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When the supernatural, psychic, or paranormal experience
enters a room, anything beyond normal dreaming, and that deja vu we all
experience makes its presence felt, goths are on it, tuning their ESP
antennae. Many goths have stories to tell.
Amanda: "On December 9, 1997,1 sat at the piano and wrote a song
titled 'In Heaven.' The song and most of the lyrics came out within twenty
minutes. I shook my head and thought, 'Okay ... In Heaven . . . whatever!'
It wasn't until six weeks later that my mother called to tell me my dear
friend Michael had passed away on December 9, 1997. The song has been
dedicated to him, since it was his presence that inspired that gift to
me as he traveled onto the next world."
ariana: "I am a tarot reader and have had a few odd experiences.
I have definitely communicated with my dead grandmother. I have also communicated
with the 'spirits' of loved ones that my clients ask me about."
Azazelle: "My house may have a ghost. There are many times when we
have seen or felt a presence here—thinking that someone has come
up behind you, talking to them, and when there's no answer, turning to
find no one there. And the person you thought you were talking to is clear
off in another part of the house. Once we saw a book fly off the shelf
for no ap-
The Lady Para-Norma
Artwork by fincent Marcone
parent reason. Once I thought my cat Monster was behind the door I was
trying to open because I felt resistance, but he wasn't there. An owner
of this house got run over by a car just around the corner. Sometimes
we think it might be her. In a different house I once owned there were
definitely cold spots, and once I heard breathing at the end of the bed
when no one was there. It's just sort of mundane strangeness." C.B.:
"About a year ago I was in a restaurant that was closed for the evening.
It was quiet and dark. A very weird chill. My friend told me later a male
ghost is rumored to inhabit the place. It wasn't threatening, just a very
odd feeling, one which I haven't felt since."
Individuation: "I've been 'in tune' since I was about five. I've
felt, seen and heard 'ghosts' for lack of a better term. I really, really,
really hated it. It's scary. Growing up, there were three places in my
parents' house that really freaked me out. I had to run past them. In
my early twenties my father and I were talking about the supernatural
after watching a film on TV and he told me about experiences he'd had
in the house. He'd seen a small boy in pajamas (I only have sisters) in
three different spots. The same three that always terrified me. Apparently
a small boy passed away due to illness in the house before they bought
it. Lots of other things have happened, but I'd prefer not to talk about
them."
Medea: "I have a ghost in my house who smokes. (No one else does,
but you can smell it.) She died of emphysema while living here."
Miss Lynx: "I used to be really uncomfortable with cemeteries, up
until the funeral of a close friend several years ago, who had been heavily
into San-teria. The funeral was done Santeria style, with drumming, dancing,
and random possession of people by the Orishas (spirits/deities). I ended
up possessed by Oya, who is among other things, Mistress of the Cemetery.
When I gazed around the cemetery in the afterglow of the ritual, I thought
it was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. Also, I've been practicing
Wicca for over twenty years, with occasional forays into Santeria, chaos
240
THE GOTH BIBLE
magic, and other magical paths, and I've had one hell of a lot of supernatural
experiences. I've seen someone possessed by the Orisha Change set himself
on fire without being burned. I've seen someone deathly allergic to peppers
eat them while possessed without being harmed. I've done quite a lot of
magical rituals that have gotten results, including one intensive healing
ritual on someone in hospital where I could see the results of what I
was doing on the digital displays of the machines the patient was hooked
up to. I've been in a coven where we did a lot of exorcisms and 'ghostbusting.'
One time, in a house we were working on, I looked in a mirror and saw
my normal reflection, but the flesh melting off my bones, leaving only
a skull. It completely creeped me out!"
Nevermore: "I love the stunning sculpture and landscaping of local
cemeteries when I'm traveling. I often photograph local cemeteries, and
take my video camera at night. I got footage of a floating orb. It was
at night, and as I zoomed the camera closer, it seemed to move away. During
the day I was walking around the cemetery and saw an older headstone with
two stone pots, one on either side. I looked in and saw plain white pebbles
in both. I continued walking for awhile and then went back past that stone.
When I looked in the pots again, the pebbles in the pot on the right had
what looked like dried blood all over them. There was no one else in the
cemetery; I have no idea how the blood or whatever got there. To this
day, it's still there."
Vena Cava: "Elmwood Cemetery, in Memphis. I originally went with
a tour, then again by myself one quiet Saturday morning with my camera.
Though I was supposedly alone, I saw human-shaped shadows walking a foot
above the grass, with no human to cast them, and heard footsteps on the
walkway behind me that stopped when I stopped, but no one was there. No
one had mentioned the place being haunted. They weren't scary ghosts—I
felt curiosity and loneliness. Hardly anyone goes there anymore. I like
to go now so they have someone to visit them. Also, in a former apartment
I was writing a warlock story and one night the room filled with the strong
odor of sewage. I investigated, but the plumbing was all right. Then I
had a very strong impression of something huge and dark hovering behind
me. I prayed for God to send whatever it was away, and after a few words
of prayer, it was gone. Next, my neighbor and his girlfriend moved into
that room. I'd left a large sorrowful angel picture on the wall. He placed
his monster toys and action figures on shelves and a few
241
THE PRETERnATURAL IS CALLJHG
days later came running up to me to say, 'Why say I can decorate however
I want if you're going to mess with my things?' I didn't know what he
was talking about but when I followed him to his room, all the action
figures were turned to face that painting. Then, in the days that followed,
things began disappearing from where they had been placed, only to reappear
a few seconds later somewhere else. Sometimes I would say, half jokingly,
'Okay, give it back!' Bing! There the item would be. It creeped me out.
His girlfriend heard someone 'walking' in the hall, and refused to stay
in the room alone. We three would sit in my room watching TV and hear
his little motion-detector figures go off, one after the other, in a row,
as if someone was walking in front of them. The presence continued to
drive us crazy and we three sat together and concentrated GO AWAY! Next
morning my lamp shade I'd left in their room was ripped to shreds as if
by claws, and my keys were bent double! After that, we never heard from
it again. I've had many other experiences."
Sally: "I talked with a transparent man in my bedroom when I was
less than three years old, and remember it well. I met Alexander, our
ghost in Atlanta, which guests saw as well. To get to sleep as a child,
I used to 'chat' with knocking conversations on the wall with invisible
respondents. I passed through a cold area on the staircase of an old house
that made me cry for no reason — the house is known as haunted."
