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Tag Archives: Royal Armouries Leeds

[Vampire Month] Vampire Killing Kits – Real or Fake? by Jonathan Ferguson

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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Bram Stoker, deviant burials, Fortean Times, Hammer Horror, Jonathan Ferguson, Mercer museum, Michael De Winter, Montagu Summers, Professor Blomberg, Real or fake?, revenants, Royal Armouries, Royal Armouries Leeds, Silver bullets, Slavic folklore, Vampire, Vampire Killing Kits, Vampires, Victorian or Edwardian Novelties


In today’s guest post, Jonathan Ferguson of the Royal Armouries in Leeds discusses the authenticity of the Vampire Killing kits.

 
In 2007 I wrote a blog post pretty much scoffing at the very idea of a ‘vampire killing kit’. During 2012, I published the definitive article on the subject in Fortean Times (#288), was interviewed for US TV about them, and found myself sitting at the back of an auction house in Yorkshire, actually bidding on one for the Royal Armouries collection. Why the change of heart? It’s not because I’ve gone from sceptic to believer. Let me explain. VKK-2
If you’ve never come across one, vampire killing kits are what they sound like; boxed sets of tools for self-defence against the undead. One thing we know for sure is that they are not rare. So far, I have documented the existence of 100 kits that either purport, or appear to be, real. What do we mean by ‘real’? Well, ‘real’ can be a tricky concept, but most would probably suggest that it means ‘old’. Some might also say that it would include genuine purpose, as in kits created to actually slay vampires. As all evidence points to an American or western European origin some time in the twentieth century, it’s unlikely that they were made by, or for, believers in vampires. The vampire is a Slavic monster, and belief in it was roundly scoffed at by the English-speaking world as soon as stories from the east began to emerge in the 18th century. We also know from folklore that vampires were killed with improvised weapons like gravedigger’s spades, not expensive specialist tools like this, and that historical ‘slayers’ don’t really fit the profile of the professional, pseudoscientific vampire hunter created by Bram Stoker.

The most common claim, often made by auction houses, is that they are period novelties, something to buy a friend before a trip to eastern Europe. This is certainly plausible, but even this is lacking in evidence. I have yet to come across any advertisement, letter, diary, or other connection to any known retailer or purchaser, though I live in hope! The only physical evidence we do have are the kits themselves, and it is remarkably easy to take an antique box, refurbish it with antique innards, and fill it with antique objects. Only invasive scientific techniques could begin to tell you how old the result really was. As each kit is different, for every kit ‘debunked’ there would be dozens of others to which the same conclusion couldn’t be applied.
To overcome this difficulty, I did two things. Firstly, I selected the most high-profile subset of kits and the first to be spotted ‘in the wild’; those supposedly made by ‘Professor Blomberg’. These kits come with a label and a more-or-less standard set of contents. Whilst the gunmaker mentioned on the label did exist, the good Professor was a fabrication. In itself, this didn’t point to a later date; these could easily be DSC01380Victorian or Edwardian novelties as suggested by those in the antiques industry.

The second weapon in my toolbag to assess the likely date of this group of kits was vampire lore. Whenever they were produced, the design of the kits would have been informed by the type of vampire and vampire hunter current when they were made. To sell to any customer, they would have to have recognition factor, to include tools known to the public. For this reason, I embraced fiction as well as folklore. I assessed each component, from stake to silver bullet, and determined when it first appeared in print or film. The most useful features proved to be the pistol, and the cross-marked silver bullets. Whilst firearms were recorded in folklore as a viable weapon against vampires, it was little known in fiction until the Hammer movies of the 1970s. Meanwhile, the earliest written reference to silver bullets against vampires was somewhat earlier, in 1928 (Montagu Summers), but no-one was talking about marking them with a cross until 1965 (an issue of ‘Penthouse’!).
This agreed with the historical and scientific evidence. The Mercer Museum in the U.S. had their kit tested and determined it to be no later than 1945. A London man, Michael de Winter, claimed online to have created the first kit in 1972 as a way to draw people to his antiques stall; I contacted him by post to confirm his story, though of course he may not have been the first. Finally, I researched the first written reference to a VKK1vampire kit, which turned out to be a militaria catalogue from 1986. This version of the kit was small, with all the usual ‘ingredients’, but the pistol was clearly the main feature. The kits seem to have become more elaborate in their casing over time. All of the dates I could come up with were late 20th century. I discovered that even some of the auction houses were selling kits as pieces of modern art, or reserving judgement on their antiquity, yet they were still selling for thousands of dollars.

