Kind of overkill, don’t you think?
This image is rattling around social media today. It’s a vampire hunting kit that supposedly sold at Sotheby’s in 2011. I did a search using those keywords and found a totally different vampire hunting kit that sold at a different auction.
The one in the picture is supposedly 1890s, but people in the threads are pointing out that this conception of vampire hunting really didn’t crystallize until the Hammer films. I suspect these were a novelty item assembled in the 20th C using 19th C components.
I know someone who claimed to have seen a simple one. He said it was a velvet-lined mahogany box with a revolver, a crucifix and six silver bullets. A revolver, so post 1850 anyway. I told him it would have been a much better story if one of the bullets was missing.
He owned a combination gun and appliance shop in Providence. That shop was wild. As you walked in, the left half was guns and knives and the right half was white goods. I bought a television there one year and a .357 magnum another year.
Usually it was too expensive for my budget, but once a year they had an invitation-only gun sale with serious discounts. The .357 became my bedside table gun – an S&W 686 snubby in nickel. It was a heavy, ugly, okay-lady-I-can-see-you’re-serious kind of gun and I think I paid less than $200 for it.
I still regret not buying the evillest machete I ever saw at that sale. It was obviously very old and had been sharped and sharpened until there was nought left but a thin, wicked sharp sickle.
I decided I was too clumsy to own that one.
November 3, 2021 — 6:09 pm
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