Charmaine was interested in my thoughts on a Victoria Police Museum’s “Vampire Slaying Kit, Early 19th Century” that was seized in Pascoe Vale in 2004, as a part of a drug raid.
(No explanation is offered on the Museum’s online catalogue for why the above kit was kept by the Police. Possibly, it was a “proceeds of crime”—rather than a “possession of a deadly weapon”—forfeiture, since the pistol is unlikely to be functional. Even if the pistol were functional, the crucifix isn’t really a “deadly weapon”—unless you are a vampire—the same goes for the Holy Water, and if a wooden stake is considered a “deadly weapon,” every gardener in Melbourne is in trouble.
Since the rest of the “Vampire Slaying Kit” contents isn’t “deadly”—and yet these items were not returned—I am guessing forfeiture of the whole thing. But, who knows, they may have kept the Kit to help in their fight against the legion of the undead. More likely, someone at Victoria Police kept the kit simply because they liked it, wanted it, and they could—which is pretty much how Governments work in general.)
Anyway, the Victoria Police kit clearly isn’t “Early 19th Century”—as claimed in their Museum catalogue (admittedly, “last updated 5 years ago”). As I explained to Charmaine, there are a lot of these faux-antique kits available online, ranging from the “Prop Plastic” “Vampire Hunting Kit” (here, for $40) to those “made with antique and vintage parts” (as here, for over $1000).
These, better, antique / vintage “Vampire Slaying Kits” commonly contain a handful of more-or-less genuine antique items, but even the most expensive of these have—for obvious reasons—plastic or dummy guns (as here).
(In the past, the more expensive ones sold in America were likely to contain real weapons, though not—it seems—anymore, on eBay at least). This one (here and image below) was one of the few I could find that appear to have real weapons.
The best of these kits are beautiful and wildly expensive artistic creations, assembled almost-exclusively from genuinely antique boxes, maps, journals, rosaries, crystal vials for holy water etc.
In her article, Charmaine gave an example of a kit sold by Sotheby’s in 2011 (here, with an estimate of 20–30,000 USD), but Sotheby’s sold another in 2021 (here, with an estimate of USD3000–5000; pic below).
In the catalogue entry for the above, Sotherby’s state that “While some vampirists claim such kits were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were more likely assembled following the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula in 1897 and marketed to travelers visiting eastern Europe.” While it is not impossible that some sort of tourist-ware was produced for the limited number of Dracula-enthusiasts visiting eastern Europe, I am yet to see any kit with a proven history that is anywhere near as long as suggested here.
To my knowledge, nothing like these kits existed prior to their appearance in films, but I am not 100% sure when that first happened—even though I have watched 279 vampire films, fifty of them more than once, and made notes on many of them, but this was not something I was looking for.
What I can say is that, although many of the early 1970s films, for instance, have a vampire-expert (I am thinking of the iconic Peter Cushing / Van Helsing figure), who helps track down and kill vampires, or has a hero who has to acquire the necessary items to do it, this type of theatrical, Tim Burton-esque, sciency-gimmicky-“Vampire Slaying Kit” seems to be at least a decade later still.
I personally associate this type of “Vampire Slaying Kit” with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and, although not a vampire film, there is also a great example of this same sort of sciency-gimmicky monster-hunter kit in Sleepy Hollow (1999).
I will keep an eye open for this type of kit as I re-watch vampire films. Hopefully, in future, I will be able to identify when they came into vogue. For the present, I’d guess it was the 1980s—when many cultural crimes were committed. Certainly, a lot later than Dracula (1898) and definitely not “Early” in the nineteenth century.
As for the dating of the Victoria Police Museum’s “Vampire Slaying Kit”—and as I said to Charmaine “If it’s 19th century, I’ll eat my head”!
**In the time it has taken to write this post, my (free) AdBlocker had blocked 75 advertisements on this page of The Guardian’s website.
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