So are vampire killing kits real? That depends. No doubt some have been created and many more sold in order to deceive, but if there are indeed no ‘real’ vampire kits, then it is not technically possible to fake them. After seven years of exhaustive research, I still can’t tell you that there’s no such thing as vampire killing kits. There are various ‘non-Blomberg’ kits that could easily be older. I do suspect that all of them are late twentieth century in origin, but I think they are important artefacts regardless. At the Armouries, our kit, however old it proves to be, lets us represent and talk about the hidden history of self-defence weapons that we could not otherwise, and has been a big hit with visitors. The kits reflect the real weapons used to ‘slay’ vampires as much as they do the fictional versions that we have all now grown up with. The only physical evidence that we have for supernatural creatures like vampires are the ‘deviant burials’ of people that may have been seen as revenants of some kind, and the stones or rusty pieces of iron that were used to stop them coming back. This fascinates us, but fails to meet our fictional expectations of what a vampire-slaying weapon should look like, and so we as a culture have addressed this shortcoming.  I think kit creator Michael de Winter was right when he told me in 2011 that he was ‘not making a fake, merely inventing an item’. Inspired by our own folklore; the classic horror movies of the 60s and 70s, we have invented artefacts of our beloved monster, the vampire. That has to be worth preserving.
IMG_6068Jonathan Ferguson is Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. His research interests include their use, effect, and depiction in popular culture. His sceptical interest in the paranormal is more of a hobby, stemming from the gift of a Ladybird version of ‘Dracula’ at a young age. However, he is especially enthusiastic when the two things overlap! He has made several television and radio appearances, including National Geographic’s ‘How Sherlock Changed the World’, and BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Lifecycle of a Bullet’.

The Royal Armouries holds in trust for the public one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world, from exquisite pieces of the gunmaker’s art, to the most functional military weapons, and from the medieval period to the present day.

Find the Royal Armouries on Facebook and Twitter:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-Armouries/215812575369
https://twitter.com/royal_Armouries

 

[Vampire Month] Jonathon Ferguson interview

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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Tags

aliens, Curator, Dracula, Eiko Ishioka, Gary Oldman, Harry Houdini, Henry VIII, How to Kill a Vampire, Indiana Jones, Jonathan Ferguson, Leeds Armouries, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Nancy A Collins, Royal Armouries Leeds, Sonja Blue, Vampire, Vampires


Today we have an interview with Jonathan Ferguson, Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. He recently gave a talk entitled ‘How to kill a Vampire’ which I was lucky enough to attend and it was this talk which led me to approach him about a slot in Vampire month.

1) When the general public imagine a curator, I think they generally consider someone older and dressed in tweed. Have you ever found people surprised when you tell them your profession?
It happens less as time goes on, possibly because I’ve succumbed to a bit of tweed! But when I was an assistant curator at Edinburgh Castle I got that a lot.mug

2) What led you to study history and when did you decide to make it a career?
As far back as I can remember really. Indiana Jones was definitely involved! Along with a love of ancient Egypt and an interest in arms and armour, this led down the archaeological path rather than that of written history. It’s always been about the tangible, physical objects for me, though a couple of weeks in Somerset mud convinced me that museums were the way to go!

3) Who is your favourite personality from history?
Well, I should probably be referencing a firearms designer like Mikhail Kalashnikov, having been asked to comment on his recent death by the BBC. However, I think I’ll have to go with Harry Houdini, because whilst he ‘wanted to believe’ in the paranormal, but was also a sceptic and tireless exposer of frauds. I actually have a pet snake named after him!

Me pic with Winchester in Store 24) What is the most interesting exhibit you have handled?
I should probably choose something like a gun belonging to Henry VIII himself, our incredible combination axe/gun, or the experimental grenade launcher I’ve been looking at recently. But my inner geek says that it’s an original ‘Pulse Rifle’ from ‘Aliens’. Movie props can certainly be as valuable as antiques, and increasingly are being seen as important pieces of material culture in their own right. The vampire kit sits somewhere between the two, and certainly ‘up there’ in terms of interesting exhibits!

