End of an era

After more than three years and 276 posts (including this one), I've decided to call it a day. This is the last entry for Diary of an amateur vampirologist.

Sudden, I know, but it's been on my mind for a while. It's been a good run, but I feel it's time to move on. I'm proud of what I've achieved with it. I'm proud of the readership and followers I've accrued since kicking it off. You guys honour me with your presence.

I've had the privledge of contributing guest blogs, elsewhere. One for Reading with bite; two for VampChix (this one and this one). Niels mentioned my blog in a paper he presented to the 2009 Vienna vampire conference. Considering the influence he's had on my online writings, not to mention the respect I hold his work, that was incredibly flattering.

Another incredible honour, was the blog's inclusion on Carrie Carolin's 'Best of the Dark Side: 13 great vampire blogs'. Even more so, as we had never been acquainted before!

While writing thing thing, I also joined a vampire 'club' for the first time: the Transylvanian Society of Dracula (I'm still a member). The first article I've ever had published (in print form), was for their newsletter, The Borgo Post.

How about a round for my 'Q & A' participants? Niels K. Petersen, Martin V. Riccardo, Bruce A. McClelland and Thomas J. Garza. They were all great. I didn't know what to expect from their answers, but each and everyone was insightful, open and interesting. Great work, guys!

I've also enjoyed the interaction with my commentators. Our 'discussions' often prompted elaboration and exploration via blog entries. Erwin tipped me off on the source of a so-called 'vampire' picture; I consoled Angela Cameron, after she felt the vampire thing was 'overdone'; I vindicated Elizabeth Miller; and Jonathan forced me to re-examine my conclusions on Peter Haining's source for the nosferatu.

Meanwhile, bshistorian triggered a search for the 'first' vampire and another one for the vampire of Croglin Grange. In doing so, I discovered a coupla pre-Hare sources. I also dealt with a commentator who was kinda pissed off in the way I 'dismissed' Theresa Bane's Actual factual, Dracula: a compendium of vampires (2007). Bane, herself, wasn't too pleased, either. Understandable, but I had my reasons. That said, I certainly respect her work. On a lighter note, Fra Moretta directed my attention to a modern manifestation of the vampire belief.

It's also been interesting seeing what draws readers to this blog. I had no idea my discussion on so-called antique vampire killing kits would be so popular. Honestly. I'd also like to think those who've found my writings on the FVZA, specifically their fake books, have now 'seen the light'. Rest assured, it's not a factual resource, guys.

A lot of others have been lured to the revelation that Johann Ludwig Tieck wasn't the author of 'Wake not the dead', despite popular attribution. I was surprised to find that out, too. Oh, and I'm still amused that others are drawn here by, well, searches for explicit entertainment relating to a certain, popular saga. You know the one.

Well, all good things, as they say, must come to an end. Here's the final stop. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for reading, for commenting and participating on this blog. I've learned that having your own blog's a great networker, scores you free merch (thanks again, Justin!)—and a lotta spam and requests to review things—as well as great interaction via comments. Ok, not all comments (I'm looking at you, Melody!), but most.

For those worried about all this stuff 'disappearing': don't. I'm not shutting this blog down, but I am closing off comments. You can still wend your way through the goodies inside, but there'll be no more entries here.

I hope you've been enlightened, entertained and, most importantly, inspired in your quest to 'get' vampires. I've pointed you in some pretty good directions, and they've been pointed right back at me! I also hope you'll see that studying the undead doesn't need to be a stuffy pursuit. It can be fun! This is Anthony Hogg, amateur vampirologist, signing off.

******************************

But not for good...

Notes on Fiends

Several years ago, I provided a teeny correction to a webpage covering one of my favourite vampire stories, "Fiends of the Eastern Front", which was written by G. Finlay-Day and illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra.

I was able to provide the correction, thanks to my (very tattered) copy of The Best of 2000 AD Monthly 95 (Aug 1993), in which it was reprinted.

Since that time, it spun off a series of novels by David Bishop and another story arc in Judge Dredd Megazine. All this and more covered in Fiends' Wikipedia entry.

New Years' Wishes

Wishing all my readers a safe and joyous New Year as we move on from the Noughties and into...the Noughteens!

Thanks for your comments, contributions and correspondence. As I've said before, couldn't do it without ya!

And remember kids, if you're gonna have a night out on the tiles, drink responsibly.

