Posts matching tags 'vampires'
2004/10/31
Today in Alternate History is running a Halloween edition today:
n 1961, Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb, only to bring its foul curse upon all of Russia. It creeps across the streets of Moscow, draining the essence from unfortunate comrades, using their energy to fuel its undead existence. It is finally stopped when an Egyptologist, a spunky Red Army soldier and a beautiful young nurse from Moscow People's Hospital destroy the ankh that was keeping it alive.
in 1987, Joseph Campbell, explorer of ancient myths, dies and is buried in Honolulu, Hawaii. That night, he appears in a dream to George Lucas, who conceives a new trilogy for his Star Wars saga based on the tales that Campbell brings to him from the other side; but, he has to tone down the Gungan that Campbell speaks of, because its horror is too much for an audience to take.
2004/3/7
It looks like Romania's bid to join the EU may be derailed by old ways still holding sway over remote rural regions; ways such as throwbacks to feudalism, Communism, the selling of children, and the ritual exhumation and staking of corpses to ward off undead:
Haunted by "strigoi" - the undead - villagers on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains exhume a corpse from the graveyard and drive a stake through its heart to banish the evil spirit. They burn the remains of the heart, mix the ashes with water from the local well and drink it, to complete the macabre ritual.
The regions of Transylvania and Wallachia were "haunted by ancestral ghosts, evil spirits, and vampires"; medieval beliefs that were "at odds with sophisticated EU rules on measuring fruit and the size of bananas".
Europe's preoccupations and debates, the paper said, were "totally out of tune with Romanian realities, where local barons make the law, enjoy privileges and export children to get favours from important people" in a "medieval fashion".
Judging by accounts from many sources, Romania sounds like a pretty bizarre place.
2003/8/22
A comprehensive history of the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, a branch of the US Government in a parallel universe where infestations of undead were a significant problem. It's sort of like an American equivalent of the British TV series Ultraviolet. (via bOING bOING)
2003/6/4
Self-proclaimed "vampire" gunned down in Melbourne. And this less than a week after a guy tried to hijack a plane to Tasmania with wooden stakes. What's going on here?
2003/5/30
Bampot attempts to hijack Qantas flight with wooden stakes, an aerosol can and a lighter. The incident happened on a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Launceston shortly after takeoff. The hijacker was not believed to be connected to Islamofascist terrorist groups, but kept mumbling about "God's will" and "Armageddon", and apparently intended to crash the aircraft into a target. Perhaps he was a self-styled "vampire hunter" of some sort?
2002/7/17
2002/6/12
An interesting (if perhaps somewhat too sympathetic) look at Goth culture in the US Midwest, where a $273,000 grant was recently awarded to a youth outreach unit to combat study "goth culture" and the leaders preying on our children.
(via Rebecca's Pocket)
As she sits still, her pale back exposed to him like a canvas, he pulls out an X-Acto knife. He leans in and carefully scratches the razor across her back in short strokes. Thin lines of blood appear in an abstract design. Not once does she wince.
Draven says he's a vampire, that he drinks blood, believes in werewolves and smokes weed. "It's a religion," he says, though he can't name any rituals beyond drinking his friends' blood and partying. He says he likes that people seem afraid of him, but he also thinks people should accept him like anyone else. Then he walks off.
(Heh; I've met goths like that...)
(I say too sympathetic, because it completely glosses over what petty-minded, bitchy tossers most goths are; and how, for all the noise they make about being "creative" and "original", they are one of the most uncreative and slavishly derivative youth subcultures around. But I digress.)