Shekinah: "In our old house, which was getting on a hundred years
old, I used to feel like I was being watched all the time, especially
when alone. Not in a threatening way, more like an invisible friend. We
did find a gravestone in the backyard."
XjUsTcRuCifyX: "I feel the dead. I feel cold spots quite a lot, but
they calm me — I think it is someone I know who died. I must sleep
under covers because the cold spots make me very uncomfortable so I protect
myself from them. I saw the ghost of a horse come to me six months before
my favorite horse died. It might seem trivial, but the horse I saw died
of cancer. Immediately I called the barn to see if anything was wrong.
My horse was sick, and they didn't find out until a few months later what
it was. He was put out of his misery shortly after that."
ten WAYS to SLOW Down, PERHAPS EVEH
StOP A VAmPJRJ
(courtesy Dr. Jeanne K. Youngson, president, the Vampire Empire)
1. Drive a nail through its forehead.
2. Cut out its heart and slice it in twain.
3. Smear it with the fat of a pig killed on St. Ignatius' Day.
4. Put a clove of garlic, a stone, or a lemon in its mouth.
5. Sprinkle its body with holy water.
6. Drive a stake through its heart.
7. Give it a knitted sock to unravel.
8. Bury it face downward.
9. Take away its shroud.
10. Blow up its tomb.
fcucuU And friends
Vampires have appeared in the mythology of just about every culture since
the beginning of recorded history. The Epic ofGilgamesh in 2500 B.C.
Photo by Andy Julia
242
THE GOTH BIBLE
top 10 ii
VompiRjs
(courtesy of Dr. Jeanne K. Youngson, president, The Vampire Empire)
1. Russia: Upierczi-so bad it can dry the dew off plants
2. Romania: Nosferat-makes husbands \mpo\en\
1 Bavaria1. NacY\e\\ret-fe cow together by their tails
4. Moravia: Vampire-likes to skulk around naked
5. Serbia: Mulo-boils ladies he fancies in a huge vat
6. Dalmatia: Kuzlak-tosses pots and pans around the kitchen
7. Albania: Sampiro-dresses in a shroud and stilettos
8. Crete: Catacano-can't stop laughing
9. Ashantiland: Asanbosam-normal except he has books for feet
10. Portugal: Bruxsa-only enjoys the blood of children
talks about the Death Bringer, one who preys upon human beings, forcing
death upon them, and the vampire has grown in popularity ever since.
Often the vampire is a formerly living human being who is now not quite
dead, rather, undead as they say. Traditionally the undead stalk the living,
often those who were close in life. In the European tradition, the nosferatu
drinks human blood. But in other cultures the cherished source o£
nourishment is energy, time, dreams, the soul itself. In Katherme V.
cretions.
Vampires possess a number of bewildering traits: they can fly; hop (China);
walk through walls; appear in dreams (Japan); possess the strength of
ten men; transform into animals like a bat (South America and Mexico);
or a wolf (Balkans). They are able to control the elements, control animals,
mesmerize human beings. They do not get sick and they do not grow old
and, more important, they do not die of natural causes. They can be ugly
and caught in the process of decay, but more often appear beautiful, even
perfect physically, which only adds to their allure. In parts of India
it is believed crows, whose diet includes carrion, can be controlled by
the Undead. In Ceylon, female vampires can survive entirely on elephant
blood. In Iceland, vampires shape-shift into dragons, birds, wolves, bears,
and horses.
Traditionally, their weaknesses are few but severely limiting: sunlight
often burns them, as does fire; a wooden stake through the heart —
especially made of hawthorn — will destroy them and cutting off
the head for good measure isn't a bad idea; they are repelled by garlic
and wolfsbane; they do not cast a shadow; they are terrified of mirrors
because they cannot see their own image; they cannot cross running water;
they cannot enter a dwelling unless invited. In China, a priest's prayer
pasted to the forehead stops the undead cold. Vampires are usually compelled
to drink blood, most of the time human, although sometimes they can survive
on animal blood. But one thing is clear: vampires are the predators, we
mere humans their prey.
Dr. Elizabeth Miller, scholar and chapter president of the Transylvan-ian
Society of Dracula, is an expert on the novel that started a chain reaction.
She has authored three nonfiction books about her favorite subject, the
most recent Dracula: Sense and Nonsense. "First published in 1897,
Dracula, by Irish author Bram Stoker, has never been out of print. It
has
Photo by Andy Julia
243
THE PRETERnATURAL IS CALLinG
been reissued in over three hundred editions, including dozens in foreign
languages. Though today the title character is universally recognized,
the book did not become an instant success upon publication. Initial sales
were moderate and reviews mixed. In fact, in his own day, Stoker was known
much more widely as a theater manager than as a novelist.
"It was not until the 1920s, several years after Stoker's death,
that the book became a hit. A successful stage production on Broadway
in the 1920s, followed by the Universal Studio's highly successful Dracula
(Bela Lugosi, 1931), made Dracula a household word. Since then, the novel
has spawned hundreds of films and works of fiction, as well as a considerable
output of scholarly studies. Today, Count Dracula is arguably the most
widely recognized of all literary characters. The figure of Dracula has
pervaded just about every aspect of Western culture: from cereal boxes
to video games and comic books, from Sesame Street to ballets and musicals."
Elizabeth isn't sure if the author was fully aware of the archetypal energy
he worked with. "Whether Stoker realized it or not, through his novel
he tapped into hidden fears, anxieties, and desires, while creating a
character who epitomizes the ostracized 'other'—be it cultural,
racial or sexual. These factors help explain the continuing popularity
of Dracula more than one hundred years after its publication."
Dracula's popularity has ebbed and flowed and then around 1976 surged
into the modern psyche, mainly because of three novels published that
year: Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn
Yarbro, and Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice. Since then, more
and more vampire fiction and nonfiction books are in our collective face,
and thousands of vampire movies have been made. Just about everyone has
read Dracula. And whatever else they read, virtually all goths have read
some vampire books, and they have strong author allegience.