5) Curator of firearms handling a Vampire Hunting kit – how did that come about?
I began my research on vampire killing kits in my own time back in 2007, before I began to specialise in firearms. But they actually originate within my field, from the antique firearms world. I would categorise them with ‘firearms curiosa’, one of many weird and wonderful things like belt-buckle guns and flintlock rocket launchers (yes, those exist). But of course they are much more than that; a physical way to access the ephemeral world of superstition and the supernatural.IMG_6068

6) You’ve studied both the real world folklore and the fictional tales of Vampires – is truth stranger than fiction?
In terms of defying our 21st century, western logic, definitely. In western fiction, vampires are created by other vampires, or through some deliberate evil or magical act. Yet in folklore, you might be ‘turned’ simply by a cat walking over your dead body! Fiction tends to be a bit more consistent with its lore, even if it’s consciously trying to subvert it

What do you think is the attraction for Vampires? Why are they such a popular topic?
It’s probably the sheer number of themes that the subject lends itself to; threat, death, rebirth, consumption, power, and sex. All but the last are shared with other monsters that prowl our imagination, but only the vampire, particularly the fictional variety, gets to look good doing it!

Share your favourite Vampire story
I have lots, but my all-time favourite has to be the ‘Sonja Blue’ series of books by Nancy Collins, partly because it was the first present my now-wife ever gave me, in the form of the ‘Midnight Blue’ book of collected stories. Though never mainstream, I think it’s been very influential. Dark, gritty, and ultra-violent; the antithesis of ‘Twilight’!

In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?
I like to think Sonja would be up there, but I’ve a feeling Dracula would still come out on top somehow. After all, he always comes back!

What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?
Well, if we’re talking style, I think it’s Dracula again, as played by Gary Oldman. That’s thanks to those wonderful Eiko Ishioka costumes, from the fantastic red muscled wolf armour to the smart victorian suit and top hat..

Tell us about your latest work.
On the vampire front, I’m preparing for the ‘Seriously Staked’ vampire conference at Goldsmiths on March 8. In my day job, I am lead curator on the Armouries First World War project at Leeds. We’ll be providing more context and a more personal focus to the arms and armour of a conflict that defined modern warfare. There will be a physical exhibition and an online feature, both due to open in time for the August 4 centenary of the invasion of Belgium in 1914.

Jonathan Ferguson is Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. His research interests include their use, effect, and depiction in popular culture. His sceptical interest in the paranormal is more of a hobby, stemming from the gift of a Ladybird version of ‘Dracula’ at a young age. However, he is especially enthusiastic when the two things overlap! He has made several television and radio appearances, including National Geographic’s ‘How Sherlock Changed the World’, and BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Lifecycle of a Bullet’.

The Royal Armouries holds in trust for the public one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world, from exquisite pieces of the gunmaker’s art, to the most functional military weapons, and from the medieval period to the present day.

Find them on Twitter and Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-Armouries/215812575369
https://twitter.com/royal_Armouries

How to kill a Vampire

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blade, Bram Stoker, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Ferguson, Halloween, How to Kill a Vampire, Jonathan Ferguson, lectures, Leeds Armouries, Leeds Vampire, Royal Armouries, Royal Armouries Leeds, supernatural, Ultraviolet, vampire fiction, Vampire Killing Kits, Vampires, Varney the Vampire


Jonathan Ferguson takes questions

Jonathan Ferguson takes questions

It was Halloween over the school half term break and so the Royal Armouries in Leeds were putting on some themed events. This allowed them to get out all their exhibits that were related to witchcraft or other supernatural occurrences and show them off to appreciative audiences.

One such event was a lecture by their curator of firearms, Jonathan Ferguson, entitled How to Kill a Vampire, which took place on the evening of the 30th October in the museum’s own lecture hall, the Bury Theatre.

This two hour lecture was split vaguely into two parts. In the first he talked about the traditional methods used, both in real life and fiction, to kill the undead. This was full of fascinating facts, even if the lecturer was somewhat hesitant in his delivery, and outlined the differences between mythological and fictional creatures such as zombies (reanimated corpses), Revenants (a lesser used term in the modern days for a visible ghost or animated corpse) and Vampires (which are typified by their tendency to drain lifeforce or blood). Some of it was common knowledge – stakes, garlic, sunlight – but through reference to folklore sources and archaeological evidence he quite ably linked the methods used to slay vampire in fiction (referencing everything from Varney the Vampire to Buffy and Blade) to what has been used in (mostly) eastern European villages for centuries to put an end to supposed curses – disease, ill fortune – that are attributed to vampires.

