Brides of sodom (Director: Creep Creepersin)
Starring:
Domiziano Arcangeli
David Taylor
Rachel Zeskind
In a post apocalyptic future where the earth is forever dark from a nuclear winter, vampires named for Greek gods rule the world. A male vampire named Eros falls in love with a human named Samuel. Eros wants to "save" Samuel and make him a vampire, but Eros evil vampire lover, Dionysus has other ideas. Matters are complicated by Eros' sister/lover, Persephone, an ambiguous Bookkeeper and three witches, who know secrets of the universe and The Laws Of Eternity.
Alan Loren: A Vampire's Pain
A Vampire's Pain
As a youth I could not foresee
What lay on the road ahead
Eternal life, the quest for love
My intentions oft misread
Can a creature of the night
A dark and bloodied, prince
Find beauty, soul, and adoration
A love I can evince
Such is the fate of a lonely vampire
To traipse the earth alone
For love is fleeting, short and bitter
My pain I do intone
David McAfee: Bachiyr series
.jpg "33 A.D. (Bachiyr, Book 1)")
33 A.D. (Bachiyr, Book 1)
Jerusalem, 33 A.D. The vampires of the era have long sought to gain a foothold into Israel, but the faith of the local Jewish population has held them in check for centuries.
When one of their own betrays them to follow a strange young rabbi from Galilee, the elders of the vampire race dispatch Theron, a nine hundred year old assassin, to kill them both.
The rabbi's name is Jesus. Killing him should be easy.
AFTER - Taras and Theron: Beyond Jerusalem (Bachiyr #1.5)
Containing the following short stories:
Taras - Unable to bring himself to feed, Taras stumbles into Antioch. Tired, weak, and nearly broken under the weight of his guilt, he wanders the streets waiting for death to catch up to him. But when he is beset by bandits, he gains a new perspective. Maybe he doesn't have to feel guilty about feeding, after all.
Theron - Theron travels by ship to his long ago home of Athens, Greece. He soon discovers the Council of Thirteen has put a price on his head so large every Bachiyr in the city will try to collect it, which leads to a very tense reunion with an old lover.
.jpg "61 A.D. (Bachiyr, Book 2)")
61 A.D. (Bachiyr, Book 2)
Britannia, 61 A.D. For ten years, Taras has lived in the young city of Londinium, feeding off the city’s underbelly. But now Theron, his old enemy, has come looking for revenge, and Taras’ nights of living in relative peace are about to end.
Yet not even Theron can slip into town unnoticed, and the Council of Thirteen sends Ramah to deal with the two renegades once and for all. But unknown to the Council, a much older enemy is also in Londinium, and this time even the great Ramah might not be safe.
Set against the backdrop of the Iceni uprising in Roman-era Britannia, 61 A.D. continues the story of Taras, Theron, and Ramah, as they fight their way through history.
Leszek Gardełaa - Kamil Kajkowskib: Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland
Leszek Gardełaa - Kamil Kajkowskib, Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland, World Archaeology Volume 45, Issue 5, 2013, p. 780-796.
Abstract
Unusual funerary behaviour is now an exciting area of research in Central and Western European archaeology. In Poland, since the first half of the twentieth century, finds of atypical or deviant burials have been almost exclusively interpreted as evidence for so-called ‘anti-vampire’ practices, intended to prevent the dead from rising, haunting and hurting the living. In the last decade or so, new attempts have been made, especially in the UK, to develop more sophisticated understandings of deviant burials, and to perceive them not only in the context of popular superstition, but also with regard to judicial practices. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers a range of new interpretations of deviant burials from early medieval Poland with a focus on burials where people were buried in a prone position, decapitated or covered with stones.
Introduction
In 1957 Bonifacy Zielonka published an article that described a range of puzzling burials which he had found in the region of Kuyavia, Poland. Among them was the grave of a female in a prone position and that of a decapitated man whose head was placed between his legs. While discussing the latter grave, Zielonka mentions that one of the workers on the excavation thought it to be the burial of a ‘witch’ (in Polish strzyga) – a rather sensationalist interpretation, but one with which Zielonka (1957, 21–3) appears to have agreed. The works of Zielonka (1957, 1958) are among the first academic studies of ‘deviant burials’ in Polish archaeological literature and today, from the perspective of more than fifty years of study, it is clear that they had a significant impact on this fascinating, yet problematic field of research.