Two intriguing books of documentation of vampire myths and stories were
written by Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers, a Protestant
minister turned Catholic priest. He dressed like an eighteenth-century
cleric, with the addition of a long, sweeping cape, and the silver-tipped
cane he carried, depicting Leda being ravished by Zeus in the form of
a swan. His hairstyle—one of his own design—is now fashionable
with goths—two knots on the side of the head.
Summers wrote several other books of interest to goths: History ofDe-monology
and Witchcraft, The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel, A
THE t SECTION ON VAMPIRES
AzAzdlc "Vampires make good
fiction. People living a delusion are not
ones I'd want to hang out with."
C.B. "I'm not one, and don't know any.
But there are lots of people out there
who are psychic vampires, and
they drain your energy and live
off your misery."
Cemetery Croro "I'm not one for
sure. I've never met anyone who thought
they were a vampire, but I've met people
who hoped a vampire would come into
their life. And I do know a lot of psychic
vampires; their personality makes them
very dependent on others. Psychic
vampires are like children, or like
wolves without pack leaders."
Jetgirl "I don't think I'm a vampire, though I look pretty damn good
for 457 years! Vampires are so much a part of my life, I can't even consider
not being interested in them. They are interested in me as well."
Johnny £ornutt>eby£>e "I don't believe in blood-drinking
undead creatures. There are blood fetishists, which is something that
doesn't appeal to me in the least, but to each his own."
CDiss £ynx "Morons who think they
are a vampire are the biggest bane of
the goth subculture. Aside from people
who think they look good in heavy
makeup, and don't."
244 •if THE GOTH BJBLE
Gothic Bibliography, and he also reprinted The Discovery of Witches by
the infamous Matthew Hopkins, and undertook the first English translation
of the fifteenth-century treatise on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum.
In much the same manner as goths, Summers saw himself as a refugee from
another century, in his case, the eighteenth. He chronicled not so much
legends and mythology, but what he saw as the terrifying reality of vampires.
He wrote a pair of dense tomes on the vampire in Gothic literary style:
The Vampire in Europe (1929), and the massive The Vampire: His Kith and
Kin (1928). Both books are long out of print but can still be found through
antiquarian bookshops. Summers's work, and that of the French seventeenth-century
priest Dom Augustin Calmet who came before him and which he used as source
material, are the authors upon whom modern vampire scholars base most
of their ideas.
In her book Piercing the Darkness, Katherine Ramsland delved into the
vampire subculture and has this to say about vampires and goths: "I
found that many goths resented being associated with vampires, and rightly
so. They have their own identity, but there is an overlap in fashion,
the desire for connections to the riches of darkness, and often in poetry
and music. Some goths see the mythological vampire as an icon of darkness
and mystery, but don't identify themselves as vampires, whereas people
in the vampire subculture may adopt goth fashion and music—perhaps
even some of that perspective—but they don't accept the more passive,
wraith-like qualities of goth culture. They do mingle at parties, but
the pure types in each subculture tend not to want to be identified as
belonging to the other. Yet there are no clear-cut definitions for members
of either."
A few of The f Section see themselves as vampires, or possible vampires.
Several know people who consider themselves vampires, or are at least
into drinking blood or blood sports. And while almost all of The f Section
love vampries, most don't believe the traditional vampire exists in reality,
although many have encountered what is known as psychic vampires—people
who drain another person's energy. But you don't have to be goth to have
met a psychic vampire!
tumpires unlimited
Modern vampires keep creating more of their kind, and the spawn have taken
strange forms of late: Count Chocula cereal, Mexico's Vampiro brand tomato-based
vegetable juice, New Orleans's Vampire Hot Sauce
Vctu Guu "If I knew anyone who was a vampire I'd hound them
constantly to bring me across. I keep
a mirror in my purse for testing
purposes."
Qoist "I'm interested in vampires as
a myth; they embody a lot of the
things that goth is all about. Beauty,
romanticism in death, and all that."
\fompirG3ikc "I'm realistic. I can
dream I'm a vampire but I can't be
one. I live like a vampire and it's a
lifestyle. If I thought I was really a
vampire, the devil would have me and
I'd kill people like a Satanist.
I'm normal, and I know the
difference between reality
and dreams."
245
THE PRETERnATURAL IS CALLJHG
Photo by Andy Julia
(from Little Cajun Outpost). The United States has Elvira (see Chapter
11), and in Brazil LizVamp (daughter of horror movie genre's Coffin Joe)
is that country's vampire queen—she was even the poster girl of
the 2002 blood bank drive.
In the Western world, all vampires seem to stem from the old-school tradition
that brought us Vlad Tepesh, aka, Vlad the Impaler, a fifteenth-century
Transylvanian prince and viviode (warlord) who became one of the inspirations
for Stoker's Dracula. That tradition is part of medieval class structure,
and it was the aristocracy that became vampire, the rest of the population
their victims.
The first piece of short vampire fiction in English was based on a page
and a half written in 1819 at the seashore by the infamous poet Lord George
Noel Gordon Byron. His personal physician John Polidori lifted the snippet
Byron tossed out and finished the tale, creating the story "The Vampire,"
about a European aristocrat who seduces and murders, vampire-style, the
sister of his traveling companion, for the sheer pleasure of it. Rumor
has it that Polidori based his decadant vampire on Lord Byron!
The first vampire novel in English was the nearly 1,000-page tome Var-ney
the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood, probably penned by Thomas Pres-kett
Prest (author of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and other
macabre works), but possibly Malcolm James Rymer (authorship in dispute).
This penny dreadful appeared as weekly newspaper installments, and then
was gathered together into a book in 1847, the year Bram Stoker was born.
Sir Francis Varney, the major character, forever sealed the Western concept
of the undead. He is a guilt-ridden vampire, an aristocrat by birth, who
just can't stop himself from drinking the blood of voluptuous young virgins
in their bedchambers. Eventually Sir Varney, unable to bear the emotional
pain any longer, tosses himself into fiery Mt. Vesuvius, ending his unnatural
existence, and the three quarters of a million-word novel.
The French excelled at vampire stories. Charles Nodier, who is interred
in Paris's famous Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise (see Chapter 10), wrote several.
Guy de Maupassant—considered the best French short story writer—penned
"The Horla" in 1887, a tale told in classic diary format of
a protagonist stalked by a malevolent energy that actualizes and drives
him insane. De Maupassant wrote this story six years before he died
246
THE GOTH BiBLE
in an asylum from syphilis, where he was placed after a suicide attempt.