The Q & A Sessions

Last night, I joined WikiAnswers, which bills itself as the "world's leading Q & A site".

The concept of the site is quite simple: users ask questions on various topics and other users attempt to answer them.

Obviously, my focus has been on the vampire side of things. You can read my contributions here.

I'll cite one such example: a user asked "Did Edgar Allan Poe have vampires in his stories?" To which, I replied:

Not in the traditional sense of the term, but a few of his stories did feature vampiric overtones. These include "Berenice" (1835), "Ligeia" (1838), "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Oval Portrait" (1842).

A few of these are collected in the anthology, Dead Brides: Vampire Tales (1999).

Manly Wade Wellman featured Poe as a character in his short vampire story, "When It Was Moonlight" (1940).

Hallowe'en Treats

Happy Hallowe'en folks!

I'll run off a few blog posts today to mark the occasion.

If you haven't had a chance to read my "Vampires Converge on Halloween" article for Reading with a Bite, then check that one out to get you in the spirit of things. My commentary on said post can be found here.

Wondering how I became an amateur vampirologist? Look no further than my contribution to VampChix. I wrote up some comments on that posting, too.

Now it's time for another glimpse into the past.

When I was nine, I was really into fantasy, myths and legends and the "unknown". The following image was taken from an orange 96 page exercise book I used to sketch in. To my knowledge, it's my earliest attempt at depicting a vampire:


Incidentally, the little bottle on the right side of the pic is labeled, "BLOOD".

Other than that, all the classic vampire "traits" are there. The widow's peak. The high collar. The cloak over the face. Bat hovering nearby.

They're also largely derived from Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the Count, except, I hadn't seen the film at that time.

I'm not hinting at anything mysterious. After all, I'm sure most kids would probably render vampires in a similar way. That's a testament to the durability of Lugosi's Count in popular consciousness.

Yep, Another Contribution Elsewhere

Ah, I've been waiting for this one to get published.

What, I didn't mention I had written another contribution elsewhere?

Surprise! Heh heh.

If you mosey on down to VampChix (VC), you'll notice my contribution, which was as requested by Michele Hauf.

In "Just a Quick One", I said I'd explain my "amateur vampirologist" tag at some future point. The blog entry I submitted does just that.

However, just as with my previous contribution elsewhere, some formatting errors seemed to have crept in. Except, in this case, it's also had a few other things snuck in, too.

Time to dissect.

Firstly, I am referred to in the intro as a "self-proclaimed Vampirologist." Ok, fair label. After all, I do refer to myself as one. But I thought the studying vampires bit was self-evident. Vampirology, after all, isn't exactly an established science. There's no real formal qualification to make you one. As Jay Stevenson notes in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires (Indianapolis, IN: Alpha, 2002):

Unlike demonology, which once enjoyed a certain degree of official support from the Church, vampirology has no major institutional underpinnings outside of fan clubs and research societies (28).

Next up, the following portion of my blog entry for VC...

Soon after, I began devouring all I could on the subject. A few books that I particularly enjoyed at this time were Lynn Myring's Vampires, Werewolves & Demons (1979), Colin and Jacqui Hawkins' Shriek! A Compendium of Witches, Vampires and Spooks (1985) and I even attempted to wade my way through Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988), even if a lot of it went over my head.

...was interspersed with Amazon links I didn't originally supply.

Nor did I originally include an Amazon link in, "When I got to high school, I found a copy of John Skipp and Craig Spektor's Fright Night novelisation (1985)". Didn't put one in this - "I later read Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) [...]" - either.

More Amazon links magically turn up in the following paragraph:

At this time, I was also buying and borrowing non-fiction vampire works. I got Manuela Dunn-Mascetti's Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead (1994) for my thirteenth birthday. Later, it'd be accompanied by works like Matthew Bunson's Vampire: The Encyclopædia (1993) and J. Gordon Melton's The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (1994).

The link for Tales from the Cryptkeeper, should have led you here, instead of a dead link.

Something went haywire on VC, in which this...

Now, I should state, that I didn't necessarily join it because I actually believed in Manchester's claims (or in vampires, in general), but it served its purpose. However, when it came to discussing certain matters on the Highgate Vampire case, I found my voice being somewhat restricted, so I founded my own forum to discuss it. This would later lead to a blog of the same name.

