Over the Fourth of July Holiday I visited my sister up in Pennsylvania. I grew up near Allentown before I moved to Florida.
OK, I liked this place … though the VAMPA Vampire and Paranormal Museum in Doylestown PA is … um … unusual ...
When Bram Stoker wrote his novel Dracula in 1897, he was already drawing upon hundreds of years of European tradition. Stoker had amassed over 100 pages worth of notes on vampire legends, including some commentary on the historical figure Vlad Dracula, a 15th century Prince of Wallachia who had defended eastern Europe from the Turkish Empire at Constantinople, and who was better-known as “Vlad the Impaler”, nicknamed after his favorite method of torturing his enemies to death. Dracula would provide his name and his Transylvanian locality to Stoker’s story. It would be Stoker’s novel—and especially the film adaptations which followed it—that set the archetype for the modern conception of the Vampire legend.
It was a legend that stretched back to medieval times. Feudal Europe was a hard place to live: catastrophes like droughts, plague or famines were a fact of life, and with no way of explaining those events, people turned to religious beliefs and stories of the supernatural. Demons and witches were accepted as parts of everyday life. But then, there was also the fear on the part of the living that maybe the dead weren’t so dead...
It was a common belief in medieval times that the spirits of the recently-dead could return to cause trouble for the living, bringing with them misfortune and disaster.
From that idea, it was then not a great leap to the notion that one could prevent the Vampire from leaving his grave to molest the living through various methods. The one we know best today, thanks to numerous movies, is to drive a stake through the heart, but in medieval times there were a myriad of ways that were thought to dispatch a Vampire. Sometimes a metal stake would be driven through the body and into the wood of the coffin, to pin the body inside. Vampires could also be killed by cutting off their head, or by cutting out their heart and burning it. In some medieval burials a sickle blade was fastened to the side of the coffin at the corpse’s neck—the idea being that if the Vampire tried to rise out of his grave, the blade would sever his head and kill him. In other stories, suspected Vampires would have a large heavy stone placed on the lid of their coffin, to prevent them from lifting it from the inside. Sometimes the coffin would be filled with sand or salt: according to legend, Vampires had an irresistible desire to count the grains one by one, thus insuring that they never left their grave.
In 17th century Britain, political and religious struggles were often the same. There was no freedom of religion in England: the Anglican Church was the official state religion, and other faiths, especially Catholicism, the religion of the enemies Spain and France, were viewed not only as heresy but as political foes. But King James also had difficulties within his own Protestant wing. A faction known as Puritans thought that the Church of England wasn’t “Protestant” enough for them, and in 1620, a small group of religious separatists, calling themselves “Pilgrims”, boarded a ship called the Mayflower and sailed across the Atlantic to New England, where they hoped to build a new utopia based on their strict religious beliefs. They took their Bible seriously. Too seriously. They saw demons and devils everywhere they looked, and they believed in exercising harsh Biblical Law against the ungodly. The result was one of the most famous events in early American history —the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
Even 100 years after Salem, the religious fervor of the Puritans had not abated, and in the 1800s, this led to a lesser-known, but equally hysterical, event known as the Great New England Vampire Panic. Newspaper articles and journals from the time indicate that there were at least 20 known instances in which recently-dead people, suspected of being a Vampire, were exhumed and their hearts ritually burned.
Thanks to Bram Stoker and several generations of authors and movie-makers, public interest in Vampires has continued ever since.
One person who became immersed in the history of the Vampire legend was Edmondo Crimi of Doylestown PA. As a minister and an exorcist, Ed takes his demonology very seriously. And in 2023 (fittingly enough, it was on the Saturday before Halloween), he opened the "VAMPA Vampire and Paranormal Museum" on the grounds of his antiques store. The website for the Museum declares, "We believe there is and always has been a battle between good and evil. Everywhere in the world, we see these two kingdoms warring against each other—the kingdom of light battling against the kingdom of darkness. We encourage and believe in hypervigilance fused with a proactive approach to fight evil. . . . We strive to bridge the gap between denial, 'There are no Demons,' and overemphasis, 'There is a Demon behind everything!'”
The Museum houses what must be several thousand pieces, in half a dozen rooms, with some objects dating back to the 17th century. Many were obtained by Ed himself over the course of 40 years of collecting, some pieces were given to the Museum by donors, and some of them come from the private collections of famous Vampire enthusiasts like Vincent Price, Wolfgang Pauli, and Jack Palance.
So, are the Vampire Hunter Kits "real"? That is not a straightforward question to answer. Undoubtedly, none of them were ever used to actually slay a Vampire. Many of them, especially the later ones, were just display pieces or novelties, and are clearly ornate and elaborate for decorative purposes and are not practical weapons. Many of the "kits" are a mishmash of pieces that were each produced at different times and were only later collected and gathered to form a set. Although they may have actually been fashioned from authentic old decorative wood trim, table legs, or rails taken from churches or cathedrals that were being demolished or refurbished and were considered to be “blessed” or “holy”, that does not mean that they could not be re-made later for the purpose of representing an anti-Vampire weapon, whether seriously or not. So I guess whether they are "real" or not depends on what one's definition of "real" might be.
When I first heard about the "vampire museum", of course, I assumed it would be a small assembly of movie posters, cheap mementos, and maybe some movie props. It is not. It is an extensive collection of art objects, which Ed takes very seriously.
(And when I visited with my sister, nieces and nephews, we got a surprise ending to our visit ...)
Arriving at the Museum grounds
There is a variety of antique lawn sculptures for sale—some of which are … odd
The Museum
Inside the Museum
A French “vampire killing kit” from 1886. It has all the essentials—wooden stakes, mallets, holy water, crucifix, salt, and Bible.
This vampire killing kit belonged to English author Augustus Montague Summers
A variety of French wooden mallets and stakes, most from the 1860s
This collection of stakes reportedly belonged to the physicist Wolfgang Pauli
A collection that belonged to the actor Jack Palance, who played “Dracula” in the movies
A French “vampire-killing mace”, from the 1840s
Another French kit, from the 1880s. The bladed weapons were used to cut off the Vampire’s head.
This, uh, rather unusual rocking chair reportedly belonged to actor Vincent Price, who appeared in more horror movies than I can even remember
An “Exorcism Chair”. From 19th century Germany.
A French vampire-killing shield, from 1888. It says “Go to the Devil”.
This German vampire-killing shield says “Death to the Undead”
And this vampire-killing sword/stake from 1844 says “Death for the Blood-Sucker”
A collection from the French writer Theophile Gautier
A collection of “demon” statues from Africa and Asia
A collection of “haunted objects”. The sign warns, “Many of the objects in this display have demonic activity. Please show caution when viewing.” I looked deep into the clown’s eyes, and I have not yet begun to speak in Latin. But, you have been warned.
An entire room dedicated to St Michael, the Demon-Slayer
Tarot cards
A Ouija board that was reportedly made by the British occultist Aleister Crowley
And finally, the surprise at the end of our visit …
As we were about to leave, Museum owner Ed came by and told us that the Museum was very close to its 10,000th follower on InstaGram and asked us all to sign up. As it turned out, my nephew’s girlfriend just happened to become that 10,000th follower. And imagine the look on Ed’s face when he learned that her name was Angel. Yes, I shit you not … the 10,000th follower of the “Vampire Museum” is named “Angel”. It’s a sign from God. Or at least Ed thought so—he filmed a video with her and gave her a lifetime pass to the Museum.
Angel, with her lifetime pass