Charles Baudelaire (see Chapter 11) wrote the banned poems "Le Vampire"
and "Les Metamorphoses du Vampire."
One short story of note is "Carmilla, The Female Vampire," a
soft lesbian vampire tale written by Irishman Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
in 1872. It is entirely possible that this story is loosely based on the
life of Countess Erzsebet Bathory, a distant cousin of Vlad Dracula, who
lived in Hungary in the seventeenth-century and became known as "the
Female Dracula."
the blood countess
Erzsebet Bathory had a normal aristocratic upbringing. But she was a problem
child, given to fits of rage and violence, and loved to torture small
animals and insects. At fifteen, she married Count Ferenc Nadasdy, who
spent most of his time away from home. Countess Bathory had a couple of
cohorts, including her servant Dorka, thought to be a witch, who also
enjoyed sadism as her main source of entertainment. Over the years, the
Countess fell into the practice of torturing her servant girls by pressing
red-hot keys or coins into their hands, and burning their faces with a
hot iron fireplace poker. She stuck needles into the flesh beneath the
fingernails. Once, she forced open a maid's mouth until the flesh tore.
In winter, she had girls play naked in the snow, dousing them with water
until ice formed and they died of hypothermia. In summer, she coated their
bodies with honey and left them outdoors for twenty-four hours to suffer
insect bites and stings.
Then the Countess, who had always been beautiful and used that power,
began to age. One fateful day she slapped the girl who had been brushing
her hair not to her liking. A cut in the girl's lip produced blood, which
splattered onto Erzsebet's face. She rubbed the blood into her skin, and
tasted it. "You look younger," Dorka cried. The Countess gazed
into a mirror and said, "It's a miracle."
Reenacting this miracle resulted in incredible suffering. The Countess
beat and tortured servant girls until they bled, washing in their blood
to renew her youth, which became a daily requirement. Eventually she left
the castle for Vienna and there had built by a German clockmaker a mechanized
precursor of the iron maiden, which she called the iron virgin. She decorated
her life-sized sarcophagus with painted blue eyes, real human teeth, and
hair. The suspended vertical contraption opened like a mummy
ExcERft F*£>m BAUDELAJRJ'S "twE VompiRj "
translation by Nancy Kilpatrick
"You n>bo, sharp as a knife
plunged into my heart; you n>bo
insinuate yourself into my life like a horde
of demons
YOU enter, dancing wildly through Che unlocked doors of my senses Co make
my spirit your domain."
247
THE PRETERHATURAL IS CALLIHG
case. Victims were placed within, and the door that contained spikes was
shut, forcing the spikes into the body, which bled into a tub as the girl
died a painful and prolonged death. The street in Vienna where so many
girls died at the Countess's hands is now known as Blood Alley.
As signs of aging increased, Countess Bathory determined that she needed
the superior blood of virgins of noble birth to rejuvenate her. She began
biting, then killing, young girls unwittingly sent to her by their families
for service among royalty. Rumors of the disappearances of the wealthy
reached the ears of the Hungarian emperor, who sent a committee to Castle
Bathory to investigate. They discovered a detailed diary of names and
dates, and 650 graves. A trial ensued; court records still exist. Because
of her high station, the Countess could not be executed. Instead, she
was walled up in the tower of her castle, food and water slipped through
an opening. She survived for three years in solitary confinement, never
seeing the sun, not speaking to anyone or hearing a sound from the outside
world. After her death, and until this day, locals believe she rises from
her grave, seeking the blood of young virgins.
U Comtessc 5u Sang J>
France had its own version of a blood countess, who lived in the Chateau
de Deux-Forts in the twelfth century. La Comtesse found a red spot on
her belly that her physician deemed to be leprosy. She didn't like his
diagnosis and threats led the medical man to prescribe bathing in fresh
human blood.
This she did, murdering children for their vitae, until the court at Au-vergne
put a stop to it. The doctor was hanged, and the Comtesse drawn and quartered.
A stone cross stands today, called la Croix de MalMon (the Cross of the
Female Death).
peter Kiirten, the tumpire of Diissel&orf
There are many "real-life vampires" in history, some of whom
have been fictionalized in books, plays, and movies. One that stands out
is Germany's vampire of Diisseldorf. The highlights of his story are told
by Euro-horror specialist Marcelle Perks, who is writing a book on this
killer.
"Peter Kiirten, the vampire of Diisseldorf (1883-1932), was born
into a violent and impoverished family of thirteen children that lived
in one room. His alcoholic father committed incest with his sister. Kiirten
began at
248
THE GOTH BJBLE
the age of nine to cut the heads off swans to drink their blood. Around
this time, an older man introduced him to masturbation, and dog torture.
By the age of ten he drowned a school friend in the River Rhine. During
his teenage years he was jailed repeatedly for petty crimes (stealing
food or clothes), and, while serving a two-year sentence, whiled away
the hours fantasizing about killing hundreds of people. Later he confessed:
'I derived the sort of pleasure from these visions that other people would
get from thinking about a naked woman.' He even broke prison rules to
get himself placed into solitary confinement in order to indulge in these
fantasies.
"On May twenty-fifth, 1913, eight-year-old Christine Klein was found
raped with her throat cut. Later Kiirten admitted, 'In a room above an
inn at Koln-Mulheim, I discovered a child asleep. Her head was facing
the window. I seized it with my left hand and strangled her for about
a minute and a half.' Then he cut her throat. The whole thing took just
three minutes.
"His murderous career was temporarily curtailed when he was imprisoned
for desertion during World War One. In 1921 he was released and attempted
to change. In 1925 he became a trade unionist and married an older prostitute.
Whilst cultivating a respectable image (he was always meticulous and neat),
he secretly murdered lovers, prostitutes, and strangers. Unlike most serial
killers, he would murder anyone: men, women, children, and animals.
"By 1929 Diisseldorf was in an uproar and the idea of a real-life
vampire had taken hold of the populous. Unemployed Maria Budlick arrived
in the city in May 1930 to find work and was initially accosted by a man
who tried to waylay her. Another man intervened—ironically, he was
Peter Kiirten. They had a sandwich at his house, and on the way to a hostel
he put a hand to her throat and demanded sex. She consented, and he allowed
her to go free. Maria did not contact the police, but described the incident
in a letter, which was misdelivered and opened by someone who informed
the police. Later, Maria unwillingly led police to the outside of number
seventy-one, Mettmannerstrasse.
