Just released from Feral House: TRUE VAMPIRES: Blood-Sucking Killers Past and Present By Sondra London Some vampires are not fictional creatures. This book examines the real vampires whose crimes have contributed to the fearsome mythos. True Vampires takes you into the minds of real blood-sucking killers from Romania and Russia, France and Wales, Brazil and South Africa, to the hills of Kentucky and the streets of Los Angeles. The history of the vampire mythos is traced from Jesus Christ urging his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood, to the legendary exploits of Vlad the Impaler, Countess Bathory, and Sawney Bean. Ancient tales of the accursed undead rising from the grave are given new life when compared with modern accounts of persons approaching burial who suddenly sit up and ask for a drink of water. Sondra London, also the co-author of The Making of a Serial Killer, explains how the seductive appeal of the commercialized vampire image acts as a "media virus" and contributes to a widespread desensitization toward a truly horrific level of personal violence. The current crop portrayed here includes Rod Ferrell and his Vampire Clan, bloodsucking teens like Virginian Kyle Hulbert and Welshman Matthew Hardman, stoned rapper Big Lurch, boy-eating pedophile Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, vampire rapist John Crutchley, San Francisco Samurai Joshua Rudiger, and the pair of German occultists who hailed Satan in court, Manuela and Daniel Ruda. Vivid and detailed histories are given for the earlier generations of flesh-eaters and blood-suckers, including the infamous Peter Kurten, Fritz Haarmann, John Haigh, Richard Trenton Chase, Issei Sagawa, Stanley Dean Baker, Daniel Rakowitz, Ed Gein, Albert Fish, Arthur Shawcross, Andrei Chikatilo, Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas. The Ultimate Vampire of contemporary variety is revealed to be Nicolas Claux, otherwise known as "The Vampire of Paris." This notorious blood-sucking killer is also a talented artist, and as such, Claux has lavishly illustrated this book with a series of striking oil portraits of vampire killers, and his Oath to Satan, inscribed and sworn in his own blood while he was imprisoned for murder. True Vampires: Blood-Sucking Killers Past and Present By Sondra London Feral House, 364 pages, ISBN: 0-922915-93-8, $16.95 www.feralhouse.com |