The Leeds Vampire Killing Kit

The Leeds Vampire Killing Kit

The practise of effectively scapegoating a recently deceased person is a common one in several cultures and generally arises because of anomalies in the decay process of a corpse. Maybe they do not decay fast enough because of sterile soil, for example, and this singles the corpse out as a vampire. According to Ferguson, in cases like this where villages attributed their woes to such a corpse, they generally went through several steps to ‘kill’ the vampire, trying all of the methods they could think of and only stopping if the bad things stopped happening. These methods involved a host of improvised weapons – mainly farm implements like sickles and even the traditional ‘stake’ so popular in vampire fiction is based on nothing more than a convenient fence post – and usually ended with the complete destruction of the body using fire (after which, as Ferguson states, there is usually nothing left anyway). There were some lesser known methods discussed too. For example, piercing the body with nails, which may be linked to the stake as well. One possible theory as to why this method was used might be linked to the ways corpses bloat due to trapped gases post mortem – another anomaly in the decay process that might be observed as supernatural in the uneducated. Piercing the flesh with a nail (or a stake) allows the gases to escape – restoring the corpse to normal. The ‘Vampire’ is slain. It was interesting to see the comparison between these rather morbid methods of solving a misunderstood problem by dismembering a helpless corpse and the more active methods employed in fiction, especially the evolution (and plausibility) of such esoteric devices as wooden bullets (or graphite ones as used in Ultraviolet), silver bullets and ultraviolet bombs and bullets. The ludicrous idea of using a small stake and thrusting it into the heart accurately while in combat with a Vampire (as seen multiple times in fiction but especially in Buffy) was also touched upon with reference back to Bram Stoker’d Dracula and Varney the Vampire where the protagonists use mallets to hammer the stakes through the breastbone.

The lecture then neatly segued into the second half which was more focused on the

A museum employee points out interesting features of the Vampire Killing Kit

A museum employee points out interesting features of the Vampire Killing Kit

Vampire Killing kit that the museum had acquired. Here Ferguson was clearly more in his comfort zone as his delivery was more confident and natural. A typical vampire killing kit usually comprises a number of items which are purported to be useful in dealing with vampiric threats – stakes, bottles of holy water and garlic essence, bibles or books of common prayer, crucifixes and guns loaded with silver bullets*. The controversy around these items is whether they were genuine 19th or early 20th century artefacts, created either as curios for tourists visiting eastern Europe or because someone really did think they needed protection from Vampires, or more modern fakes. Ferguson discussed in detail the evidence for and against these arguments, citing references from auction houses, folklore and even internet forums to build a convincing case that the balance of probability places the majority of these items firmly in the category of fakes. Such points as the inclusion of guns with silver bullets suggests that the earliest these items could have been made was after 1928 (rather than the late Victorian period as usually claimed) and certain facts about the methods of manufacture and the materials used are also damning. Most convincing of all, of course, is the confession of one poster on an internet forum who admitted to having produced a number of these items in the 1970s.

This does not, of course, stop Vampire Killing kits being sold on ebay and in real world auction houses for thousands of dollars (indeed, Ferguson described how he acquired the museum’s kit from a local auction house after a house clearance in Yorkshire). Nor does it demean the value of them as museum pieces – even if they were made as recently as the 1970s (and there is some evidence that the one Leeds have may have been made earlier, possibly even the 1920s) they are still antiques** and a well done fake with an intriguing story about why it was made in the first place is something just as worthy of museum space as a genuine article. In this respect they are much the same as the fake suits of armour displayed in the Tower of London. These were put there by the Victorians to demonstrate ‘armour through the ages’ but later historic research shows they do not represent the armours used in those periods. However, the Tower keeps them in place as examples of historic misconceptions. Ferguson mentioned that when this kit is on display he labels it clearly to show the belief about its authenticity, allowing the visitor an insight into how such fakes can arise and why.

At the end of the lecture, the audience were allowed to ask questions and to go up on stage to view the kit. It was quite fascinating to see it close up and it was even possible to handle the items inside it under guidance from a member of the museum staff.

In all this was a very interesting way to spend an evening on the night before Halloween.

* Yes, this is normally believed to be for Werewolves but the boundary between Vampire and Werewolf is often blurred in myth, especially with a concept of shape-shifting vampires and some cases like the Greek Vrykolakas which are wolf like vampires. According to Ferguson the first movie reference to the use of silver bullets for Vampires was in 1928, though silver as protecting against and harming evil is a common theme in folklore.

** As something made in the 1970s myself, I would like to say that I now feel old…

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