You're listening to Imaginary Worlds. I'm Eric Milinski. So I'm talking to you

outside today because I'm shaking the format up a bit. Usually on the show I

examine imaginary worlds from the outside. But sometimes I need to go there

because I want to hear directly from the characters. So this week's episode is a

radio drama and it's actually a sequel to another radio drama that I produced a

few years ago which may sound confusing but I'm gonna let Imaginary Eric in the

studio explain what's going on. Just don't believe what word he says.

A couple years ago I did a story for Studio 360 about vampires. Now when you see

vampires on TV or in the movies they're always like really fast or strong. They

can fly or hypnotize you. They're dressed in latest fashions you know very

sexy lots of black and leather. I wanted to show that in the real world being a

vampire is not glamorous. They usually don't keep up at the times. It can be kind

of disorienting to live forever and if they're low on blood they're pretty weak.

That's why New Haven Connecticut created a safehouse program in the 1960s which

was copied by Oakland Austin and a couple other cities. New Haven provided

vampires with a regular supply of blood and in turn the vampires agreed to live

in safe houses guarded by police. So in 2011 I went to one of these safe houses

and here's a little bit of that story. New Haven is plenty of spooky gothic

mansions but Alicia Rubenstein and over a dozen vampires are living at a

hardware store called Grossman's Lumber that went out of business 20 years ago.

It's now a safe house guarded by police. The police let us inside a holding

area. They won't allow us to go any further even they don't go beyond the

...