This Is a Horror Story: How Private Equity Vampires Are Killing Everything

There are many, many different versions of the vampire’s tale, but in its most timeworn Eurocentric telling, vampires are evil’s upper crust: beautiful, blue-blooded aristocrats draped in velvet, exuding idle menace. Dracula and his cursed kin are the undead 1 percent and act accordingly: terrorizing villages, murdering peasants, siphoning off others’ lifeblood, and turning up their aquiline noses at the slightest hint of dissent.

An entire cottage industry operates around their stories, and vampire lore does not always confine itself to the page. In the 17th century, the very real...