Practical Vampire Hunter kit from last Halloween

[NLogan]

Last Halloween my son wanted to go as a vampire reusing an old costume of mine. So I decided to make a vampire hunting kit to go after him. I didn't want to lug around a box/chest so I opted for a more practical approach.
My vampire hunting kit with crucifixes, holy water, wolfsbane, garlic, wild roses, mirror, prayer book, mallet, stake, axe for beheading, and walrus skin doctor bag.



I made the labels for the bottles and wrote them in Old Romanian and Latin. Holy water Agheasma, Wolfsbane Lycoctonum aconitum carpatii sudici otravitoare, Garlic Usturoi allium sativum, Wild roses Rosa eglanteria salbatic trandafir. Of Course each bottle is actually filled with the labelled contents, albeit locally sourced not from Transylvania.



I drew this crucifix modeled after Eastern and Romanian Orthodox church crucifixes. I used Church Slavonic, Old Romanian, Latin, and Greek.



Here I am on the trail of the little blood sucker as he collected candy in the neighborhood.



Here is a previous year of me and my brother as the undead.

 

[Funky]

Really? No revolver? Not for the undead but to take out their "friendlies" human caretakers.

 

[NLogan]

Yeah no revolver. I didn't want to make the standard vampire kit that was sold to tourists through magazines and that there is no evidence of any existing in the 1800s. They always include the revolver or pistol. I wanted to imagine a kit if there actually was one in Romania in the early 1800s. First of all if you suspected a vampire there certainly wouldn't be human caretakers or friendlies. You would call your doctor over to examine a patient suffering from a variety of illnesses that the vampire legends were born from like tuberculosis, porphyria, plague, or the stages of decomposition in a dead body, hence the doctor's bag. The caretakers would be family and loved ones of the suspected vampire. You wouldn't want to shoot them. Germ theory was relatively unknown or ridiculed and medicine was far from modern standards so the victim probably died of the illness. I did include a mirror which would make my kit post Dracula in 1897 if you said the mirror was to check for a reflection but mine was to detect breath to see if the person was still living. It is also silver which is useful against the undead. When others who cared for the victim also fell ill blame would be placed on the source victim and a trip to the graveyard would prove it. After digging up the first victim who would be in various stages of decomposition bloating, livor mortis, expelling blood from the mouth, etc. sufficient proof was plain for all to see. The corpse vampire was well fed, plump, and had a rosy complexion, and had blood around the mouth from feeding. You would place your apotropaics on the corpse, in the grave, and on top when reburied; like your holy water, crucifixes, garlic, and wolf's bane. You would drive a stake through the vampire to pin it to the earth to prevent it from rising and claiming another victim. Then cut out the heart and burn it, and finally decapitate the suspected vampire to kill it, placing its head between its feet with a stone in its mouth. The prayer book was then used as the monster was reburied. My prayerbook is from 1812. The tools I put in there were for a real life vampire situation based on superstition. So yeah, no pistol.