"When Kiirten found out about this, he took his wife out for a meal
and confessed everything. Worried about being destitute in her old age,
Frau Kiirten suggested they commit suicide together. Kiirten advised her
to report him to the police so she could claim the reward. His loyalty
towards his wife confounded everyone who was involved in his capture.
"Kiirten was tried for nine murders and seven attempted murders,
but
249
THE PRETERHATURAL IS CALLinG
he confessed, in excruciating detail, to sixty-eight crimes. Suave and
sophisticated in court, he remained calm, despite being on display in
a shoulder-high cage surrounded by [evidence such as] his murder tools
and victims' body parts.
"In July 1932 his death sentence was carried out by guillotine. His
last words were: 'Tell me, after my head has been chopped off, will I
still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood
gushing from the stump on my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all
pleasures.' "
the Vampire of poster,
New England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a hotbed of
vampiric activity. For example, in 1827, nineteen-year-old Nancy Young
died of consumption in Foster, Rhode Island. Her father, Captain Levi
Young, was a religious man. When one by one his remaining children became
ill, rumors sprouted throughout the town that Nancy must be a vampire,
returning from the dead to infect the living. As is the custom in almost
all vampire legends, the undead prefer to prey upon their relatives first.
Captain Young apparently believed the rumors and felt there was only one
course of action that made sense. Two months after her death, he invited
the neighbors to gather at the cemetery while Nancy's body was exhumed
and burned on a wooden pyre. The remaining Young family inhaled the fumes,
in the belief that this would cure the sickness that plagued their line.
Sadly, it did not.
The story of Nancy Young is one of a dozen vampire tales that come out
of New England, eleven of which involve tuberculosis, a disease that ran
rampant between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early
1990s, Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni wrote a paper for The American
Journal of Physical Anthropology (No. 94) reprinted on the Internet, discussing
what was found when the remains of twenty-nine individuals in Walton Cemetery
were exhumed, a rural farm family burial ground in Griswold, Connecticut,
used for burials between 1690 and 1750. The remains of one complete skeleton
of a male in his fifties indicated a severe case of pulmonary tuberculosis.
The other interesting thing about his bones is that they had been rearranged,
the skull and femora in a "skull and crossbones" position on
top of the ribs and vertebrae. The authors discuss the usual method of
dispatching a corpse thought to be a vampire in early New England, which
involved destroying the heart. "In this case, tapho-
250
THE GOTH BJBLE
'DRIED ALIVE!
: could happen to you
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la re Oracuia Poster
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EW YORK STORIES he Vampire Director
HE GREAT SCIENCE GHOST HUMT
\ WAYS TO J BECOME AWEREWOLf
nomically, the physical arrangement of the skeletal remains in the grave
indicates that no soft tissue had been present at the time of rearrangement;
no heart remained in the body. We hypothesize that, in the absence of
a heart to be burned, the apotropaic remedy was to place the bones in
a 'skull and crossbones' arrangement. In support of this hypothesis, we
note that decapitation was a common European method of dispatching a dead
vampire, and that the Celts and Neolithic Egyptians were known to separate
the head from the body, supposedly to prevent the dead from doing harm.[Barber,
1988]."
HAT GIRL'
ie Rise o( the Gothic Supermodel
-, „ itfl
The world is full of real-life vampires, and one site, Shroudeater, run
by Amsterdam vampire expert Rob Brautigam, documents real-life and mythological
encounters with vampires from around the world.
Many publications exist that focus on the vampire. One, out of Glasgow,
Scotland, with a large goth readership, is Bite Me. Most of the models
used in the publication dress goth.
Arlene Russo, publisher and editor of Bite Me, says that the centenary
Model Donna Ricci (modeled for of Stoker's Dracula (1997) changed her
life. "I traveled to the world's death on the Sandman cov«)
Copyright by Arlene Russo
biggest Dracula convention, in Los Angeles, and met a host of interesting
characters, including actress Ingrid Pitt and other Hammer film stars,
and also the son of Bela Lugosi. It was there I decided my mission was
to come back home and produce a vampire magazine, uniting fans from around
the world. Someone suggested I apply for a grant and I thought 'What chance
have I got, there's nothing to lose.' I received a woman's grant so my
humble fanzine was forced to become a magazine. Bite Me launched July
1999 at a cinema in Glasgow, with a special screening of Blade. The Scottish
news covered it!"
Since then, Arlene has "traveled to Transylvania on several occasions.
Got stranded in a forest there during a blizzard. That was both scary
and exciting!"
frAnkenstdn, or the modern prometbeus
One summer in 1816, the British poets Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron,
Shelley's lover Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley was married at the time to
someone else), her half-sister Claire Clairmont, and Byron's personal
physician, John Polidori, took a little vacation to Geneva. Mary had met
Percy when she was just fifteen, and fell in love. Uncharacteristic of
girls
251
THE PRETERHATURAL IS CALLIHG
Gollum
Artwork by Vincent Marcone
of their day, Mary and Claire had run off to Europe several times with
Shelley.
It was a warm but rainy evening, keeping the party indoors. Despite plenty
of laudanum—a tincture of diluted opium—the vacationers became
a bit bored. Lord Byron challenged them all to write a ghost story over
the weekend. Byron himself produced a fragment, later completed and published
by Polidori under his own name. Shelley produced nothing much. But Mary
Wollstonecraft had a dream, one that became the basis of the novel Frankenstein.
A wonderful depiction of the weekend's events has been created by Ken
Russell in his film Gothic.
In her novel, unlike in most of the film versions of the book, Mary's
creature is a pathetic being. Dr. Victor Frankenstein fashioned the creature
from the flesh of recently executed criminals dug up by grave robbers—a
common practice then, when doctors needed corpses for medical experiments.
His creation is physically hideous but sentient, possessing mixed morality.
It is driven by instincts and emotions beyond its control, often fueled
by the rejection it experiences from human beings who cannot tolerate
being in the presence of something so primitive and hideous, and composed
of the body parts of the dead. There are many touching scenes in the novel
that show this being, caught between intelligence and emotion, struggling
to take the high road, yet crushed again and again by its baser instincts
until it commits murder.
