Carmilla Machado mentions in this intro where she says that in like the 1970s some scholar from the University of Iowa found a bunch of papers like in Lefanoo's office or something. This implies that the story Carmilla is not as fictional as it is implied to be. It turns out that there is like this long standing trope where gay people are evil in fiction. And I don't know if you've noticed this before but like apparently it's a thing.