A person who attended an auction last week bought a "vampire-slayer kit" from the 19th century. The kit sold for six times its estimated price after being offered from all over the world.
The U.K. buyer brought home a heavy wooden box with a set of brass crucifixes that slid to open it. There is a set of pistols, a brass flask, holy water, a Bible, a wooden mallet, a wooden stake, brass candlesticks, and rosary beads inside the box. The Metropolitan Police, a force that serves the greater area around London, has paperwork in the box.
Charles Hanson, the owner of Hansons Auctioneers, the auction house that sold the box, said in a statement that the task of killing a vampire was very serious. The items of religious significance, such as crucifixes and Bibles, were supposed to repel the monsters.
There is an antique vampire-slaying kit for sale. The bible, crucifix and pistol were included.
The image is the first of three.
There are black crucifix and candle holders in the wooden chest. Mark Laban's image was used.
There are two pistols in the vampire slayer kit. Mark Laban's image was used.
There is a bible with beads and a crucifix. Mark Laban's image was used.
The kit was once owned by a British official in India. Hanson said it's not clear whether he hoped the kit would help him ward off vampire or if he bought it because he was interested in it.
Vampire mythology has been around for a long time. Live Science reported that ancient human remains were found in Greece that were pinned down with heavy rocks to keep them out of the air. In 16th-century Europe, human burials had stone stakes in their legs and rocks in their mouths to prevent them from eating.
Live Science previously reported that people's belief in dead beings was likely due to a lack of understanding of communicable disease and the natural physical processes that bodies go through as they decay. The liquified remains of the dead can sometimes be found in the mouths and noses of dead people. It looks like blood. Some people may have been tricked into thinking the recently deceased were still alive by the continued growth of hair, beards and nails after death.
There was still belief in the vampire in some places. The deaths of two local women, a mother and daughter, in the late 19th century, caused New England to fear a vampire. As the late mother's son grew sicker and sicker, townspeople began to believe that the two deceased women were cursing him from the grave, a common belief about Vampires. The author of "Dracula" kept vampire mythology alive by publishing his book around the same time.
Hanson said it was interesting to know that a member of the highest social order had acquired this item. He was drawn to the vampire-slaying kit. It's understandable. The objects are both curious and interesting.
It was originally published on Live Science
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