That same year, Shelley's wife Harriet Westbrook committed suicide by
drowning, and the poet married Mary, then twenty-one years old, and achieving
a modicum of fame herself with the publication of Frankenstein. But life
was far from blissful for Mary and her romantic poet husband. The young
child of Claire and Lord Byron died of typhus in a convent. Mary's other
half-sister Fanny Imlay committed suicide. Two of Mary's children died
in Italy. After she gave birth to their only surviving child— also
named Percy—the nuclear family moved to Italy. One fateful day in
1822, Percy Shelley went fishing with two companions. An unexpected storm
capsized the boat and all three drowned. Ten days later Lord Byron, with
Capt. Edward Trelawny—a fan of Shelley's who had only met him
252
THE GOTH BiBLE
Afy Mummy
Artwork by fincen,
six months before—tried to retrieve the body, which had washed up
on the beach at Massa, only to discover that quarantine regulations were
in effect. Trelawny buried Shelley in the sand but soon after exhumed
his body and burned it in a portable crematorium he had built for that
purpose. During the cremation, the body burst open, exposing the heart.
Trelawny grabbed the smoldering organ, scorching his hands in the process.
Naturally Mary Shelley wanted her husband's heart, and eventually Trelawny
gave it up. But he took the ashes to Rome and purchased adjoining cemetery
plots, one for the poet, and one for himself!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley died in 1851 at the age of fifty-three of
a brain tumor.
lyomtbropby
In the first century A.D., the Roman poet Virgil wrote of a sorcerer who
took poisonous herbs to turn himself into a werewolf. The wer part of
werewolfcomes from the Old English word meaning man.
In the mythology of many lands, there seems to be two types of werewolves.
Voluntary werewolves were considered to be people who made a pact with
the devil. Involuntary werewolves were those whose actions inadvertently
caused a nasty transformation. For instance, in Sicily, a child born during
a new moon would surely grow up to be an involuntary werewolf. In Germany,
folktales told of a mountain brook where the water turned one into a werewolf.
In Serbia, those who drank water from a wolf's footprint would turn. In
Greece, epileptics were thought to be werewolves. And in Armenia, an adulterous
woman would be visited by the devil, who would fornicate with her, then
give her a wolf's skin to wear for seven years, after which she could
return to human form.
The last British wolf died in 1743. They managed to survive in Ireland
until 1773. Few wolves remain in Europe today, and in places like Italy,
only about 250 have survived, forced to give up their instinctual pack
hunting because of encroaching civilization. Most European countries consider
wolves an endangered species. In Norway it is illegal to kill a wolf,
unless a farmer is protecting livestock. The organization Grupo Lobo,
founded in Spain and Portugal in 1985, protects the wolves along their
border. Germany has a strong wolf conservation group, created when the
wolves began returning.
Today's European wolf, on the edge of extinction, is the descendant of
253
THE PRETERHATURAL JS CALLiHG
Willow
Artwork by Vincent Marcone
the wolves on which the medieval werewolf legends are based. European
wolves that existed up to the 1700s and 1800s were not the small, timid,
doglike creatures we see today, but, according to reports, were larger,
with more hair, and far more fierce. They lived in the wilderness and
were not so intimidated by the smaller populations of human beings dwelling
on the continent then.
Guy Endore's tour de force novel The Werewolf of Paris is one of the most
intriguing werewolf books to be published, alive with Gallic manners and
mores of the nineteenth century. Endore based his book on newspaper accounts
of le loup-garou Sergeant Bertrand, as recorded by Sabine Baring-Gould
in his 1865 Book of Werewolves. The actual events took place in 1848,
in the cemeteries of Paris, where at night graves were rifled. Baring-Gould
writes: "The deeds were not those of medical students, for the bodies
had not been carried off, but were found lying about the tombs in fragments."
The initial thinking was that a wolf had done this, but human footprints
belied that idea. Close watch was kept at the cemeteries and the following
year a trap was sprung, setting off a gun. Guards rushed to the scene,
in time to watch, "a dark figure in a military mantle leap the wall,
and disappear in the gloom." Blood and the fragment of a blue cloth
were found, and Bertrand was eventually tracked down. Endore fictionalizes
the accounts.
ghouls
It is in a work dating from at least the tenth century—The Book
of the Thousand Nights and One Night—where ghouls first surfaced
in daylight. The late Brian McNaughton told us, "The ghoul derives
from their [Arabic] folklore as 'a spirit or demon that haunts graveyards
and feeds on the dead.'"
THE GOTH BJBLE
254
The ghouls featured in the Arabic classic are all lusty flesh-and-blood
creatures. One story is of a wife who only realizes her husband is a ghoul
when she finds a pile of severed heads he's stashed away. In another tale,
a husband is cuckolded by a ghoul, who lures his young bride away from
the marital bed for midnight trysts.
Brian McNaughton's novelette The Throne of Bones—which won both
the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild award—
chronicals the antics of a multigenerational family of ghouls. Brian said
about his seminal work, "My own ghouls are former humans who have
been transformed into ghouls either by contagion, genetic predisposition,
or morbid preoccupations—depending on which of my fictional experts
you believe. They are somewhat more than human in that they have the ability
to recall the memories and even mimic the personae of the people they
eat."
Brian believed that "families with dark secrets have long been a
staple of Gothic fiction. What darker secret can you have than that Grandpa
was a ghoul?"
zombies
Haiti is the home country of zombies. A voodoo bokor (practitioner of
black magic or petro voodoo—usually a male) places a spell on a
human being, accompanied by a poisonous potion that brings about a state
that imitates death in the imbiber. For all intents and purposes, the
zombified person is dead, and frequently buried in a shallow grave, or
aboveground. Three days later the person is "resurrected" in
a state of walking catatonia and traditionally used as slave labor on
a plantation. The will of the human being has been stolen, through poison.
