of dream.

Ever since that experience, even before it, I’ve had a minor obsession with vampires. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, even the film, The Lost Boys, fascinated me. Vampires are a contradiction. Alive, and yet dead. Human, and yet other. Sophisticated, and yet primal. They’re so deliciously complicated. So I’d choose vampire. And although the drinking blood thing might be hard, I would take right to sleeping during the day and being up all night. I’m a night owl anyway.

So, what about you? Which supernatural creature would you be, and why?