In subsequent years, evidence for early medieval funerary practices that deviate from the norm has been noted in different parts of Poland and at cemeteries that range in date between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. In the majority of excavation reports, articles and monographs, however, interpretations are rather limited and until recently scholars almost always argued that unusual graves contained people who, it was feared, would become revenants or ‘vampires’ (e.g. Falis 2008; Porzeziński 2008; Stanaszek 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Zoll-Adamikowa 1971: 47–54 contra Żydok 2004). The ‘vampiric’ interpretation of unusual burials from Poland has become dogma and remains largely unchallenged.
In the last few years, however, a new branch of ‘judicial archaeology’ has developed in Poland (e.g. Duma 2010; Grabaczyk 2008; Wojtucki 2009; but see also articles published in the journal Pomniki Dawnego Prawa devoted to the study of early-modern legal culture in Poland and beyond). With a particular focus on the archaeology of law and legal culture in all of its aspects – from the study of execution sites and their specific penitential devices (e.g. gallows, stocks, etc.), through analyses of burials of criminals, to an acknowledgement of the wider social context of judicial practices in the Middle Ages or the early-modern period – this new field of research has filled a significant niche in our understandings of Poland’s past. In our view, these new studies have also had a significant impact on the perception of early medieval ‘deviant burials’ and on refining traditional interpretations.
Unusual funerary behaviour is now an exciting area of research in Central and Western European archaeology. In Poland, since the first half of the twentieth century, finds of atypical or deviant burials have been almost exclusively interpreted as evidence for so-called ‘anti-vampire’ practices, intended to prevent the dead from rising, haunting and hurting the living. In the last decade or so, new attempts have been made, especially in the UK, to develop more sophisticated understandings of deviant burials, and to perceive them not only in the context of popular superstition, but also with regard to judicial practices. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers a range of new interpretations of deviant burials from early medieval Poland with a focus on burials where people were buried in a prone position, decapitated or covered with stones.
Introduction
In 1957 Bonifacy Zielonka published an article that described a range of puzzling burials which he had found in the region of Kuyavia, Poland. Among them was the grave of a female in a prone position and that of a decapitated man whose head was placed between his legs. While discussing the latter grave, Zielonka mentions that one of the workers on the excavation thought it to be the burial of a ‘witch’ (in Polish strzyga) – a rather sensationalist interpretation, but one with which Zielonka (1957, 21–3) appears to have agreed. The works of Zielonka (1957, 1958) are among the first academic studies of ‘deviant burials’ in Polish archaeological literature and today, from the perspective of more than fifty years of study, it is clear that they had a significant impact on this fascinating, yet problematic field of research.
In subsequent years, evidence for early medieval funerary practices that deviate from the norm has been noted in different parts of Poland and at cemeteries that range in date between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. In the majority of excavation reports, articles and monographs, however, interpretations are rather limited and until recently scholars almost always argued that unusual graves contained people who, it was feared, would become revenants or ‘vampires’ (e.g. Falis 2008; Porzeziński 2008; Stanaszek 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Zoll-Adamikowa 1971: 47–54 contra Żydok 2004). The ‘vampiric’ interpretation of unusual burials from Poland has become dogma and remains largely unchallenged.
In the last few years, however, a new branch of ‘judicial archaeology’ has developed in Poland (e.g. Duma 2010; Grabaczyk 2008; Wojtucki 2009; but see also articles published in the journal Pomniki Dawnego Prawa devoted to the study of early-modern legal culture in Poland and beyond). With a particular focus on the archaeology of law and legal culture in all of its aspects – from the study of execution sites and their specific penitential devices (e.g. gallows, stocks, etc.), through analyses of burials of criminals, to an acknowledgement of the wider social context of judicial practices in the Middle Ages or the early-modern period – this new field of research has filled a significant niche in our understandings of Poland’s past. In our view, these new studies have also had a significant impact on the perception of early medieval ‘deviant burials’ and on refining traditional interpretations.
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