White Zombie made in 1932 and directed by Victor Halperin, was one of
the first movies about zombies. This classic stars Bela Lugosi as the
overseer of a sugar mill who turns his workers into zombies. It set up
the link between management control and labor, and formed the concept
of the zombie. Revolt of the Zombies, by the same director, made in 1936,
is about zombified Cambodian soldiers. A third early zombie movie, also
from 1936 and directed by Michael Curtiz, is The Walking Dead. But Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania filmmaker George Romero did more for zombies than anyone
on the planet. His classic horror trilogy Night of the Living Dead, Dawn
of the Dead, and Day of the Dead took an old monster and revived it for
a
How TO rriAKE A ZornBiE
1 shot of light rum X shot Cream de almond 1 shot Sweet and sour
hot Triple sec 1-2 shots orange juice (you can use
other fruit juices or combos) 1 shot rum over 100 proof
Take a small sip of the rum and put the shot glass of rum aside. Shake
the rest of these ingredients together with some ice slivers. Use a strainer
and pour into a tall glass filled with ice cubes-Zombies have a low body
temp, so these babies should be cold! Gently pour the rest of that mega
proof rum into the tall glass-it will just rest there quietly at the top,
like the dead. If you're not afraid of #2 red dye, add a cherry. Drink
this, look in the mirror, and voila! You will see a zombie.
255
THE PRETERrlATURAL JS CALLJHG
new audience, and created a mythology in the United States. Suddenly,
the traditional Haitian poisonous brew was irrelevant. Now, microbes from
outer space, or ... something . . . infected the dead, bringing them back
to life. And the dead were hungry. Their diet: living flesh.
Author and explorer Wade Davis, who has degrees in anthropology and biology
and a PhD in ethnobotany, wrote two definitive books on Haitian zombies,
The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, and in 1986 the bestselling The
Serpent and the Rainbow. In 1988 Wes Craven directed a film based on the
latter, a highly sensationalized version of Davis's experiences in Haiti.
A pair of researchers who wrote a paper for the international medical
journal The Lancet studied three Haitian zombies—identified as such
by family and neighbors—and concluded that one suffered catatonic
schizophrenia, which made him mute and immobile, another brain damage
and epilepsy possibly owed to oxygen starvation of the brain, and the
third suffered a severe learning disability, possibly owed to fetal-alcohol
syndrome.
Whether or not actual zombies exist, the metaphorical state does. It can
have a variety of interpretations, and Clive Barker nailed one when he
was quoted in the introduction to the anthology set in Romero's zombie
world Book of the Dead (1989), edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector.
Clive said this: "Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have
the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door
with their faces falling off; and you're trying to be as humane as you
possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat.
tools of the supcnutuul tuoe
Psychic and other paranormal, supernatural, or preternatural experiences
frequently require tools to allow the spirit world to connect to the physical
one: Crystal balls, divination rods and pendulums, astrological charts,
and tarot cards. Leilah Wendell of Westgate (see Chapter 9) designed a
tarot deck called the Gothic Tarot, which she sells from her Web site.
ulking boards
One intriguing prop whose divination powers are accessible by all is the
talking board, commonly called a Ouija board.
It was 1848 when two sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville,
256
THE GOTH BIBLE
new audience, and created a mythology in the United States. Suddenly,
the traditional Haitian poisonous brew was irrelevant. Now, microbes from
outer space, or ... something . . . infected the dead, bringing them back
to life. And the dead were hungry. Their diet: living flesh.
Author and explorer Wade Davis, who has degrees in anthropology and biology
and a PhD in ethnobotany, wrote two definitive books on Haitian zombies,
The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, and in 1986 the bestselling The
Serpent and the Rainbow. In 1988 Wes Craven directed a film based on the
latter, a highly sensationalized version of Davis's experiences in Haiti.
A pair of researchers who wrote a paper for the international medical
journal The Lancet studied three Haitian zombies—identified as such
by family and neighbors—and concluded that one suffered catatonic
schizophrenia, which made him mute and immobile, another brain damage
and epilepsy possibly owed to oxygen starvation of the brain, and the
third suffered a severe learning disability, possibly owed to fetal-alcohol
syndrome.
Whether or not actual zombies exist, the metaphorical state does. It can
have a variety of interpretations, and Clive Barker nailed one when he
was quoted in the introduction to the anthology set in Romero's zombie
world Book of the Dead (1989), edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector.
Clive said this: "Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have
the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door
with their faces falling off; and you're trying to be as humane as you
possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat.
tools of the supernatural tuoc
Psychic and other paranormal, supernatural, or preternatural experiences
frequently require tools to allow the spirit world to connect to the physical
one: Crystal balls, divination rods and pendulums, astrological charts,
and tarot cards. Leilah Wendell of Westgate (see Chapter 9) designed a
tarot deck called the Gothic Tarot, which she sells from her Web site.
talking boAtos
One intriguing prop whose divination powers are accessible by all is the
talking board, commonly called a Ouija board.
It was 1848 when two sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville,
THE GOTH BJBLE
256
New York contacted the spirit of a dead peddler. This led to personal
fame for the Fox girls, and the birth of spiritualism across North America
and Europe that flourished through the remainder of the nineteenth century
and into the twentieth. Special churches dedicated to contacting those
on the "other side" sprang up, and inviting a medium to your
party became all the rage.
At first this was done by way of talking tables. The medium and the participants
would sit at a small table with fingers resting lightly on the edge, ask
a question, and wait for the table to rotate, then for the legs to "knock"
out the letters of the alphabet. That long and tiresome process led to
the invention of the planchette, a piece of wood usually pointed at one
end, with a small hole for a pencil that allowed for "automatic writing."
But automatic writing was often difficult to read. Consequently, apparatus
was dispensed with for a time and mental channeling via a tranced state
came into vogue. Then—briefly—bulky, impossible contraptions
with pulleys and wheels called "dial plates" appeared. Obvious
drawback—they couldn't be easily transported.
The patent for a talking board was granted in 1891 in the United States
to Elijah Bond, and assigned to two men from Baltimore. One of those men,
Charles Kennard, called the board Ouija (WE-ja), after, he said, the Egyptian
word for good luck—which it is not, but that's marketing for you.
He set up Kennard Novelty Company and began manufacturing the boards.
The first boards were made of solid wood, held together at the back by
wooden braces. A hostile takeover in 1892 forced Kennard out of the business.
His successor, William Fuld, changed the name to Ouija Novelty Company,
which soon became the William Fuld Novelty Company, and boards were mass-produced
and sold by the millions. Fuld claimed he had invented the Ouija board,
calling it Oui (French for yes) and Ja (German for yes). His children
sold the company to Parker Brothers in the 1960s. Parker Brothers initiated
the slogan for the Ouija: "It's only a game—isn't it?"
