PHOTOS VIDEO The Bachelor vampire Madison Garton is actress Madison McKinley

Season 15 of The Bachelor features dapper Texan Brad Womack, 29 sexy woman from around the continent and one vampire. That’s right, one of The Bachelor harem may be thirsty for more than just love and fame!

25-year-old model Madison Garton will bare her fangs in tonight’s premiere and reveal that she is a member of the New York Underground Vampire Club! Here’s Count Bachula showing off her canines from the episode:

I did a little research on “The Underground Vampire Club” and found out that writer Katherine Ramsland (most famous for penning The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide To Anne Rice’s ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ and the Anne Rice biography Prism of the Night) wrote a book about her experiences with the underground vampire club in New York titled Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today! Here’s a Q&A about that experience from an interview with Women On Writing:

WOW: For your book Piercing the Darkness, you went undercover with members of a real-life underground vampire club. How did you find these folks, and what did you do to prepare?

Katherine: I jumped in. Seriously. I’d read plenty of vampire novels, but it was the incident of a missing reporter in New York who was investigating the vampire subculture that inspired the idea, and it was my literary agent who gently pushed me toward it. To that point, I had never written immersion journalism. In fact, I’d never even had a journalism course. However, because of my work on Anne Rice’s books, it wasn’t hard to get invited to a vampire club, and that’s how it started. The person who invited me also fitted me with custom-made fangs and showed me where I could buy the right clothes for going to the club. I describe all of this in Piercing the Darkness, because my MO as a writer in those three books (Ghost and Cemetery Stories) was to take readers with me on my journey of discovery. Once I was inside, it wasn’t hard to get connected to vampire groups in other cities and other countries. It was just a matter of how much courage I could generate and how far I was willing to travel. Of course, Paris was on my list! There was no shortage of people willing to talk with me and invite me places. However, I do attribute this to my association with Rice’s vampire novels and the book I wrote, The Vampire Companion. Only afterward did I write my own vampire novels, in which I wrote a fictional account of what happened to the missing reporter.

But being a vampire isn’t the only skeleton in Madison’s closet! In addition to being undead and a model, Madison is also a professional actress! Her stage name is Megan McKinley and her credits include minor roles in films such as The Smurfs and Sex In The City as wells as appearances on television shows like 30 Rock, Rescue Me and Lipstick Jungle.

Madison had so much success in fact that Star magazine featured her in a “Rising Star” piece in their November 29, 2010 issue. (That seems a little suspicious to me because by that time the names of the contestants had already been leaked by Reality Steve, although the connection had not yet been made to Madison’s stage name of McKinley yet) Here’s the Star feature (click to enlarge):

Although most of her speaking roles seem to feature Madison talking in a foreign language, this promo reel from her website ought to give you a good glimpse at her acting chops:

And here she is in the short film “Wonder of See Saws”, which is part of the Wonder Project. (Madison is the blond woman seated on the right)

The fact that Madison has a professional acting career may not seem so surprising, but the casting folks on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette tend to avoid actors like the plague so as to not hurt the “integrity” of the show. They seem OK with previous reality show experience (Justin “Rated R” Rego) and even very limited acting experience (Jake Pavelka made a brief appearance as a young Walker, Texas Ranger on the television series) but Madison’s resume seems like a lot more than they would usually allow. My guess is that they really wanted to play up the vampire angle and have bloggers like me making posts about “the girl with fangs” to help promote the show. Well played, ABC. Well played indeed!

Vampire or not, Madison Garton or Madison McKinley – either way Madison is one mighty fine eligible bachelorette! Here are a few more photos of her sans fangage:

For detailed background info on other contestants from The Bachelor 2011 with photos, videos and whatever else the internet had to offer, be sure to check out our Bachelor File posts on Chantal O’Brien, Ashley Hebert, Emily Maynard and Shawntel Newton! For photos as well as very brief bios and Q&As with all the other contestants take a gander at our “Brad Bunch” post HERE!