...was rendered as this:

Now, I should state, that I didn't necessarily join it because I actually believed in Manchester's claims (or in vampires, in general), but it served its purpose. However, when it came to discussing certain matters on the Highgate Vampire case , I found my voice being somewhat restricted, so I founded my own forum http://wampyrinhighgate.multiply.com/journal/item/31 to discuss it. This would later lead to a blog of the same name http://dawwih.blogspot.com/ .

Something similar happened with another paragraph that went from this...

This, in turn, led me to a blog by Danish vampirologist, Niel K. Petersen. We both shared similar interests in vampire folklore and classic vampire studies. His blog was part of the reason I started my own, Diary of an Amateur Vampirologist.

...to this:

This, in turn, led me to a blog http://magiaposthuma.blogspot.com/ by Danish vampirologist, Niel K. Petersen. We both shared similar interests in vampire folklore and classic vampire studies. His blog was part of the reason http://doaav.blogspot.com/2008/07/just-quick-one.html I started my own, Diary of an Amateur Vampirologist .

And lastly, I didn't originally include an Amazon link in Martin V. Riccardo's name.

All said and done, it's one of my favourite blog entries. Hope you like it too!

Amazonian Reviews

I gave some brief coverage to my presence on Amazon in "A Note on Amateurs" after  TFO (still hiding behind a variety of usernames) "outed" me.

So, I thought I'd share the reviews I've written for that site. Yes, even the ones that make use of "tnuocalucard".

Let's start with books (non-fiction):

• "Not all it's cracked up to be..." (June 3, 2002) for Leonard R. N. Ashley's The Complete Book of Vampires (1998).
  
• "Great Book!" (July 5, 2002) for the Kim Newman-edited The BFI Companion to Horror (1996).
  
• "An okay read, but could have been better..." (July 10, 2002) for J. Gordon Melton's Vampire Gallery: A Who's Who of the Undead (1998).
  
• "One of the few vampire books written by an actual believer" (October 11, 2002) for Montague Summers' The Vampire in Europe (1929).
  
• "A Wannabe Lestat?" (September 9, 2005) for Katherine Ramsland's The Science of Vampires (2002).
  
• "The First Non-Fiction Book on Vampire Hunters" (November 29, 2006) for Bruce A. McClelland's Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead (2006).
  
• "Highly Recommended" (6 Oct 2007) for Elizabeth Miller's Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000).
  

And now, the fictional variety:

• "sitting on the fence for this one..." (July 5, 2002) for Brian Lumley's Necroscope (1984).
  
• "good stories, but expected more" (July 5, 2002) for the Joe R. Lansdale and Pat Lobrutto-edited Razored Saddles (1989).
  
• "An ok read...I guess" (July 7, 2002) for Peter Tremayne's Dracula Unborn (1977).
  
• "Similar in VEIN to Tremayne's "Dracula Unborn"" (July 28, 2002) for Peter Tremayne's The Revenge of Dracula (1978).
  
• "They're baaaacckk!" (December 23, 2005) for F. Paul Wilson's Midnight Mass (2004).
  
• "Zombie in the Old West" (January 3, 2006) for Joe R. Lansdale's Dead in the West (2005).
  

Lastly, let's look at movies:

• "A "pop/corn" vampire flick" (July 7, 2002) for Count Yorga, Vampire (1970).
  
• "Even Von Goosewing is Better" (October 5, 2005) for Van Helsing (2004).

So much for TFO's "detective work"! I had to pretty much stalk myself.

Kindred Spirits?

It seems that I'm not the only amateur vampirologist on the web!

That said, there aren't many others, either.

So far, the only others I've come across (who, at least, explicitly refer to themselves in this way), are a bloke named named Mark, from Boulder, Colorado, who refers to himself a "BloodMeridian" on Twitter and a gal named Liliana from New Mexico, who resides on MySpace.

In her "About Me", she describes herself thusly: "I am an amateur vampirologist and very amateur vampire mythologist. I'm working on becoming less amateur."

I hear ya.

Just a Quick One

Welcome to the inaugural "diary" entry of an amateur vampirologist!

I'll go into that title a bit more, at a later time.

But for now, I can tell you that the purpose of this blog is to share my thoughts and resources on things vampiric. It was largely inspired by Niels K. Petersen's brilliant Magia Posthuma, Andrew M. Boylan's comprehensive Taliesin Meets the Vampires, Curt Purcell's wonderful The Groovy Age of Horror and the layout of The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire.

I highly recommend you give each one a read.