Talking boards tap into the spirit realm, with letters that can spell
out words, and the words Yes and No, and Goodbye for when the spirit has
said enough. There are often pictures of a sun on one side, moon on the
other, perhaps a pentagram, a witch, a cat. One early board features a
swastika— the word derived from the Sanskrit meaning so be it or
amen. (An ancient
257
THE PRETERHATURAL IS CALLJnG
symbol used in many religions down the ages, the swastika has been associated
with magic, but its use is possibly ruined forever thanks to Nazi Fiihrer
Adolf Hitler adopting it as the emblem of the Third Reich.)
Boards come with a wood or plastic planchette that sits on the surface,
often a triangle with a small viewing window. Players rest the tips of
their fingers on the planchette. A question is asked, and then the planchette
mysteriously moves around the board. It will stop over Yes or No for simple
answers, and over individual letters that must be spelled out to form
words or sentences for more detailed responses. Boards are usually rectangular
in shape, but there are round and square boards. In the early years, they
were made of solid wood, but since have been constructed of plywood, glass,
plastic, copper, and even cardboard.
Talking boards reflect their era. William Fuld's Ouija in the early 1900s
was known as the Egyptian Luck Board. Other turn-of-the-century boards
include: Mystifying Oracle; Throne Board; Wireless-Messenger from 1898
with instructions in seven languages on the. back; I-D-O PSY-CHO-I-D-O-GRAPH
from 1919, a psycho-graphic board packed with images; Electric Mystifying
Oracle, an early board with an Art Deco design; Psyche, and Mitche Manitou
from the 1920s.
The 1930s and 1940s produced many fascinating boards that deviated from
the original visual designs by adding unusual images and color. These
include: Swami; Rajah; Mystic Soothsayer; and the Black Magic Talking
Board with lettering in the shape of bones.
The boards made in the 1960s and 1970s reflect the hippie era: Guiding
Star Board; Mystic Genii; Predicta; Finger of Fate; a round board the
size of a grapefruit; Ziriya; the pre-AIDS Psychic Sex Board; a talking
table board from England that attaches to a table—the fine print
identifies it as psychic investigators' research equipment; ka-Bala, a
roulette wheel—type board with a black die; a black seeing-eye ball
with answers that could be had via alternative means such as tarot or
astrology.
The 1980s saw Pen-G, a folding board that can also be used with a pendulum;
and the Midas Board from Canada, packed with digits, good for picking
lottery numbers.
Other great names and visuals are Witchery Board; Father Time; Weeja Queen;
We-Ja Girl and Crystal Gazer—two boards from the same unidentified
company; the Olympia ESP Board, which comes with a 45-vinyl record of
Music to Play ESP By; Witchboard; Portals to the Beyond custom
THE GOTH BJBLE
258
boards with a devil face on the board; Yogee; Wizard; Mystic Quiz, the
smallest board for playing at 7" X 12"; Mystola, the board for
romantic questions; Cardinal's Swami with its detailed Victorian circus-style
alphabet; Asterial Ouija Board; Telepah; and Mystic Glow.
There are glow-in-the-dark boards, bilingual boards, tiny boards for dollhouses,
and odd items like Ouija Board mouse pads, the 1940s Mystic Tray, and
the Star Gazer Talking Board, the last two doubling as serving trays.
And besides the mass-produced boards, there are many examples of hand-painted
one-of-a-kind boards.
In 1999 Parker Brothers, which still owns the patent on the Ouija board,
ceased production. But talking boards continue to be made. Recent boards
include: A-51 Alien Contact Boards; a board with Aleister Crow-ley's leering
face hand-painted on it; boards dedicated to the dark Greek goddess Circe;
Gypsy Ouija featuring Pre-Raphaelite artist Frederick Sandy's painting
of Medea; and the Creepy Necronomicon talking board with the history of
H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon on the back.
Since 1994, Robert L. Murch has been collecting antique Ouija/talk-ing/spirit
boards, and has amassed over 300. "These boards," he says, "reflect
very different attitudes as time passed. This has always fascinated me.
These mysterious 'games' are much like chameleons, shifting and adapting
to their surroundings. The artwork used to decorate these boards tells
us very clearly what the attitude towards them was."
Robert, with Gary Halteman, took the history of boards into account and
called on Christian Day and Deborah Norris—a New England artist—to
help create Cryptique, a modern talking board designed around the Salem
witch trials of 1692. "The board's background replicates a piece
of bark found on a tree at Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, Massachusetts,
final resting place of Wilmot Redd, the only Marblehead resident put to
death in the Salem witch trials." (see Chapter 13). The seer [planchette]
is
Courtesy of Cryptique, photo by Mary and Christian Day
Tatger
259
THE PRETERHATURAL JS CALliHG
shaped like a headstone, decorated with a winged skull reproduced from
a grave at Old Burial Point in Salem. "Seeing firsthand the steady
decline in quality and inspiration in spirit boards in the twenty-first
century, Cryp-tique was born. We found that the atmosphere the board created
was essential to how well it operated. People are greatly influenced by
the artwork decorating the boards. Rather than follow the New Age trend
to soften the spirit boards' image, we decided to create a board that
recaptured its conjuring spirit. Cryptique was designed from the grave
up. ..."
The walls of the offices of Spirited Ventures, Inc. in Salem are adorned
with original antique boards, and the seance scenes that appeared on magazines,
sheet music, and book covers from the late 1800s to the 1940s. "How
can one work if the spirit doesn't move them?" Robert asks, and in
fact that is the company's theme: "Let the Spirit Move You."
Robert says, "Fifty percent of our customers consider themselves
goth. We know this from the e-mails they send to our Web site. I'd also
be willing to bet a fair amount that Cryptique owners at least wear black
on a regular basis!" And while Robert and Gary are not goth, like
a lot of mainstream people, they both love the imagery and atmosphere
goth brings to the world. "Goth creates a mood of mystery that we
tried very hard to recreate in Cryptique. We got the feeling early on
that the goth community often gets left out of mainstream products even
though many TV shows, movies, and music generally depict it. Cryptique
gives goths a link to spirit boards. With its graveyard inspiration, goths
have a choice. No one should have to use a glow-in-the-dark spirit board
if they don't want to!"
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